Indian nukes and missiles stolen technology from US/USSR/Russia/French/N. Korea and British.
In November 1963, NASA began the Indian space program by launching a U.S. rocket from Indian soil. Between 1963 and 1975, more than 350 U.S., French, Soviet and British rockets were launched from India's new Thumba Range, which the United States helped design. Thumba's first group of Indian engineers learned rocket launching and range operation from the United States.
Among these engineers was A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the Agni missile's chief designer. After the Indian nuclear tests last month, he was also hailed as the "father" of the Indian atomic bomb. In 1963-64, he spent four months in training in the United States. He visited NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, where the U.S. Scout rocket was conceived, and the Wallops Island Flight Center in Virginia, where the Scout was being flown. The Scout was a four-stage, solid-fueled launcher used to orbit small payloads. It was also used to test the performance of reentry vehicles--a technology necessary to deliver nuclear warheads. According to NASA officials, the Indian engineers saw the blueprints of the Scout during their visit.
In 1965, the Indian government asked NASA for design information about the Scout. The request should have raised some eyebrows. It came from the head of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. Nevertheless, NASA obligingly supplied the information. Kalam then proceeded to build India's first big rocket, the SLV-3, which was an exact copy of the Scout. The first stage of the SLV-3 is now the first stage of the Agni missile.
The second stage of the Agni is based on a surface-to-air missile known as the SA-2 that India bought from Russia. But in order to build the second stage, India also had to learn about liquid propulsion. For this, India turned to France. The French willingly transferred the technology needed to build a powerful liquid-fueled rocket motor called the "Viking," which powers the European Space Agency's Ariane satellite launcher. Thus, India learned how to build the first stage of the Agni from the United States, and how to build the second stage from France and Russia. The U.S. and French help was supposed to be for peaceful space exploration, but it wound up helping India's missile program.
The Agni also needed a guidance system. For this, India turned to the German Space Agency. In the 1970s and 1980s, Germany conducted an intensive tutorial for India in rocket guidance. The assistance--once again--was supposed to be for peaceful space exploration. But each step in the process for building a guidance system for India's space launcher moved India further down the road to building a guidance system for the Agni missile. In fact, India seems to have invented a new term to describe its progress. Again and again, India's Department of Space, in its annual reports, announced that it was able to "indigenize" another piece of essential equipment.
Germany also provided other help. The German Space Agency tested a model of the first stage of the SLV-3 (identical to the Scout) in its wind tunnel at Cologne-Portz. That first stage is now the first stage of the Agni missile. The German Space Agency also helped India build rocket test facilities, and trained Indians in the use of the special composite materials needed to make rocket nozzles and nosecones. I have included a graphic and a table in my testimony that summarizes the extensive foreign help that India received.
Thus, India's biggest nuclear missile is an international product. Under the guise of peaceful space cooperation, the United States, France and Germany helped create the most advanced nuclear missile in South Asia. The Agni's first stage, second stage and guidance system all come from Western technology, which proves beyond any doubt that you cannot help a country build space launchers without helping it build missiles.