[sacw] S A A N Post | 14 Dec 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asians Against Nukes Post
14 December 2000

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#1. Politics of Nuclear Weapons in India & Pakistan
#2. Pakistan: CTBT: facing up to some questions
#3. India's National Security Strategy in a Nuclear Environment
#4. India's atomic boss claims 'Neutron bomb capability exists'
#5. India's nuke doctrine: mired in turf battles & bureaucracy
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#1.

'The Roots of Rhetoric- Politics of Nuclear Weapons in India and Pakistan'

by Haider Nizamani
(Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for
International Studies)

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/other/nizamani.htm

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#2.

CTBT: facing up to some questions
http://www.dawn.com/2000/12/06/op.htm#2

Editorial in The Dawn reasons why Pakistan should sign the CTBT,
including the pressure it will put on India and the need to focus on
economic growth and national unity over weapons development.

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#3.

India's National Security Strategy in a Nuclear Environment
http://www.idsa-india.org/an-dec-00-3.html

Strategic Analysis, December 2000, published by The Indian Institute for
Defense Studies and Analysis contains a series of articles on security
issues in South Asia. Posted below is the link to one of the articles at
the IDSA website

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#4.

'Neutron bomb capability exists'
http://www.the-hindu.com/fline/fl1725/17250890.htm

Frontline magazine interview with Anil Kakodkar, (Chairman of India's
Atomic Energy Commission) on December 1. Kakodkar speaks about India's
nuclear energy programme & on India's nuclear weapons program.

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#5.

Tehelka.com

India's nuke doctrine: mired in turf battles and bureaucracy

Even two years after the multiple underground nuclear tests in Pokhran,
India's nuclear command-and-control structure is in political, bureaucratic
and technical control, with the military on the "outer loop", says Rahul
Bedi

New Delhi, December 13 India is yet to fully formalise its nuclear
command and control structure even two years after conducting multiple
underground nuclear tests and 14 months after the National Security
Advisory Board (NSAB) released a draft nuclear doctrine.

Official sources said that "overall ignorance" of nuclear issues
underscored by "turf battles" between the bureaucracy, scientific
establishment and the military had so far prevented a "clear cut
enunciation" of a coordinated, failsafe Nuclear Command Authority (NCA).
"India's nuclear employment strategy in maintaining its Minimum Nuclear
Deterrence (MND) not been considered deeply," an official said. Neither,
he added, have the "escalation dynamics" of a preemptive strike scenario
been clearly thought through.

The NSAB envisages India's MND and policy of no-first-use of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) as based on a triad of aircraft, mobile missiles
and sea-based assets, including the classified nuclear powered submarine
(SSN) programme known as the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV), which is at
least five years behind schedule and expected to be delayed even further.

The absence of an institutionalised nuclear war fighting doctrine and
workable nuclear command structure made South Asia one of the world's most
volatile flashpoints The doctrine conceives a capability to shift from
peacetime deployment to "fully employable forces" in the shortest
possible time, and the ability to retaliate effectively to a decapitating
preemptive nuclear strike. It also wants India to have a "robust"
command-and-control system organised for "very high survivability against
surprise attacks and for rapid punitive response" (Jane's Defence Weekly,
August 25, 1999). Officials said that little or nothing had been done to
"firm up" these proposals. They said that India presently had a
"rudimentary, defused and confused NCA" under political, bureaucratic and
technical control, with the military on the "outer loop" on a strict
need-to-know basis. "Given such a diversified NCA, the efficacy of its
second strike response is likely to be slow," an official said.

The new Chief of Army Staff General Sunderajan Padmanabhan's remarks
indicated as much, when he declared after assuming office on September 30
that he would "finetune" India's nuclear strategy, doctrine and tactics.
"India's military is finally realising the urgency to place firm nuclear
weapon controls in place," an official said. But it remains to be seen
whether it will be permitted more than a peripheral role, he added.
Other military officials said that the absence of an institutionalised
nuclear war fighting doctrine and workable nuclear command structure made
South Asia one of the world's most volatile flashpoints between the
neighbouring nuclear weapon states (NWS) of India, Pakistan and China.
"This is especially so in the absence of agreed language and grammar of
nuclear responses," he stated, declining to be identified.

Indian defence officials privately admitted that rival Pakistan's
"Delhi-centric" nuclear weapon development and employment had always rested
with the military, giving its WMD programme relatively greater continuity
and cohesion.

They said that this "single-point" control had resulted in Pakistan
announcing earlier this year that its nuclear weapon programme was being
regulated by an institutionalised National Command Authority comprising the
employment control committee, development control committee and a strategic
plans division. There was also a strategic force command in which the
army's component was reportedly in an advanced state of readiness.

Senior security officials have iterated that India's nuclear weapons
programme is not "country-specific", adding that Delhi needs an MND in a
"nuclearised environment", an euphemism for the nuclear arsenals of
Pakistan and China with whom India has unresolved territorial disputes.
India has fought three wars with Pakistan since Independence and an
11-week-long border war last summer along the Kargil frontier in Kashmir,
which is claimed by both but divided between the two.

Official sources said that fearing a preemptive nuclear strike by Pakistan
during the Kargil conflict, India had reportedly activated three types of
nuclear delivery vehicles to a "3rd level of readiness", with nuclear
warheads ready for mating with delivery platforms. Indian apprehensions
were triggered by Pakistan Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed's veiled
threats of the border war escalating into a nuclear exchange.

The suggested command-and- control structure conceives
single-service authority over the strategic nuclear weapons "In its
posturing, Pakistan has a single rung escalation-from low-intensity
conflict to the nuclear option-as an attention grabbing gambit to focus
attention on the 53-year old Kashmir dispute," an official said. Fears of
the conflict broadening prompted Washington to step in and =93persuade=94
Pakistan to withdraw from India-administered Kashmir.

India's nuclear capability has also to contend with China. In a letter to
UN Security Council members Russia, France, Britain and the United States,
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said that fear of China's nuclear
capability, and mistrust between the two neighbours who fought a war in
1962 over an unresolved border dispute, had prompted India to undertake
five nuclear tests at Pokhran in the western desert region. Vajpayee also
accused China of helping Pakistan become a nuclear weapon state (NWS) and
provide it missiles.

Releasing the NSAB draft doctrine in August 1999, National Security Advisor
Brajesh Mishra declared that India had a nuclear command-and-control
system in place and the analysis would help hone it. Sources said that
this elementary, somewhat crude system-configured presently around Mirage
2000 Hs and planned around the advanced SU-30 MI versions which are to be
inducted into service by 2002, some 100-120 surface-to-surface Prithvi I
and II missiles and a limited, but unspecified number of Agni I and Agni II
tested to a range of 2,000 km with a 1,000-kg payload-follows the
"top-down" control regime. Overall authority rests with the prime
minister, who is aided by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), which
includes the ministers of defence, home, external affairs and finance.

An interim National Command Post (NCP) has reportedly been established
somewhere in the vicinity of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in the heart
of the city. A more permanent post with layered communication connectivity
is planned in the Aravalli hills southwest of Delhi, with the capability
to withstand up to a nominal ground zero nuclear strike based on US
6B(1)-11 earth penetrating nuclear warhead. An alternate NCP is also being
considered some where within a 100-150 km radius of Delhi.

Under the proposed NCA, the CCS would be advised on nuclear affairs by the
National Security Council (NSC) formally constituted in April 1999. But
according to an official review, the NSC was still "evolving" and would
"take time to mature". The next link in the chain of nuclear command would
be the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), an appointment still under
consideration, as the " link" between the single service chiefs and the
CCS. Below the CDS would be the service chiefs controlling the nuclear
assets through their respective operational directorates.

The suggested command-and-control structure conceives single-service
authority over the strategic nuclear weapons. The Indian Air Force=92s (IAF=
)
proposition for a strategic nuclear command has reportedly been shelved,
principally because of the prohibitive cost it would entail in acquiring
additional hardware, developing a separate logistic infrastructure and
integrating it with existing systems.

The designated nuclear forces would operate on two separate channels,
getting orders directly from their respective operations directorates in
"half-code" authorising the use of WMD. The remaining half of the launch
code would be relayed directly by the CDS working in tandem with the
technical control channels headed by the AEC and the Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO). Although considered cost-prohibitive,
because of additional communication networks on different links that, in
turn, can be delay-prone, Indian planners deem it necessary to ensure
adequate checks and balances.