After the emergence of Islam in the sub continent in 712 A.D, when Muhammad Bin Qasim(an Arab General) made an entry to this strategically important region of South Asia, the Muslims ruled India for almost one thousand years. The decline of Mughal Empire, however, created a vacum, which was immediately exploited by the British East India Company resulting in British rule of the sub continent for nearly one hundred years. During their colonial rule, the British raised sixteen ordnance factories prior to Second World War to thwart strategic threats posed to their occupation. At the time of creation of Pakistan in 1947, all those sixteen factories fell to Indian share since no one of them were located in Muslim majority areas. Newly created Pakistan with fragile state apparatus and fragmented Armed Forces, had absolutely no arms & ammunition manufacturing facility to meet the security challenges to its sovereignty.

Khan Liaqat Ali Khan, who was the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, immediately realized this imbalance and issued a directive within four months of creation of Pakistan to establish an ordnance factory in collaboration with British Royal Ordnance to manufacture .303 in.calibre rifles and its ammunition in Rawalpindi. The second Prime Minister, Khawaja Nazim-ud-Din, later performed the groundbreaking ceremony on 28th December, 1951 for four workshops at present day’s industrial town of Wah Cantonment, where today we have fourteen big factories which are taking care of almost 100% requirements of our more than half a million Land Forces. This modern defence industrial complex, which is the oldest & largest in Pakistan, later helped many other sister defence production set ups to flourish. Resultantly today Pakistan has a reasonably good defence production potential in which Pakistan Ordnance Factories occupy the pivotal position.

All the factories are under the control of a Board consisting of a Chairman, a Financial Advisor and two career technical members. The factories are headed by managing directors who are quite independent in taking all actions related to the production of arms and ammunition within the framework of policy guidelines determined by the POF Board.

The engineers, technicians and work persons of POF have acquired sufficient knowledge and experience through years of dedicated hard work. The initial products were of British origin. Later American products and standards were introduced, followed by the collaboration with the Germans & Chinese. Now POF produced ammunition even meet the requirement set in the NATO specification. The amalgam of various technologies has a enabled our engineers and workforce to obtain diversified experience.