Nuclear Thread - 4

[Guest]

<b> Perils of minimal deterrence</b>

Bharat Karnad
First Published : 24 Sep 2009 11:19:00 PM IST


India is lucky that in the decade since the 1998 tests when the Indian government trumpeted the country as a ‘nuclear weapon state’ boasting of thermonuclear armaments in its inventory, no country called its bluff. In the context of deterrence as a high-powered game of poker, luck is a statistical incidence for a player with a weak suite. It will eventually run out.

The coordinator of the 1998 series of nuclear tests K Santhanam has authoritatively shown up the Indian government’s thermonuclear claims as pretension torpedoing, in the process, the longstanding fiction of India’s mastery over the science of fusion weapons purveyed by R Chidambaram, adviser to the prime minister on science and technology and, formerly, chairman, Atomic Energy Commission. <b>By referring, moreover, to the ‘hard data’ regarding the tests Santhanam says he has, the other shoe is yet to drop. Chidambaram & Co must be sweating bricks — the reason why they have been silent, even as the Manmohan Singh regime’s urge to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and close the testing option altogether lies buried</b>. Instead of doing the right thing and having a committee of eminent physicists, including stalwarts from the retired nuclear community, examine the test data and the design details of the hydrogen device, <b>national security adviser M K Narayanan’s talk of a BARC group having already done this job and — surprise, surprise — pronounced the fusion test a success, has only stoked the disbelief freighted with anxiety.
</b>
Most significantly, Santhanam disclosed that none of the high yield thermonuclear weapon designs in the 100-kiloton to 300-kiloton range that Chidambaram had repeatedly assured the government and the military had been realised have, in fact, been weaponised. <b>This is a devastating denouement to a story that has the makings of a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the country, a fraud based on a scientific conceit of Chidambaram’s that Indian nuclear weaponeers are able to do what their counterparts in the more advanced countries cannot, namely, configure the complex hydrogen bomb based solely on simulation, not sustained and rigorous explosive testing.</b> It is another matter that India’s supposed simulation prowess is suspect considering that <b>simulation requires extensive test data to write the software and computing speeds in thousands of trillions of operations per second to replicate the variables of a fusion reaction — neither of which the country possesses. </b>Moreover, absent tests, facilities for large scale inertial confinement fusion and for dual axis radiographic hydro testing to enhance the yield by, say, improving the system for injecting tritium gas in the boosted fission trigger in an H-bomb, are unavailable in the country.

But, what is so special about thermonuclear weaponry? For one thing, the hydrogen bomb can inspire dread and is truly ‘frightening’ — the essence of deterrence as mind game and something Herman Kahn, the pioneering theorist of deterrence, said was the prime requisite. And, most importantly, the H-bomb is four times more destructive than a fission weapon and costs only a third as much. With limited resources and fissile material stockpile, India will be strategically better off with a mainly thermonuclear arsenal, each warhead providing enormously bigger bang for the buck.

Supporters of the government’s ‘no more testing’ line, incidentally, are also, without exception, adherents of ‘minimal’ deterrence. Acknowledging that India’s thermonuclear cupboard is virtually bare, these worthies now argue that: (1) weapons capable of 150-300 KT, leave alone megaton, yields are not needed because 60-80 KT fission weapons are adequate; (2) instead of one thermonuclear missile on target, India can fire three missiles, each with a 15-25 KT warhead and, in a supportive hypothesis, (3) delivery accuracy is more important than weapon yield.

<b>
An Indian arsenal featuring only 20 KT weapons will do for Pakistan but is guaranteed to fail against China.</b> <b>Besides, India does not have 60-80 KT fission weapons. If these are to be acquired, it will mean scaling up the only proven weapon in the armoury — the 20 KT variety. But scaled up fission bombs/warheads will still need to be tested. If testing is deemed politically infeasible for fission weapons as for fusion weapons, then a big question mark will continue to hang around the Indian deterrent.
</b>

The fundamental problem with triggering a salvo of missiles with small yield warheads in the place of thermonuclear missiles is that it is inherently illogical to make the effort of investing in and obtaining 5,000 km Agni intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and, in the future, an 12,000 km intercontinental range ballistic missiles or even long range cruise missiles, and then arm these with puny warheads. It skews the cost-benefit calculus. The minimalists think otherwise given their simplistic take on deterrence, which is high risk-acceptant. Costs may be irrelevant once a nuclear war breaks out, but isn’t the purpose of a nuclear deterrent to prevent nuclear war credibly but also as economically as possible? Secondly, there will be that many more fission weapon-armed missiles to secure and keep safe on the ground. Thirdly, against well-defended value targets, such as Beijing, several missiles will need to be fired to penetrate missile defences and to overcome attrition in flight and inaccurate terminal guidance.

<b>Finally, just the threat of incoming Chinese Dongfeng-21 IRBMs carrying warheads in the 1-3.3 megaton range would so psychologically cripple Indian political leaders with only 20 KT firecrackers to bank on, they will likely throw in the towel.</b>

The Armed Services have been shaken up by Santhanam’s outing the weapons programme as fraudulent and the thermonuclear deterrent as hollow. It will be reasonable for them to demand that nuclear weapons principally meet rigorous military performance standards and not, as happens at present, perform mostly on paper or on computer screens — the sort of thing that apparently satisfies the scientists who are not in the firing loop, retired bureaucrats and policemen (as NSA and what not) who offer strategic counsel such as is on display but are safely out of harm’s way, and political leaders making crucial nuclear weapons-use decisions. <b>The pity is that while the military is starting to get a grip on the situation, the retired civil servant-types and politicians, who understand little about nuclear weapons and even less about deterrence dynamics, are predisposed to make the wrong strategic choices because they accept the misleading, short term-oriented, West-pleasing, advice offered by promoters of minimal deterrence.
</b>
<i>About the author:

Bharat Karnad is professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and author of India’s Nuclear Policy</i>