Twirp: Terrorist Wahabi Islamic Rep Pakistan 5

[acharya]

Arrival of the Arihant



Monday, August 03, 2009
By Taj M Khattak
In an impressive ceremony on July 26, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur struck a coconut on the steel hull of the Indian Navy’s latest nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, and catapulted her country into “Club Five,” countries which develop their own submarines, the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China.

Ironically, the INS Arihant launch site was not far from the sea grave of Pakistan’s first submarine, PNS Ghazi, with its crew of 90 or so, interned in eternal sleep; a site as sacred to Pakistan’s sea warriors as sacred can be. Ghazi, it may be recalled, had valiantly bottled the entire Indian Navy fleet in its harbours in the 1965 conflict, facilitating the Pakistani Navy’s surface fleet to have a shoot at Dwarka. But fortunes had swung full circle and it perished at the entrance of Vishakhapatnam harbour during a daring but dangerous mission in 1971 war. But back to Arihant now.

The launch on July 26 coincided with the 10th anniversary celebrations of India’s victory over Pakistan at Kargil. “Arihant” is a Sanskrit word which means “destroyers of all enemies.” If the meaning of the submarine’s name and the date of its launch had any symbolism aimed at Pakistan, only the Indians would know, as most of the media here, more or less, gave it a miss.

INS Arihant has been developed, at a cost of $2.9 billion, under the super-secretive “Advanced Technology Vehicle,” a euphemism for an SSBN, which was conceived in the 70s. It will provide India with the capability to launch nuclear weapons from sea, adding to its land and air abilities to complete New Delhi’s nuclear weapons concept of triad. In the process it would give India an unquestionable second-strike capability.

Arihant is a ballistic nuclear submarine, also known as an SSBN (ship submersible ballistic, nuclear). It is not an attack submarine, SSN, that is designed to hunt and destroy surface and undersea vessels. Arihant’s main purpose is nuclear deterrence and firings of strategic nuclear weapons.

The Arihant is not the first nuclear submarine in the service of the Indian Navy. In 1988, India leased a Soviet Charlie-class nuclear submarine it renamed as INS Chakra. In accordance with the lease agreement, the USSR received Indian Rs100 millions per month as lease charge. The “lease” arrangement also ensured that the USSR received back the spent nuclear fuel, so it was not seen as violating the NPT.

The Indian Navy, in the process, was gaining useful experience in operating nuclear submarines as it was manned by an all-Indian crew. The lease, however, remained plagued with reports of radiation-related accidents and the submarine was returned on completion of the lease in 1991, the year the Soviet Union disintegrated into several independent countries.

INS Arihant has been jointly built by the Indian Navy and the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO). Arihant is claimed to be constructed entirely in India, though reports have surfaced now and then about India seeking Russian assistance is such tricky areas as propeller and shaft technology in order to mitigate production risks, and perhaps the cost, as the ATV had already reached a whopping $2.9 billion tag.

Russian footprints are clearly visible as far as the design of the submarine is concerned, and its assistance in the miniaturisation of the nuclear reactor would certainly have been unavoidable. If there were any doubts, the repeated expressions of gratitude from speakers during the launch ceremony for Russian assistance dispelled those doubts.

INS Arihant is believed to be powered by an 85-megawatt-capacity nuclear reactor and can acquire surface speeds of 22 to 28 km/hour (12-15 knots) and a submerged speed of up to 44 km/hour (24 knots). It has four launch tubes of 2.4- meters diameter each. Initially, it will be armed with three 0.74-meters diameter, K-15 (Sagarika) missiles with a range of 700 kilometres in each launch tube.

Subsequently, it will be armed with one 2.0-meters-diameter sea launched Agni III in each tube with a range of 3,500 kilometres. The sea trails are expected to take anything up to two years where the next milestone to watch is when the reactors onboard attain criticality. The Arihant would then enter the phase of induction of weapons and the whole exercise could take anything up to ten years from now.

The Pakistani Navy’s Agosta 90-B submarines had been equipped with MESMA (module d’energies sous marine), and an Air Independent Propulsion system, which offered that extra battery power in high double-digit hours on hotel load at slow speed to evade enemy pursuit after an attack. This had been a qualitative advantage over the foe so far; admittedly not a very huge one, but an important one nonetheless, which now stands covered well beyond with one big leap of Arihant’s launching.

But in conventional warfare at sea, this advantage inherent in the Pakistani Navy’s submarines, as anyone with experience of being at the wrong end of depth-charge activity in war would vouch, is still a very big and a most welcome breather indeed.

There have been some rather hurried statements from our ministry of defence after the launching in Vishakhapatnam, which reflect an acceptance of what has been termed as the Indian challenge. But it is certain that the defence establishment of country will take a much harder and deliberate look at the whole issue (if it has not been done already since the ATV was in the coming since 1970s), and indeed the whole paradigm of strategic weaponry.

Both India and Pakistan have enough nuclear weapons to lob over each other from land and air and destroy each other two or three times over and render this entire region an ecological disaster area for decades to come. Should Pakistan then need more nuclear weapons to be lobbed at India from the sea?

One often hears that if our survival is at stake in a war with India, then we shall exercise the nuclear option; or, put militarily, if there is a serious threat of loosing sensitive spaces, then we will make a move towards the “N Button.” I am sure our Strategic Defence Command knows that the moment we press that button, we would have initialled a reaction from India on the 17-or-so targets in Pakistan.

Admittedly, this figure on sites is the works of one Indian analyst, but it is hard to figure how much different it would be from the Indian establishments own calculations. The whole point is that nuclear weapons are deterrence against going to full-fledged war. But if, for whatever reason, a war breaks out between India and Pakistan, then the nuclear option would cease to be an option any longer.

If it yet does, and is exercised in a moment of madness, then, far from hoping that it will help us save the fatherland, it will expedite its pulverisation, and there will be nothing left for anyone, either this or that side of the border, for such is the devastating nature of the mushroom clouds.

As we have seen in the recent past, nuclear submarines have not saved countries from implosion. The Soviet Union’s Northern Fleet nuclear submarines lay rotting by the dozens at Murmansk after the break-up down of the Soviet Union.

Pakistan, currently ranking at number 10 on the list of most failed state and at 134 amongst 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, besides the host of other problems which need not be repeated here, should watch each and every step that it take and very, very carefully indeed.

It is time to put our house in order and not overstretch ourselves in any unnecessary competition. The Soviet Union was drawn in one such race that it could not sustain and it perished in the process. Let Pakistan not be the second such case study of this century.