Pakistan: No Airfields Needed? Pakistan Tests New Tech to Launch Missiles From Anywhere
新闻台署名 来源：新华社、《黎明报》、《阿拉伯新闻》、阿纳多卢通讯社与《分钟镜报》。由 GSRRA 编辑部翻译并节选。
Pakistan just tested a private rocket booster that eliminates the need for airfields—a major tactical shift inspired by lessons from the Ukraine war.
On 06 June, Woot-Tech, a privately owned Pakistani defence contractor, revealed that it had tested a rocket-assisted take-off (RATO) booster for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
Designated RATO-150, Woot-Tech describes it as a 2,500 Ns-class system built for reliable assisted launch. In a company announcement, Woot-Tech pitched the booster as both cost-effective and mass-producible, enabling the end-user to dispense with large pneumatic catapults and long runways, while supporting rapid deployment/launch from austere sites. Woot-Tech is marketing the RATO for tactical, reconnaissance, and defence missions, and tagged for zero-length launch and loitering munition use.
Overall, Woot-Tech is positioning the RATO-150 to support loitering or one-way attack (OWA) munitions, which currently comprise the majority of Woot-Tech’s solution offerings. In other words, the RATO-150 is primarily a launch enabler for the systems Woot-Tech is already producing and marketing.
A 2,500 Ns Booster and Its Class
Woot-Tech specifies 2,500 Ns – i.e., Newton-seconds – a measure of total impulse rather than thrust. The total impulse is the quantity that determines how much momentum a booster can transfer to an air vehicle, so it sets the ceiling on what the RATO-150 can launch.
A RATO booster is a short-burn solid- or hybrid-rocket motor. It accelerates an air vehicle to flying speed from a rail, canister, or zero-length launcher, then separates once the air vehicle’s own engine takes over.
This is the standard launch method across the loitering munition and OWA class. IAI’s Harpy and Harop fire from sealed canisters with rocket assist before unfolding their wings, while the Shahed-136 launches via RATO from truck-mounted rails.
Internally, RATO solutions range from 2.5 kN · s to 200 kN · s of total impulse, covering everything from small tactical drones and OWAs to heavy-payload, retrievable systems. Providing 2,500 Ns, Woot-Tech’s RATO-150 sits at the floor of that range, indicating that it is designed for lighter-weight UAS.
A Launch Backbone for Woot-Tech’s Effector Stack
Woot-Tech Aerospace, founded in 2021, began with commercial vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones for agriculture and survey work before moving into defence.
Its portfolio now runs across target drones, an armed multirotor, loitering munitions, a turbojet OWA, a cruise missile, and a drone-swarm system.
The jet-powered effectors anchor the line. The HiMark-25 TJ is a turbojet OWA, and the Nimbus 2K is a cruise missile, both built for long-range expendable strike.
Its Juggernaut armed multirotor has already entered service with the Pakistan Navy (PN) and special operations forces (SOF). The company is not new to supplying a service arm directly.
Woot-Tech had already offered RATO as an option on the HiMark-25 TJ to extend its range from mobile launch sites. The RATO-150 turns that option into a dedicated product.
Reference Link:- https://quwa.org/pakistan/market-intelligence/no-airfields-needed-pakistan-tests-new-tech-to-launch-missiles-from-anywhere/
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
