Ra'ad meaning Thunder in Arabic is a Pakistani Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM), in service with the Pakistan Airforce. It can be fired from all current aircrafts in Pakistan's inventory. The missile has a range of 350 Km. Ra'ad gives Pakistan the ability to take out enemy radar installation and surface to air missiles well beyond the visual range of the enemy. The missile can also be used in an anti-ship role. The acurracy of the missile is said to be comparable to Pakistan's Babur cruise missile, which reportdely has "pinpoint accuracy" at 700 Km. A Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missile of the Luftwaffe A cruise missile is a guided missile which uses a lifting wing and most often a jet propulsion system to allow sustained flight. ... A Pratt and Whitney turbofan engine for the F-15 Eagle is tested at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, USA. The tunnel behind the engine muffles noise and allows exhaust to escape. ... The distance AB is the wing span of this Aer Lingus Airbus A320. ... A B61 nuclear bomb in various stages of assembly; the nuclear warhead is the bullet-shaped silver cannister in the middle-left of the photograph. ... An inertial navigation system measures the position and altitude of a vehicle by measuring the accelerations and rotations applied to the systems inertial frame. ... Former South African Air Force Mirage IIICZ The Dassault Mirage III is a supersonic fighter aircraft designed in France during the 1950s, and manufactured both in France and a number of other countries. ... The J-9 is also known as the FC-1 or JF-17 is a third generation fighter jet being developed jointly by the Peoples Republic of China and Pakistan. ... A Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missile of the Luftwaffe A cruise missile is a guided missile which uses a lifting wing and most often a jet propulsion system to allow sustained flight. ... Akash Missile Firing French Air Force Crotale battery Bendix Rim-8 Talos surface to air missile of the US Navy A surface-to-air missile (SAM) is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft. ... RBS-15 missile launched from a Sisu missile carriage. ... The Babur missile (named after the Mughal Emperor Babur) is the first cruise missile fielded by Pakistan. ...

Ra'ad is designed with stealth features. The missile has a very low detection probability due to its stealthy design and materials used in its construction. Ra'ad can carry all type of warheads, including Nuclear, but it is unlikely to be used for Nuclear delivery as Pakistan already has the longer range Babur cruise missile for that role. Ra'ad will most likely be used for precision airstrikes on enemy Command centers, radars, surface to air missiles, ballistic misisle launchers, warships etc. F-117 stealth attack plane Stealth technology is a sub-discipline of electronic countermeasures which covers a range of techniques used with aircraft, ships and missiles, in order to make them less visible (ideally invisible) to radar, infrared and other detection methods. ...

History

Pakistan's first cruise missle, Babur was tested in 2005. While that missle was said to have had an air launch capability, Ra'ad appears to be an entirely new missile, as is evident by the different name and a new official designation of Hatf VIII, as opposed to the Babur's Hatf VII. The missle was tested for the first time on 25th August 2007. An offical press-release at the time of the test declared that the missle gave Pakistan "a strategic stand-off capability on land and at sea,". [[1]]. The Babur missile (named after the Mughal Emperor Babur) is the first cruise missile fielded by Pakistan. ...

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