Armstrong
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2012
- Messages
- 19,390
- Reaction score
- 94
- Country
- Location
No one is talking of targeting Lahore or Karachi or Delhi or Mumbai directly.
It will be a graded, instant, non-negotiable response.
An escalatory reprisal to show Pakistan the danger of its current course of action.
A couple of small towns or villages with or without strategic importance, but with an established military presence.
Small satellite air bases.
Rahim Yar Khan.
Bahwalpur.
Sub-100 thousand. A message.
And that message will call for a similar response ! Hence why even at a tactical level the deterrent serves its purpose to ensure that there is no escalation of hostilities beyond a stand-off or a sorry excuse for a skirmish because either of the High Commands will have to factor in these things & if the probable casualties incurred from the conventional prism wasn't enough you've got nukes on a tactical level to increase that amount by a factor of God knows how many !
Suppose Pakistan targets the first 5-6 Indian FOBs with tactical nukes & makes them redundant; what would India's response be ? Taking out a 10-20 of smaller towns or villages with conspicuous if not important military presence ? No & we'd be foolish to assume as such ! The response would be 10-20 Pakistani FOBs to knock the PAF virtually out of service. But because the corresponding response by Pakistan would be of a similar nature the stakes becomes so..so very high. Most of these tactical nukes are either air-launched, land launched or in the form of very mobile platforms able to traverse the length & breadth of Pakistan in a matter of hours & to be cheap enough to be procured in large numbers. Thats the dilemma over here - If you press & we launch & you launch in retaliation & we reply once more ! We would have obliterated most of our armed forces & many civilians in the vicinity in a matter of hours. Thats why this is so effective as a deterrent because from the signal to advance to the first push of the button the stakes are so...so very high that neither side would risk it !
So it all again comes down to - Are we bluffing & how much are either of us willing to risk it to find out ?