Dragon Fire

A. Q. Khan Laboratory, Kahuta, Pakistan: 33°54′ N, 74°06′ E

The town of Kahuta, thirty kilometres south-east of Islamabad, was a closed, military area. Anyone who travelled there without a permit was arrested on suspicion of espionage. It was the site of a uranium mine, which also contained Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons laboratory, named after A. Q. Khan, the physicist who pioneered the country’s nuclear programme. In the early eighties, Chinese technicians were involved in working on Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and production began in 1986. It’s thought Pakistan began to build weapons shortly after that. The HEU hexafluoride was made into uranium metal which was then machined into weapon pits. Kahuta was able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for three to six weapons a year. China’s involvement came to light again in 1996 when it sold five thousand ring magnets, enabling Pakistan to double its capacity to enrich uranium.

India suspected that Pakistan had alternative reprocessing laboratories and at least one more within the vicinity of Islamabad. In the late nineties, a heavy-water reactor went critical at Khushab, 160 kilometres south-west of Islamabad, giving Pakistan the ability to make plutonium. This was the nuclear material of choice for missile warheads, because they could be lighter and therefore give the missile more stability. About half the amount of plutonium was needed, making it possible to create a nuclear weapon the size of a grapefruit. Although the success Pakistan had had in creating plutonium was not yet clear, Khushab (32°16′ N, 72°18′ E) was part of the same airstrike operation as Kahuta.

Kahuta was the pride of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. It was also within a few minutes’ flying time from India, and barely had the aircraft crossed into Pakistani airspace than the laboratory was in flames. The weapons used for this operation had been carefully chosen so as to minimize the risk of nuclear leakage. No deep penetrations or free-fall bombs were used. Laser-guided bombs were the main weapons, targeted on the entrances and exits of the laboratory, with the view of sealing it rather than destroying it. Cluster bombs were dropped around the perimeter of the complex, sowing a path of smaller anti-personnel bomblets and tiny delayed-action mines, with the purpose of maiming staff working there and deterring others from going in. Fragmentation explosives damaged vehicles and light structures. By the end of the raid, the Kahuta laboratory might still have been in action. But its capacity to transfer enriched uranium to any warhead and missile had been crippled.