FAS | Nuke | Guide | Pakistan | Facility |||| Index | Search |



Wah Cantonment
Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF)
Uranium Conversion Facility

The Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex consists of three nearby armament facilities in Wah (Pakistan Ordnance Factories - POF), Kamra (Air Weapon Complex - AWC), and Taxilia (Heavy Industries Taxila -HIT). The Taxilia facility is devoted to land combat systems, and is an unlikely candidate for nuclear weapons development work. The Air Weapon Complex at Kamra is devoted to air-to-surface munitions, among other activities, and would probably have at least some connection with the development of air-delivered nuclear weapons.

Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF)

The Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), responsible for conventional weapons production, is located in Wah Cantonnement . The Pakistan Ordnance Factories is a complex of arms and ammunition manufacturing factories employing more than 40,000 personnel. POFs provided the weapons and ammunitions to the Pakistan Army and all their foreign clients. However, since POF can not produce the complete inventory of the Pakistani Army's armament needs, a high content of the Armed Force requirements are imported.

The Pakistan Ordnance Factories organization has fourteen large complexes at Wah:

  1. Weapons Factory
  2. Machine Gun Factory
  3. Small Arms Ammunition Factory
  4. Tank Ammunition Factory
  5. Medium Artillery Ammunition Factory
  6. Heavy Artillery Ammunition Factory
  7. Brass Mill
  8. Steel Foundry
  9. Tungsten Carbide Factory
  10. Tungsten Alloy Factory
  11. Explosives Factory
  12. Propellants Factory
  13. Filling Factory
  14. Clothing Factory for Uniforms

The two main subsidiaries -- Wah Industries Ltd., and Wah Nobel Ltd. -- were established to utilise spare capacities of Factories for commercial applications. Subsequently Hi-Tech Plastics Ltd., Wah Nobel Chemicals Ltd., Wah Nobel Detonators Ltd., and Attock Chemicals Ltd., were set up to meet the requirement of civil market.

POF produce approximately 70 major products for supply of Army, Navy and Air Force. The main products include automatic rifle; light medium and heavy machine guns, complete range of mortar and artillery ammunitions, aircraft ammunition and anti-aircraft ammunitions, tank ammunition and anti-tank ammunitions, bombs, grenades, land mines, pyrotechnics and signal stores etc.

Starting form raw materials, all other inputs needed for the manufacture of arms and ammunition such as brass, gilding metal clad steel, steel products carbide and tungsten alloy products, fuzes all types of gun, rocket and artillery propellants, and all types of explosives are produced in POF. During the 1990s there was a massive influx of new technologies which permitted an upgrade of production technology. This involves the use of modern equipment e.g. robotics, CNC machines, microprocessor - controlled processes, and automation. Major investments were made in CNC machines and computerisation of management and control systems. To augment the product and tool & gauge designing facilities, a modern CAD system was installed. Quality control, proof firing and inspection are carried out by the inspection and Technical Development Directorate of General Headquarters.

Uranium Conversion Facility

According to some reports, a Uranium enrichment plant is under construction in Wah, possibly with Chinese assistance. This facility may [or may not] be the otherwise un-attested "Uranium Conversion Facility, Islamabad" that was cited in the 1998 Entity List.

Photographic Evaluation Report

High resolution imagery is available from two sources, including declassified CORONA imagery. As of 04 June 2000 Russian 2-meter resolution KVR-1000 imagery coverage was not available via the SPIN-2 service on TerraServer. As of 04 June 2000 archival Space Imaging IKONOS 1-meter imagery available on the CARTERRA™ Archive included two cloud-free scenes acquired on 12 March 2000. The location of these scenes is almost certainly consistent with the Wah/Kamra/Taxila area of interest, although the metadata appears corrupt, and thus the orientation of the browse images is uncertain. Consequently, it is not possible to correlate the three entities in this area with the several large complexes that are evident in the images.

Sources and Resources



FAS | Nuke | Guide | Pakistan | Facility |||| Index | Search |


http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/facility/wah.htm
Maintained by Michael Levi

Updated Sunday, June 04, 2000 10:36:06 AM