From the Financial Times:
The brazen attack on a Pakistani naval air base has sent shockwaves through the nuclear-armed country, raising concerns about the military’s ability to protect sophisticated weaponry .
The ease with which six Taliban militants stormed the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, close to the city’s busy commercial airport, and destroyed two newly US-supplied P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft has unnerved Pakistan’s military establishment.
More FT video
The militants held off security forces for more than 16 hours, killed 12 naval personnel and injured 14. Their primary objective appeared to be some of the military’s most sophisticated electronic warfare equipment, as they wiped out Pakistan’s anti-submarine warfare capability in a single stroke.
Ghazanfar Ali, a former brigadier general, said the Taliban attack would “hurt Pakistan’s reputation as a nuclear weapons state” in the eyes of the international community, by emphasising the country’s vulnerability.
In its arms race with arch-rival India, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons in the 1990s and carried out its first nuclear tests in 1998.
Pakistan’s security establishment insists that the nuclear arsenal is carefully guarded.
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