[20] At the meeting, Bhutto also appointed Munir Ahmad Khan as chairman of PAEC, who, until then, had been working as director at the nuclear power and Reactor Division of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna, Austria.

In December 1972, Abdus Salam led the establishment of Theoretical Physics Group (TPG) as he called scientists working at ICTP to report to Munir Ahmad Khan.

[33] In 1969, after a long negotiation, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) signed a formal agreement to supply Pakistan with a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant capable of extracting 360 grams (13 oz) of weapons-grade plutonium annually.

[37] In addition to the psychological setback for Pakistan,[37] it had failed to gather any significant material support or assistance from its key allies, the United States and the People's Republic of China.

[40][41] At a United Nations Security Council meeting, Bhutto drew comparisons between the Instrument of Surrender that ended the 1971 war, and the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was forced to sign in 1919.

"[44] In an effort to instill a sense of pride, Salam noted that the heads of the Manhattan Engineer District were theoreticians, and informed the scientists at ICTP that a similar division was being established at PAEC; this marked the beginning of the "Theoretical Physics Group" (TPG).

Under Khan's supervision, the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) was set-up and engaged in clandestine efforts to obtain the necessary materials technology and electronic components for its developing uranium enrichment capabilities.

[61] Enormous production was undertaken by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission for feasibility of weapons grade plutonium but parallel efforts were mounted toward weapons-grade uranium after India's test, the Smiling Buddha, in 1974.

Pakistan was so alarmed by the sighting that their then ambassador to the UN, Ahmed Kamal, held an emergency meeting with the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek reassurance from the international community that an attack was not imminent.

In 1999, Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India signed the Lahore Declaration, agreeing to a bilateral moratorium on further nuclear testing.

These were deemed essential risk reduction measures in view of the seemingly unending state of misgiving and tension between the two countries, and the extremely short response time available to them to any perceived attack.

[109] Physical chemist, Dr. Khalil Qureshi, did most of the calculations as a member of the uranium division at PAEC, which undertook research on several methods of enrichment, including gaseous diffusion, jet nozzle and molecular laser isotope separation techniques, as well as centrifuges.

[111] The army engineer and ex-technical liaison officer, Major-General Syed Ali Nawab discreetly oversaw KRL operations in the 1970s including procuring the electronics that were marked as "common items.

[115] On 28 May 1998, it was the KRL's HEU that ultimately created the nuclear chain reaction which led the successful detonation of boosted fission devices in a scientific experiment codenamed Chagai-I.

According to public statements made by the US Government officials, this heavy-water reactor can produce up to 8 to 10 kg of plutonium per year with increase in the production by the development of newer facilities,[119] sufficient for at least one nuclear weapon.

According to J. Cirincione of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Khushab's Plutonium production capacity has allowed Pakistan to develop lighter nuclear warheads that would be easier to deliver to any place in the range of the ballistic missiles.

[21] The plutonium electromagnetic separation takes place at the New Laboratories, a reprocessing plant, which was completed by 1981 by PAEC and is next to the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) near Islamabad, which is not subject to IAEA inspections and safeguards.

"[121][122][123] The New York Times carried the story with the insight that this would be Pakistan's third plutonium reactor,[124] signalling a shift to dual-stream development, with Plutonium-based devices supplementing the nation's existing HEU stream to atomic warheads.

[145][146] In 2001 visit to India, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Li Peng rejected all the accusations against China to Indian media and strongly maintained on the ground that "his country was not giving any nuclear arms to Pakistan nor transferring related-technology to it.

However, after the Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was dismissed in August 1990, the French nuclear power plant deal went into cold storage and the agreement could not be implemented due to financial constraints and the Pakistani government's apathy.

Declassified documents from 1982, released in 2012 under the US Freedom of Information Act, said that US intelligence detected that Pakistan was seeking suspicious procurements from Belgium, Finland, Japan, Sweden and Turkey.

[151] On January 23, 2024, India intercepted a Malta flagged ship, CMA CGM-Attila, at Mumbai’s Nhava Sheva Port, for carrying a “dual-use consignment” identified as a computer numerical control (CNC) machine, produced by an Italian company, from China to Pakistan.

In comparison to population, "India is more powerful than Pakistan by almost every metric of military, economic, and political power—and the gap continues to grow," a Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs report claims.

"[155] American political scientist Vipin Narang, however, argues that Pakistan's asymmetric escalation posture, or the rapid first use of nuclear weapons against conventional attacks to deter their outbreak, increases instability in South Asia.

[161] The NCA is composed of two civic-military committees that advises and console both Prime minister and the President of Pakistan, on the development and deployment of nuclear weapons; it is also responsible for war-time command and control.

[163] Under the National Command Authority, its secretariat, Strategic Plans Division (SPD), is responsible for the physical protection and to ensure security of all aspects of country's nuclear arsenals and maintains dedicated force for this purpose.

[168] Pakistan turned down the offer of Permissive Action Link (PAL) technology, a sophisticated "weapon release" program which initiates use via specific checks and balances, possibly because it feared the secret implanting of "dead switches".

[171][172] In 2007, Lisa Curtis of The Heritage Foundation, while giving testimony before the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, concluded that "preventing Pakistan's nuclear weapons and technology from falling into the hands of terrorists should be a top priority for the US.

According to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-proliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, citing a Pakistani news article,[189] Pakistan is developing its own equivalent to the Davy Crockett launcher with a miniaturised warhead that may be similar to the W54.

[193] A 2016 report by Hans M. Kristensen stated that "The F-16s were considered to be the first planes that are nuclear-capable in the Pakistan arsenal and the French Mirage III was upgraded as well to carry a new air launch cruise missile.