Pakistan's defense industry: An effort towards self-reliance?

This paper discusses the current state of Pakistan's defense industry and its potential. Like most of the developing Third World countries, Pakistan also has a number of weapons production and related R&D facilities. The defense industrial infrastructure was considered necessary to maintain an ability to fight without compromising foreign policy or other state objectives. However, the present state of the defense industry does not give one the satisfaction that Pakistani policy-makers could depend upon local capabilities to fight a war. A variety of reasons pertaining to lack of an industrial culture, technological, industrial and educational backwardness, poor quality of human resource, dearth of resources, financial mismanagement and lack of a political will to establish a sound defense industry are some of the factors analyzed in the paper.