How Pakistan Became a Nuclear Power: History and Timeline of the Nuclear Program

Pakistan became a nuclear power on 28 May 1998 by firing five underground nuclear devices at Ras Koh Hills in Chagai district, Balochistan. The Chagai-I tests made Pakistan the seventh state to test nuclear weapons publicly.

The programme behind those tests took 42 years, ran through two rival laboratories, and was driven by a war Pakistan lost. This article gives the full timeline, the reason the programme started, the people who actually built the device, what happened at Chagai on 28 and 30 May 1998, why 28 May is now Youm-e-Takbir, and where Pakistan’s nuclear programme stands in 2026.

When Did Pakistan Become a Nuclear Power?

Pakistan became a declared nuclear power on 28 May 1998 at 15:15 Pakistan Standard Time, the moment five devices were detonated inside a tunnel bored into Koh Kambaran in the Ras Koh Hills. A sixth device followed on 30 May 1998 in the Kharan Desert. Pakistan had held an untested weapons capability since the mid 1980s, so 1998 marks the declaration rather than the achievement.

The table below sets out the programme from the creation of its first institution to the command structure that now controls the arsenal.

Year	Event
1956	The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) is established to run a civil nuclear energy programme.
1962	The United States agrees to supply PARR-1, a 5 megawatt research reactor, under the Atoms for Peace programme.
1965	PARR-1 goes critical at Nilore on 21 December; PAEC chairman Ishrat Usmani establishes PINSTECH and sends hundreds of Pakistani students abroad for nuclear training.
September 1965	After the war with India, Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto says Pakistan will build a bomb even if its people have to eat grass.
16 December 1971	Pakistan surrenders at Dhaka and East Pakistan becomes Bangladesh.
20 January 1972	At the Multan meeting, President Bhutto authorises a crash weapons programme and appoints Munir Ahmad Khan chairman of PAEC.
18 May 1974	India detonates Smiling Buddha at Pokhran and describes it as a peaceful nuclear explosion.
December 1974	Abdul Qadeer Khan returns from the Netherlands with centrifuge design knowledge from URENCO.
1976	Engineering Research Laboratories is set up at Kahuta under the Army’s Corps of Engineers; A.Q. Khan joins the bomb programme in April; the uranium route is codenamed Project-706.
1983	PAEC carries out the first cold test of a device at Kirana Hills on 11 March; Kahuta is renamed Khan Research Laboratories after a visit by President Zia-ul-Haq.
1984	A cold test is conducted on 6 October, and on 10 December A.Q. Khan writes to Zia that a device could be detonated at one week’s notice.
11 and 13 May 1998	India conducts five tests at Pokhran under the codename Operation Shakti.
28 May 1998	Chagai-I: five devices fired at Ras Koh Hills, Chagai district, at 15:15 PKT.
30 May 1998	Chagai-II: one device fired in the Kharan Desert at 13:10 PKT.
2 February 2000	The National Command Authority is created to control nuclear weapons policy.

Why Did Pakistan Start Its Nuclear Program?

Pakistan started its nuclear programme as a civil energy project in 1956 and converted it into a weapons project after the loss of East Pakistan in 1971. Three events set that course.

The first was the war of September 1965, which ended without a decisive result and left Pakistan aware of India’s conventional advantage. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then foreign minister, made the statement most often quoted in the whole programme: that Pakistan would build a bomb even if its people had to eat grass. The conventional balance that argument rests on is the same one commemorated on 6 September, Defence Day in Pakistan.

The second was the war of December 1971. Pakistan surrendered at Dhaka on 16 December, about 93,000 prisoners entered Indian captivity, roughly 80,000 of them military and paramilitary personnel, and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. The state had lost more than half its population in a single defeat.

The third was India’s test of 18 May 1974. Smiling Buddha proved that a nuclear device could be built inside South Asia, and it removed any argument that Pakistan’s programme was chasing a hypothetical threat. Bhutto had already convened the Multan meeting on 20 January 1972, so the weapons decision preceded the Indian test by two years, but 1974 is what turned it into a national priority.

Who Made Pakistan a Nuclear Power?

Four people carry most of the credit, and popular accounts usually compress them into one. The programme had a political author, an institutional director, an enrichment specialist and a test director, and the device fired at Chagai was not the work of any one of them alone.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Bhutto made the decision. As foreign minister he argued for a weapons programme from 1965, and as president he authorised the crash programme at the Multan meeting on 20 January 1972, arranged by the physicist Abdus Salam. Bhutto also appointed the chairman who would run it.

Munir Ahmad Khan and the PAEC

Munir Ahmad Khan chaired the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission from 1972 and directed the weapons programme itself. A nuclear engineer trained at the Illinois Institute of Technology who had worked at Argonne National Laboratory and the International Atomic Energy Agency, he built the fuel cycle, assembled the theoretical and design teams, and pursued the plutonium implosion route. PAEC, not Khan Research Laboratories, designed the devices, calculated the yields, prepared the Ras Koh tunnels and conducted the tests. The first cold test of a Pakistani device, at Kirana Hills on 11 March 1983, was PAEC work.

Abdul Qadeer Khan and Khan Research Laboratories

Abdul Qadeer Khan solved the fissile material problem. A metallurgist who had worked at the FDO subsidiary of the URENCO consortium in the Netherlands, he returned to Pakistan in December 1974 with centrifuge design knowledge, joined the bomb programme in April 1976, and built the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta that was renamed Khan Research Laboratories in 1983. Highly enriched uranium from Kahuta was the material used in the 28 May devices, which A.Q. Khan confirmed publicly after the tests.

A.Q. Khan was never head of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and was not responsible for weapon design, yield calculation or testing, which stayed with PAEC. The popular title of father of the bomb reflects his public visibility after 1998 rather than the division of work, and Pakistani accounts that name only A.Q. Khan omit the organisation that built and fired the device. He is included among the country’s national heroes of Pakistan on that popular reading.

The proliferation episode belongs in the record. On 4 February 2004 A.Q. Khan confessed on Pakistan Television to running a network that transferred centrifuge technology and designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya. President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him the following day and placed him under house arrest, which the Islamabad High Court ended on 6 February 2009 after ruling his detention unconstitutional. Pakistan has maintained that the transfers were unauthorised and personal; investigators outside Pakistan have questioned that account. A.Q. Khan died on 10 October 2021 and was given a state funeral.

Samar Mubarakmand

Samar Mubarakmand led the team that fired the devices. As director of PAEC’s fast neutron physics group he supervised the cold tests of the 1980s and served as chief scientist at both Chagai-I and Chagai-II.

What Happened at Chagai on 28 May 1998?

India tested five devices at Pokhran on 11 and 13 May 1998 under the codename Operation Shakti and declared itself a nuclear weapons state. Pakistan tested seventeen days after India’s first tests, having faced heavy diplomatic pressure not to respond, including an American offer of military and economic inducements to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Chagai-I took place at 15:15 PKT on 28 May 1998 inside a horizontal tunnel driven into Koh Kambaran in the Ras Koh Hills. Five devices were fired simultaneously, all boosted fission designs using weapons grade uranium enriched at Kahuta.

Chagai-II followed at 13:10 PKT on 30 May 1998 at a separate site in the Kharan Desert. This single device was a plutonium implosion design, which vindicated the plutonium route PAEC had pursued since 1972 alongside the uranium route.

Yields are disputed. Pakistan’s Theoretical Physics Group put the 28 May total at about 40 kilotons of TNT equivalent, with the largest device between 30 and 36 kilotons, and gave 20 kilotons for the 30 May test. Independent seismic analyses are lower, with estimates in the range of 6 to 20 kilotons for Chagai-I and about 8 kilotons for Chagai-II from the American Physical Society. No verification is possible from outside, so both sets of figures stand as claims.

What Is Youm-e-Takbir?

Youm-e-Takbir, also written Youm-e-Takbeer, is the national day Pakistan observes every 28 May in commemoration of the Chagai tests. The name translates as the day of greatness, from the takbir, the declaration Allahu Akbar.

The day is a public holiday. Observance includes a change of guard at the Mazar-e-Quaid in Karachi, ceremonies at government buildings, addresses by the prime minister and president, and coverage of the Chagai monument. Nawaz Sharif, prime minister at the time of the tests, is the figure most associated with the decision to test, and the anniversary is also used to restate Pakistan’s deterrence policy.

Where Does Pakistan’s Nuclear Program Stand Today?

Pakistan is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has not signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Pakistan’s position is that the NPT divides states into nuclear haves and have nots and that accession would require giving up the arsenal, and Pakistan has instead declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear explosive testing, stating that it was not the first to test in South Asia and will not be the first to resume. Pakistan has sought membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which has not been granted.

Command of the arsenal sits with the National Command Authority, created on 2 February 2000. The NCA is chaired by the prime minister and is the highest decision making body on nuclear and missile policy. Its secretariat, the Strategic Plans Division, sits in Joint Services Headquarters under a senior army officer and handles planning, custody, security and the command and control network, and the three services each maintain a strategic forces command.

Doctrine has not changed since 1998. Pakistan describes its posture as credible minimum deterrence, aimed specifically at India, and it has never adopted the no first use pledge that India maintains. On arsenal size, the Federation of American Scientists and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute both estimate roughly 170 warheads in 2026, up from about 140 to 150 five years earlier. Every such number is an external estimate, because Pakistan publishes no figures.

Frequently Asked Questions About Pakistan’s Nuclear Program

When did Pakistan become a nuclear power?

Pakistan became a nuclear power on 28 May 1998, when five devices were tested at Ras Koh Hills in Chagai district, Balochistan. A sixth device was tested on 30 May 1998 in the Kharan Desert.

Who is the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program?

Abdul Qadeer Khan holds the popular title for building the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta. Munir Ahmad Khan directed the weapons programme itself as PAEC chairman, and PAEC designed and tested the devices.

How many nuclear tests did Pakistan conduct?

Pakistan conducted six nuclear tests in 1998. Five devices were fired simultaneously as Chagai-I on 28 May, and one plutonium device was fired as Chagai-II on 30 May. Pakistan has not tested since.

Why is 28 May called Youm-e-Takbir?

28 May is called Youm-e-Takbir, the day of greatness, because Pakistan conducted the Chagai-I tests on that date in 1998. The day is a public holiday marking Pakistan’s entry into the declared nuclear states.

Was Pakistan the first Muslim country to get nuclear weapons?

Pakistan is the first and so far the only Muslim majority country with nuclear weapons. The 1998 tests also made Pakistan the seventh state in the world to have tested a nuclear device publicly.

Last Thoughts on Pakistan’s Nuclear Program

Pakistan’s nuclear programme took 42 years, started as an energy project, and became a weapons project because of a war that cost the country half its population. The 1998 tests were the declaration of a capability that already existed, and the record shows an institution rather than an individual behind them, with PAEC designing and firing the devices and Khan Research Laboratories supplying the enriched uranium.

What follows from 28 May 1998 is still unfolding. Pakistan and India both hold arsenals outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, both are enlarging them, and neither has a verification arrangement with the other. That is the reason the position of the country on the map continues to matter, a subject set out in this guide to the geographical importance of Pakistan.