Bharat Rakshak

U-Boat Bases and Bunkers 1941-45 (Fortress)

The fortress serie from Osprey is quite interesting as it covers a topic only previously browsed by specialized books (and thus expensive).
The "U-Boat Bases and Bunkers" is a good start for whom want to know a little more about those concrete pens. 3D illustrations and present day pictures of the unbreakable survivors illustrate this book. The only drawback is that it lacks some infos about civil engineering (concrete technology, jobsites evolutions,..) and about the norvegian sites.

Hitler's U-Boat Fortresses

Hitler's U-Boat Fortresses is a caprivating, eye-witness account by a World War II participant of the Allies' campaign to capture the German U-Boat pens on the coast of Brittany. These submarine pens were active and responsible for sinking a massive amount of Allied ships right up until armistice.
As very little has been written about the Allied campaigns in Brittany and their importance to the overall European war effort, this book is essential for any reader of history.

Singha wrote:
question is will the political leadership authorize use of ballistic missiles like prithvi or close that option and allow only brahmos/nirbhay (unless the other party also uses ballistic missiles)

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) announced on Wednesday that it has obtained commercial satellite imagery from January 15, 2011 that shows what appears to be a fourth reactor under construction at Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site. The reactor construction was not visible during a previous satellite pictures last November.

"Pakistan is determined to produce considerably more plutonium for nuclear weapons,"

What’s at stake and who should be worried.

Foreign Policy ran a piece by SWJ’s Robert Haddick on recent disclosures about Pakistan’s increasing nuclear arsenal. Pakistan’s single-minded pursuit of destabilizing the subcontinent should not come as a surprise to those that have followed Pakistan’s weapons program. However, this article, like many others in the West, perpetuates the notion of an “arms race” in the subcontinent that Pakistan is swept helplessly into. This blogger finds such narratives very disturbing, and hence the rebuttal. Mr. Haddick’s first paragraph on Pakistan reads thus:

The most obvious and enduring explanation for the continuing buildup in Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile is the inescapable demographic and economic superiority enjoyed by India. India’s economy is nearly nine times larger than Pakistan’s, it spends 7.6 times more per year on its military and can mobilize 6.8 times as many military-aged males. Absent the arrival of previously unknown trust between the two countries, nuclear weapons are the only way for Pakistan to reassure itself about this unfixable strategic imbalance.

No, the explanation is neither the most obvious, nor enduring. Because it presupposes and rationalizes the argument that Pakistan must gain strategic parity with India under all circumstances. This, of course, is misleading because there simply is no reason for a country one-ninth that of India to try and gain parity with it, especially when India has never provoked conflict with it.

Let us also be careful about throwing about numbers on defense spending. Yes, India does spend considerably more than Pakistan does in absolute numbers. However, India’s defense spending, firstly, isn’t Pakistan-centric. And second, when considered as a percentage of GDP, Pakistan’s defense spending is at about 5%, while India’s is below 2.5%. This does not even factor in the $2 billion the U.S. provided Pakistan in overt military aid, which in and of itself amounts to about 1.2% of Pakistan’s GDP. That should put Pakistan’s defense “spending” at 6.2% of GDP for FYE11. And let us not even get into discussions about the misappropriation of aid provided to Pakistan.

Next, the article attempts to draw parallels between Pakistan’s increasing nuclear arsenal and the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear agreement:

The completion of the civil nuclear agreement between Washington and New Dehli was no doubt highly disturbing to Pakistan. With India’s nuclear technology and expertise fungible, the civil nuclear agreement allowed India to divert resources to its military nuclear program. Pakistan likely concluded that it had to respond to a potentially much larger Indian nuclear program at some point in the future.
Again, a very convenient excuse. No doubt, the civil nuclear deal between India and the U.S. does disturb Pakistan. But not because it “allows India to divert resources to its military nuclear program” but really because it negates the parity that Pakistan imagines it has with India.

If India really wanted to produce more nuclear weapons than it already has, it can, since it has sufficient fissile material reserves (as opposed to Pakistan). The fact that India hasn’t weaponized its reserves amply demonstrates that it is committed to maintaining minimum credible deterrence (something that Pakistan has never been committed to).

But here’s the kicker in the article:

The latest round of nuclear news out of Pakistan demonstrates that South Asia has not found a way out of the security dilemma it has long been in. Excuse me, “South Asia?” Let us not equate the actions of a rogue state with one that has been a constructive participant of several nonproliferation and disarmament discussions, including the FMCT talks. Let us not also assume that Pakistan has no option but to add more weapons to its stockpile because of India. If Pakistan was concerned about deterrence, it should revisit the unfolding of events subsequent to the December 13, 2001 attacks on the Indian Parliament and 26/11.

The question that the West must ask is why Pakistan continues to add weapons to its stockpile, especially when their payloads are unlikely to give India any more of a headache than they already do. Mr. Haddick alludes to one aspect of this in his discussions about Iran — but the key here isn’t Iran per se, it is Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, Rawalpindi sees value in portraying Pakistan to be an unstable and irrational state. An Islamic state teetering on the precipice while adding nuclear weapons to its stockpile quicker than any other nation is bound to attract Washington’s attention — and benevolence.

Pakistan’s most successful industry today is selling its irrationality to the rest of the world. Rawalpindi is the snake-oil salesman and Washington, the wide-eyed wonder. The U.S. has doled out billions of dollars to Pakistan since 2001. How does it know how the money was spent, and if it ever made it to its intended recipients? What has the U.S. received from Pakistan after 10 years of appeasement? The answer to these questions should worry D.C. more than it should New Delhi.

Primarily regarding what’s happening in Pakistan it’s becoming increasingly unstable. The Taliban and Pakistani Taliban are moving into the heart lands and they are getting into alliances with local Punjabi groups and increasingly there are politicians who are working towards trying to get these groups on their side. They (extremists) can complete take over the state-run actors and here countries like the U.S. have already started locking down nuclear sites to prevent what would happen if something like that actually occurred in terms of transferring the nuclear weapons."

" There is some sort of symbiotic relationship between the nuclear programmes in Pakistan and China. We have seen this repeated again and again over the past 20 years. I think what we do need to realize is that China, what China in terms of its regional, and strategic aims, its important to have an ally in Pakistan. And, Pakistan is not a direct threat, Pakistan can be controlled "
DR. RASHMI SINGH, the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violcence (CSTPV), Scotland

"Pakistan is doubling its nuclear stockpile. But, the main issue is who is financing the projects and what is its purpose? Pakistan is using more than 8 per cent of its GDP for defence spending. The aid which Pakistan is getting from the U.S. and Gulf countries, it is `secretly’ using on defence and nuclear weapons. This is a very serious issue especially to the American people and to the European community, those who continue aiding Pakistan. " -- Muneer Mengal, Paris

arun wrote:
President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari :

"If Japan is willing to cooperate with India in nuclear technology and (is) giving nuclear technology for peaceful purpose, I do not see any reason why we should not deserve the same.”

Read it all:

Pakistani leader seeks Japanese nuclear cooperation ahead of visit

Singha wrote:IAF has a bunch of conventional Prithvi planned mainly for striking at paki airbases. it is known that prithvi has a FAE warhead among other options. a FAE would collapse most overground structures and make a airbase fairly inoperative until mobile ATC/radar etc could be arranged. with a 30m CEP, its feasible to target specific areas of airbases.

question is will the political leadership authorize use of ballistic missiles like prithvi or close that option and allow only brahmos/nirbhay (unless the other party also uses ballistic missiles)

Guddu wrote:Some info about paki nuclear program, from the declassified files
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb333/index.htm

Guddu wrote:Some info about paki nuclear program, from the declassified files
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb333/index.htm

Also under review was a proposal to sell Gearing-class destroyers as a way to "keep the nuclear dialogue going." During the recent talks with Vance, foreign minister Shahi had given assurances that Pakistan would not manufacture nuclear weapons or help others do so and that the "present government" would not test nuclear weapons. State Department officials sought to expand the assurances so that they covered future governments headed by General Zia.

Work on the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant was proceeding apace as were efforts to upgrade defenses against air strikes. Undoubtedly what made Islamabad more comfortable about the U.S. stance was that Washington was seeking Pakistani cooperation with its effort to thwart the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That new priority put the Pakistani nuclear program more or less in the backburner, at least in terms of high-level initiatives, but Washington would continue to try to slow it down and complicate it.

shiv wrote: Thanks for the link. Clearly Carter tried to do something contrary to my shrill accusations against the US in general. However there is another issue here. Clearly the 4 year cycle of US politics did not help. That 4 year cycle can often disrupt and defeat the so called long term continuity of US policy. US policy is a mixed bag that can sometimes be described as being consistent and sometimes contradictory.

ramana wrote:We need a compare and contrast the events as recounted above releases and KS garu's interview.

Note he says he concluded in 1979 that TSP was working on the bomb.

So as I wrote above India was aware of what was going on and who was doing what.

1979
November 4 (13th of Aban): Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran which resulted in Iran hostage crisis.
November 6 (13th of Aban): Mehdi Bazargan, prime minister of The Interim Government of Iran, resigns, "unable to muster" support for "eviction of the students."[52] Khomeini immediately accepts his resignation along with all the other members of his cabinet.
December 18 (27th of Azar): Mohammad Mofatteh assassinated by Forqan group.
December 2 and 3(11th and 12th of Azar): New Constitution of Iran was approved by referendum by over 98 percent of the vote,[citation needed] but much lower turnout because of boycott. Khomeini becomes vali-ye faqih.[53]

In the case of Pakistan, however, nuclear strategic analysis faces an anomalous state with which it has yet to come fully to terms. In three important respects Pakistan differs from every other nuclear state that has emerged to date. First, in Pakistan it is the military and not the civilian government that controls nuclear weapons and it is military analysts (mainly within the Strategic Plans Division and Strategic Command) rather than civilian analysts that control the nuclear discourse.

Second, Pakistan is the only nuclear weapons state that hosts and backs sub-national terrorist and insurgent groups as instruments of security policy, greatly complicating the calculus of state-to-state dynamics and of nuclear escalation pathways as was evidenced in the Kargil crises of 1999, the military stand-off of 2001-02 in the wake of the attack on the Indian Parliament, and in the wake of 26/11.

Third, and most importantly, Pakistan is a revisionist and irredentist state, which accepts neither its own borders nor the regional status quo. As aconsequence, nuclear weapons in Pakistan have a different meaning and a different purpose from those held by other nuclear weapons states. For Pakistan, nuclear weapons are a tool to challenge the status quo and are subordinated —as are all other instruments of state policy —to that end. Thus, while the US, Russia, China, the UK, France, India and Israel seek to use nuclear weapons to maintain durable stability, Pakistan seeks to use nuclear weapons to maintain instability because to agree to durable stability is to accept the status quo. This does not mean that Pakistan is necessarily an irresponsible nuclear weapons state, but it does mean that it is not searching for nuclear stability but for a managed nuclear instability. The purpose of this instability is to keep India off balance, to resist agreement, to underpin uncertainty, and to generate ambiguity. This is the basis on which Pakistan's nuclear behaviour needs to be understood and it is rather different from that envisaged —before Pakistan even existed —by Brodie, Khan and others.

ramana wrote:We need a compare and contrast the events as recounted above releases and KS garu's interview.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 2#p1025292

Note he says he concluded in 1979 that TSP was working on the bomb.

So as I wrote above India was aware of what was going on and who was doing what.