shiv wrote:India had one constraint that no other nation had - i.e time. India did not have the luxury of keeping on testing for an indefinite time. It was one chance and that one chance came up in 1998 when an just-voted-in government took its chances with sanctions - and even recalled the LCA folks in the US expecting sanctions before testing.
And because of the time constraint India was forced to try and achieve 4 objectives in the span of 48 hours and the plans had to be made in total secrecy, keeping most people out of the loop.
Only 2 of those objectives was technical. Two objectives were geopolitical.
In May 1998 the people in Pokhran were expected to:
1) Demonstrate capability (geopolitical objective)
2) Validate existing design (technical objective
3) Test new designs and collect data (technical objective)
4) To declare itself a nuclear weapons state that could then bargain as an "equal" with the other nuclear weapons states (geopolitical objective)
Shiv sahib, I am sure you know that RC and DAE was not given just 48Hr to deliver the objectives. DAE was directly under PMO since Mrs Indira Gandhi, and got all the necessary support from the highest office of the country. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv and most importantly PVN Rao gave them mandate to be ready to deliver when the time comes, at the expense of funds and labor and limbs of defense forces. DAE got ample heads up and dry run of how they will be asked to deliver during the first short lived govt of ABV too. You give DAE very generous rope when you say they got 48 hrs to deliver, when in reality they got many years, with the caveat that it will be a rare and possibly one time opportunity for DAE and India to test to their hearts content and DELIVER.
When the time came DAE did deliver something:
1. A successful S2 pure fission test (~12 Kt yield) from the inventory from the 1974 vintage version.
2. Demonstrated capability of mastery of fission weapons with the 3 sub critical tests.
3. Demonstrated competence of boosted fission weapons with the primary of S1 weapon.
But did they deliver all MUST HAVE goods that PMO required?
Let me list what they did not deliver in spite of all the funds and also adequate support/cautions:
1. Fusion was identified within DAE as the next stop after 1974 test. Fusion was explicit deliverable that DAE asked for and PVN Rao granted all necessary things during his tenure. That was a commitment not a commitment to try Fusion.
2. DAE put all eggs in one basket for Fusion weapon design. Review and lab facilities available to experimentally validate aspects of weapon design were not used (CAT/Indore was available but not used, so supremely confident the design team was, but eventually it turned out to be empty boast).
3. When the once in a lifetime orders (& opportunity) came to test to their hearts content, DAE was totally unprepared to deliver Fusion weapon. When the S1 seriously underperformed on Day-1 DAE had no fall back plan to test any other/second Fusion weapon design. Any reasonable program plan would have called for a fusion weapon design that will meet the PMO's BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS for this type of weapon which is as someone said "Effects of Effect". Viz an unambiguous big Fusion weapon test of many hundred KT yield to confidently declare to the world that India has arrived and "India had Big Hydrogen Bomb" something that PM ABV blurted out first only to recount and modify it to something irrelevant and not meeting BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS that were SPECIFIED to DAE.
That alternative fusion weapon design (however sub-optimal it might have been) should have gone in a test shaft for the second round. But no, RC was forced (and by implication India was forced) to eat humble pie by ordering S6 to to be pulled out of the shaft because he forgot to make the correct stuff (plan B stuff) that will work no matter what, for that S6 shaft.
That is the biggest "Night soil" on DAE's face, because the price India has/had to pay for that mistake & many future generations of Indians will have to pay in one way or another. And yes let us not forget to thank DAE and RC for all the gut wrenching, sick feeling, hair pulling, teeth gwaning frustrating discussion on BRF related to Indian strategic deterrence, options, testing, Hyde and Jackyll etc etc.. No BRF fun without that gift from DAE.
Fusion was the major deliverable for Pok-II and it seriously compromised the deliverable required off DAE in exercising that "Silver bullet" of an opportunity with all the grave risks it entailed to India.
4. The 3 sub-kt experiments had many objectives. Unfortunately apart from proving Indian mastery in fission design. Those experiments it turned out were not that well designed. But Indian had lucky providence of getting good data that will prove invaluable in fixing the TN weapon, not to mention there are other things that need to be fixed in that design.
5. When finally RC/DAE leadership did use the lab facility in Indore, the lab experiments quickly gave the exact result of what would happen if S1 design weapons is fired. It matched result of S1 debris. Yet another incriminating criminal act of powers to be in DAE weapon design team lead by R Chidambram. If only DAE leadership used all the money and facilities created at huge deprivation of other military programs. Most mediocre program managers in India in similar situation would have done far better. One does not have to compare DAE program management to program mgmt in multi-national corporations, much less foreign military PM or Military Nuclear Program Mgmt.
The above reveals no proliferation sensitive information, but exposes serious organizational weakness of DAE and its leadership.
Very little is known of the exact technical objectives and results other than what was declared by a small core group of people. The only hint that I have of the question of subcritical testing again comes from Chidambaram's IISc talk:
< snip >
RC dwelt at some length on what he called the "chotus" - the "little ones" among the tests. Why 0.2 kT? He went into some technical detail here (see footnote 4) and said that after the CTBT came into effect France and China were not confident of computer simulation of devices less than 0.2 kT, (unlike the US), so they called for a modification in the CTBT requirements so that tests uoto 0.2 kT could be done, For that technical reason it was thought necessary to test a 0.2 kiloton device in Pokhran.
< snip
Footnote 4)In fissile material k=population of neutrons in present generation/population of neutrons in the previous generation. In a runaway chain reaction - eg a nuclear bomb k>1. In a steady state nuclear reaction k=1, and in storage k<1.
CTBT allowed for tests as long as k<1. That was fine for the US as it was actually able to do undetectable subkiloton tests or simulate on computer. France and China objected and wanted the limit raised to 0.2 kT below which they had not developed the ability to validate at the time of signing.
For completeness I restate point#4 above:
4. The 3 sub-kt experiments had many objectives. Unfortunately apart from proving Indian mastery in fission design. Those experiments it turned out were not that well designed. But Indian had lucky providence of getting good data that will prove invaluable in fixing the TN weapon, not to mention there are other things that need to be fixed in that design.