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A long & confused write up.
If everything about the Indian missile system is wrong then whats there to fear for Pakistan, why is it wanting to catch up or stay abreast
The Indian defence myth - Rizwan Asghar
The nuclear establishments of India and Pakistan have never missed any opportunity to spark a new arms race in the region. But, over the past few years, New Delhi always took the lead in this sphere and the latest move to trigger fresh tensions has been India’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) programme.
In April this year, India test-fired an anti-ballistic missile which is considered to be capable of intercepting targets outside the planet’s atmosphere. India’s nuclear establishment has termed it a major step in development of a missile defence system available to only a handful of nations including the United States, Russia and Israel. This development signalling India’s increasing reliance on missile defence as an element of nuclear deterrence is highly destabilising and dangerous.
The BMD aims to provide a multi-layered shield against the incoming hostile missiles. India’s hawkish Defence Research and Development Organisation’s declaration of its successful BMD capability by testing it against slow moving Prithvi missiles faces a lot of doubtful questions. The success rate of a deployed BMD system is supposed to be very low.
The Indian BMD does not even provide reliable defence against Pakistani stealth cruise missiles like the Hatf-VII and would surely be unable to provide India’s two cities – New Delhi and Mumbai – a shield against Chinese Dongfeng-41 missile with ‘multiple sub-warheads with separate trajectories.’ But there are very strong concerns that this system might threaten Pakistan’s first strike capability and some analysts are of the view that Pakistan should counter it by increasing the number of its cruise missiles.
It is quite unfortunate that New Delhi remains a dominant player in conventional warfare against Pakistan but the Indian military establishment remains in a paranoid state, refusing to reduce the role of nuclear forces in its military strategy. Indian officials maintain that their country would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict but recent moves by the Indian military are raising uncertainty levels for Pakistan. After 2007, Indian policies have largely hastened an arms race, prompting Pakistan to scale up the number of missiles to a level enough to evade the missile defence shield.
Many changes in the prevalent regional security environment in the post-9/11 era have raised the danger of nuclear terrorism in the region if both countries do not take drastic steps to reduce their nuclear arsenals while ensuring that low-level conflicts do not escalate unpredictably.
New Delhi has exhibited interest in strategic missile defence since the early 1980s. In 1983, Indian Ministry of Defence in partnership with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) started work on the ‘Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme’ for the development of the Theatre Missile Defence (TMD). The programme included offensive missiles like the nuclear-capable Prithvi and Agni, and Akash, a surface-to-air missile with the potential to provide India with theatre missile defence capabilities.
India also received a lot of foreign help to enhance its offensive nuclear capabilities as part of diplomatic initiatives like Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) launched in 2005 and Defence Trade and Technological Initiative (DTI) in 2012, giving rise to further challenges for strategic stability in the region. It is ironic that the US continues to be supportive of India’s emergence as a dominant nuclear player in the region in pursuit of its regional security interests while remaining a consistent advocate of complete nuclear disarmament at the global level. Missile defence cannot enhance India’s deterrence value because it cannot effectively deter any nuclear attack. The only thing it can do is fuel insecurity for rival countries.
This missile defence programme might be able to gain the support of a handful of analysts known for toeing the establishment’s line in India but such offensive war doctrines only serve to bring the two nuclear-armed neighbours closer to nuclear conflict.
Nuclear South Asia is not like cold-war Europe because of the many differences between the Indo-Pak nuclear calculus and the dynamics of nuclear deterrence between the US and the USSR. The bitter animosity between India and Pakistan still has profound impacts on the decision-making approach of the leaders of both countries. In addition, because of high terrorism risk in South Asia, terrorist networks like Al-Qaeda have the potential to bring the region to the brink of a nuclear war by using militant organisations to launch Mumbai-like attacks in India.
There is strong evidence to suggest that India’s pursuit of BMD has not only destabilised regional security but has also created incentives for both countries to behave like ‘arrogant nuclear powers’. In addition, exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of missile defence might prompt India’s not-so-rational leaders to make unguided nuclear calculations that would prove costly in case of an unintended nuclear conflict between the two countries.
Will the people of India and Pakistan continue to live in the shadow of nuclear annihilation or will they move forward to rein in their paranoid military establishments?
If everything about the Indian missile system is wrong then whats there to fear for Pakistan, why is it wanting to catch up or stay abreast
The Indian defence myth - Rizwan Asghar
The nuclear establishments of India and Pakistan have never missed any opportunity to spark a new arms race in the region. But, over the past few years, New Delhi always took the lead in this sphere and the latest move to trigger fresh tensions has been India’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) programme.
In April this year, India test-fired an anti-ballistic missile which is considered to be capable of intercepting targets outside the planet’s atmosphere. India’s nuclear establishment has termed it a major step in development of a missile defence system available to only a handful of nations including the United States, Russia and Israel. This development signalling India’s increasing reliance on missile defence as an element of nuclear deterrence is highly destabilising and dangerous.
The BMD aims to provide a multi-layered shield against the incoming hostile missiles. India’s hawkish Defence Research and Development Organisation’s declaration of its successful BMD capability by testing it against slow moving Prithvi missiles faces a lot of doubtful questions. The success rate of a deployed BMD system is supposed to be very low.
The Indian BMD does not even provide reliable defence against Pakistani stealth cruise missiles like the Hatf-VII and would surely be unable to provide India’s two cities – New Delhi and Mumbai – a shield against Chinese Dongfeng-41 missile with ‘multiple sub-warheads with separate trajectories.’ But there are very strong concerns that this system might threaten Pakistan’s first strike capability and some analysts are of the view that Pakistan should counter it by increasing the number of its cruise missiles.
It is quite unfortunate that New Delhi remains a dominant player in conventional warfare against Pakistan but the Indian military establishment remains in a paranoid state, refusing to reduce the role of nuclear forces in its military strategy. Indian officials maintain that their country would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict but recent moves by the Indian military are raising uncertainty levels for Pakistan. After 2007, Indian policies have largely hastened an arms race, prompting Pakistan to scale up the number of missiles to a level enough to evade the missile defence shield.
Many changes in the prevalent regional security environment in the post-9/11 era have raised the danger of nuclear terrorism in the region if both countries do not take drastic steps to reduce their nuclear arsenals while ensuring that low-level conflicts do not escalate unpredictably.
New Delhi has exhibited interest in strategic missile defence since the early 1980s. In 1983, Indian Ministry of Defence in partnership with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) started work on the ‘Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme’ for the development of the Theatre Missile Defence (TMD). The programme included offensive missiles like the nuclear-capable Prithvi and Agni, and Akash, a surface-to-air missile with the potential to provide India with theatre missile defence capabilities.
India also received a lot of foreign help to enhance its offensive nuclear capabilities as part of diplomatic initiatives like Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) launched in 2005 and Defence Trade and Technological Initiative (DTI) in 2012, giving rise to further challenges for strategic stability in the region. It is ironic that the US continues to be supportive of India’s emergence as a dominant nuclear player in the region in pursuit of its regional security interests while remaining a consistent advocate of complete nuclear disarmament at the global level. Missile defence cannot enhance India’s deterrence value because it cannot effectively deter any nuclear attack. The only thing it can do is fuel insecurity for rival countries.
This missile defence programme might be able to gain the support of a handful of analysts known for toeing the establishment’s line in India but such offensive war doctrines only serve to bring the two nuclear-armed neighbours closer to nuclear conflict.
Nuclear South Asia is not like cold-war Europe because of the many differences between the Indo-Pak nuclear calculus and the dynamics of nuclear deterrence between the US and the USSR. The bitter animosity between India and Pakistan still has profound impacts on the decision-making approach of the leaders of both countries. In addition, because of high terrorism risk in South Asia, terrorist networks like Al-Qaeda have the potential to bring the region to the brink of a nuclear war by using militant organisations to launch Mumbai-like attacks in India.
There is strong evidence to suggest that India’s pursuit of BMD has not only destabilised regional security but has also created incentives for both countries to behave like ‘arrogant nuclear powers’. In addition, exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of missile defence might prompt India’s not-so-rational leaders to make unguided nuclear calculations that would prove costly in case of an unintended nuclear conflict between the two countries.
Will the people of India and Pakistan continue to live in the shadow of nuclear annihilation or will they move forward to rein in their paranoid military establishments?
