Deterrence

[Austin]

Indian H Bomb test is long over due , Hopefully this time they go the full way and test multiple H bombs and Neutron weapon to complete the circle

[James]

Could the NKo test be a signal from China / Pak to us to make us think twice about taking any retaliatory action for Pathankot? The timing surely can't just be a coincidence?

[SSridhar]

James, the NoKo test would be more tied with Chinese needs than the Pakistani ones. I believe that China would not go to that extent for Pakistan and history proves that. The Chinese may make some noise for Pakistan but wouldn't go beyond that. The NoKo H-bomb test (if it is true) is a far more destabilizing and escalatory one for the whole world than Pathankot would demand in any case.

[Supratik]

It measured 5.1 on the Richter scale - no different from the 2013 test. One would expect it to be higher for a H-bomb test. But it does say the Paki fission weapons which are probably from the same source and design do work.

[Supratik]

The other possibility is that this is a pakistani weapon based on a Chinese design that NoKo is testing since unlike the past the Chinese can no longer test Pak weapons made based on their designs. I find it difficult to believe that a state so isolated like NoKo can do a H-bomb on its own.

[ramdas]

http://bharatkarnad.com

here is Bharat Karnad's take on NoKo's test. Says it is a succesful thermonuclear test of TSP design. At this rate, we are in danger of being locked into nuclear inferiority vis a vis Pakistan. There are two options: become a militarily weak U.S ally like South Korea or the Phillipines or restart testing till a full fledged thermonuclear arsenal becomes a reality. Hope Modi chooses the second option irrespective of the sanctions that result. There are enough treasonous elements who would push for the first option and leave us a punching bag for Jihadi terrorism on a vastly expanded scale compared to today. Loss of sovereignity over Kashmir and eventual islamization of the whole country would be the ultimate result.

[Prem]

Now Japanese and SOKO will be preparing to unwrap their own their own strategic capability. By 2020, world must have 4-5 new nuclear powers. Japan, SOKo, Vietnam, Iran and Indonesia.

[schinnas]

James, the NoKo test would be more tied with Chinese needs than the Pakistani ones. I believe that China would not go to that extent for Pakistan and history proves that. The Chinese may make some noise for Pakistan but wouldn't go beyond that. The NoKo H-bomb test (if it is true) is a far more destabilizing and escalatory one for the whole world than Pathankot would demand in any case.

SS-ji, imvho, it could be a case of China sending a message to warn off US - Japan - Phillipines - Vietnam regarding South China Sea.

If Pakistan designs were utilized in NoKo, it is a serious case of escalation indicating that China views actions of GoI such as Malabar exercises, infra build out in NE, etc., gravely and wants to send a warning to India. However, that would also indicate that Cheen retains some control over the delivery mechanisms of nukes (or some components are kept separate under the control of Cheen engineers in Pak) for them to give tested H-Bomb to Pukis. I agree with you that Cheen would not go all the way to gift H-Bomb to Pukis. That would be unnecessarily reckless of them and they are not such types.

Thoughts?

[ramdas]

What strategic capability will SoKo and Japan have ? They are castrated by their alliance with the U.S. Will take a decade for them to develop a nascent strategic capability. As for India, we should embark on open ended thermonuclear testing unless we want to end up like SoKo/Japan vis a vis TSP. North Korea is far less malicious than TSP. Nuclear inferiority vis a vis TSP will mean full fledged Jihadi terror with no restraint.

This is NOT the time to hold back on the needful to "avoid sanctions" etc. If we pursue nationakl power at all costs, we eventually acquire national power as well as the well being of the common people. If we avoid doing this out of fear of sanctions, we lose national power as well as lose any temporary gains that we may have acquired in terms of economic well being.

[ramdas]

schinnas:

Better to assume the worst: which is that TSP is soon going to have a credible thermonuclear capability and that not testing on our part will ensure nuclear inferiority. Anything else amounts to burying one's head in the sand (which is what R Chidambaram, [who is clinging onto his post of Scientific Advisor to the PM across 3 PM's as he is nearing 80] will advise).

[ShauryaT]

From BK.

NKorea/Pakistan’s thermonuclear test details

The International Monitoring System based at Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia (comprising 5 primary and 13 auxiliary seismic stations, 4 infrasound stations, 8 radionuclide stations, 1 radionuclide laboratory), downwind from the North Korean Hanggyong mountain test site, has detected tritium. It confirms that the test Pyongyang was preparing for, and which the North Korean supremo Kim Jong Eun today confirmed, was of a hydrogen device, as warned in my blog on the subject three days ago. The seismic reading of 5.1 on the Richter Scale, in that rock hard substratum, translates to yield in the 50-100 kiloton range.

What experts believe is that given the relatively small yield for a fusion design but an apparently nearly flawless performance of the critical radiation channel that directs the fission energy from an atomic explosion into the tritium fuel package (that is the two stage system) in order to set off a full thermonuclear burn, the very good possibility is that the Pakistani designers have achieved something even more challenging — a successful tailored yield device and that too in miniaturized form!

This is a remarkable technical achievement even with Chinese weapons experts assisting and helping in configuring the design and vetting it before final engineering, for Pakistan to get right at the first shot — something India failed to do, whatever R. Chidambaram may say by way of obfuscatory explanations about the S-1 test in May, 1998.

But this is not the end. There is a certain method here. The 2013 test carried out in North Korea was of an FBF (fusion-assisted fission) device. The present test was of an enhanced FBF system. Far from being the terminus, there’s likely to be still another test in the series which will be full-fledged thermonuclear, and this new test could be conducted as early as July (or thereabouts) 2016 — i.e., just some six months-odd from now.

The strategic implications of Pakistan going fully thermonuclear with tested and proven weapons, courtesy the North Koreans and their making their test site available to the Pak Army’s SPD (Strategic Plans Division)-run nuclear weapons programme and hence providing Islamabad with plausible deniability — a brilliant working of the ‘rogue triad’ of China, Pakistan and North Korea, are too daunting to consider. For starters, it nullifies the official Indian doctrine’s misplaced reliance on “massive retaliation” as credible deterrence. When an adversary confronts you with a proven and tested high yield weapon and you have only a notional fusion weapon that may or may not work — thanks to the lack of open-ended testing owing to the test moratorium persisted with by now four successive govts (including, so far the Modi regime) since the Shakti series of tests 17 years ago.

The crucial difference is an incomprehensibly contented India habituated to thinking and acting small and minimal, sat still, thinking it had accomplished every thing, and is now where it was in May 1998 in terms of a noncredible thermonuclear arsenal. On the other hand, an unsatisfied Pakistan, displaying the sort of strategic verve and imagination absent in GOI, sought out other means of getting the weapons inventory it desired, and found a way out from under the US sanctions overhang in cahoots with its willing partners — China and North Korea.

Delhi sought Washington’s suffocating embrace and now finds itself inferior strategic weapons-wise to a rump state carved out of India some 70 years ago but one with a far stronger will, a formidable sense of its national self, and an infinitely greater flair for playing the international power game.

Guess where that leaves India?

PS: Ramana, I will respond to your question in a few days.

[ramdas]

royG,

How can you be so sure that Buddha will smile again ? Modi seems more interested in ``development", getting bullet trains etc. I doubt if he will reallize that open ended thermonuclear testing should be national priority no: 1 even if the price we pay is -10 % GDP growth for a few years due to sanctions.

[ramana]

ramdas events will force the decision due to history marches on and doesn't wait for good time.
ST, I got my answer no need.

[ramdas]

Ramanaji,

Looks like events are going to force the decision. Hope there is minimal resistence to making the decision. The more we allow resistance to the decision, the worse it becomes for us vis a vis TSP.

[ramana]

I want you to read the Luttwak article posted by Philip in the Indian Foreign Policy thread.

Here is the link to original article:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/d ... f-maryland

[ramdas]

Ramanaji,

Did read the Luttwak article. Shows that India is in their crosshairs. No direct link yet to the question of whether we will test again.

Hope GoI does not let us down for the sake of a "strategic alliance" with the U.S. As Saurav Jha says, this "strategic alliance" is for militarily emasculated democracies that are to be a sponge for totalitarian aggression.

[ramdas]

Ramanaji,

I see the review of the Luttwak book you posted in the China thread. All that might be fine. But without a credible nuclear deterrent, the India-Japan-Vietnam axis looks like the proverbial "Hijron ki fauj". Plus for India the near term threat of a vastly enhanced TSP arsenal.

As I see it, we are at a cusp:

1) if GoI is spineless and worries too much about avoiding sanctions, we will be trapped into military inferiority vs TSP. Leaving surrender+islamization or "strategic alliance with the U.S" as the only options. Erosion of sovereignty will result and China will achieve hegemony.

2) If GoI acquires spine and institutes open ended thermonuclear testing, China's moves would have backfired spectacularly and our sovereignty would be free of constraints. This is what Modi should do. Losing a few bullet trains/sanctions for a few years is worth it.

[ramana]

Think like Luttwak not about the article.

What would Logic of Strategy suggest?

[ramdas]

Ramanji,

Depends at what level: at one level, the logic of strategy suggests that for setting up a credible strategic defense/deterrent, we would require continuous qualitative and quantitative expansion.

at a higher level, we can focus primarily on military/deterrent power or economic power. Maintaining full sovereignty demands that we primarily focus on military power. This ties in with the previous level I mentioned.

Indeed, the strategically optimal decision may not be economically optimal. If we are guided purely by the logic of strategy, the current events would force our hand in testing sooner or later. Question is whether the logic of strategy or the logic of economic interests primarily guides us. Hope the Modi govt. respects logic of strategy.

[ShauryaT]

One thing on that Luttwak article, one the few people I know, who gets what George W. Bush did. I will bet, he probably knows on who's advise did he do it.

[SSridhar]

James, the NoKo test would be more tied with Chinese needs than the Pakistani ones. I believe that China would not go to that extent for Pakistan and history proves that. The Chinese may make some noise for Pakistan but wouldn't go beyond that. The NoKo H-bomb test (if it is true) is a far more destabilizing and escalatory one for the whole world than Pathankot would demand in any case.

SS-ji, imvho, it could be a case of China sending a message to warn off US - Japan - Phillipines - Vietnam regarding South China Sea.

If Pakistan designs were utilized in NoKo, it is a serious case of escalation indicating that China views actions of GoI such as Malabar exercises, infra build out in NE, etc., gravely and wants to send a warning to India. However, that would also indicate that Cheen retains some control over the delivery mechanisms of nukes (or some components are kept separate under the control of Cheen engineers in Pak) for them to give tested H-Bomb to Pukis. I agree with you that Cheen would not go all the way to gift H-Bomb to Pukis. That would be unnecessarily reckless of them and they are not such types.

Thoughts?

schinnas, when I said the test was more tied with 'Chinese needs', I only had the Chinese strategy against the emerging big alliance in Asia in mind. I do not believe that Pakistan has any capability to design any bomb that NoKo tested. Indeed, NoKo itself has more capabilities than Pakistan. In the present circumstances, it is easier, wiser and safer for China to transfer H-bomb design and material to NoKo than to Pakistan even if it wished Pakistan to eventually acquire the fusion capability.

[NRao]

India has got to do what India needs to do.

This is not about "embrace" or "strategic thinking" or anything else.

Stand up and be counted.

The only thing is that India does not have the support that is provided by China, that is for sure. But that should not deter India. Or is it a deterrence in itself?

[NRao]

BTW, mid-2014 saw a number of articles on Japan going nuclear, even one that suggested that Japan has a nuke in the basement. Being a small land mass, Japan is not inclined to develop land based missiles, .......................................

Very interesting set of articles.

But, for how long will Japan rely on external help to defend itself?

THE problem is China, not Pakistan or NK. Has the time come to sideline China - is it possible?

[NRao]

Japan Has Nuclear 'Bomb in the Basement,' and China Isn't Happy

March 2014. NBC News.

No nation has suffered more in the nuclear age than Japan, where atomic bombs flattened two cities in World War II and three reactors melted down at Fukushima just three years ago.

But government officials and proliferation experts say Japan is happy to let neighbors like China and North Korea believe it is part of the nuclear club, because it has a “bomb in the basement” -– the material and the means to produce nuclear weapons within six months, according to some estimates. And with tensions rising in the region, China’s belief in the “bomb in the basement” is strong enough that it has demanded Japan get rid of its massive stockpile of plutonium and drop plans to open a new breeder reactor this fall.

Japan signed the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans it from developing nuclear weapons, more than 40 years ago. But according to a senior Japanese government official deeply involved in the country’s nuclear energy program, Japan has been able to build nuclear weapons ever since it launched a plutonium breeder reactor and a uranium enrichment plant 30 years ago.

“Japan already has the technical capability, and has had it since the 1980s,” said the official. He said that once Japan had more than five to 10 kilograms of plutonium, the amount needed for a single weapon, it had “already gone over the threshold,” and had a nuclear deterrent.

Japan now has 9 tons of plutonium stockpiled at several locations in Japan and another 35 tons stored in France and the U.K. The material is enough to create 5,000 nuclear bombs. The country also has 1.2 tons of enriched uranium.

Technical ability doesn’t equate to a bomb, but experts suggest getting from raw plutonium to a nuclear weapon could take as little as six months after the political decision to go forward. A senior U.S. official familiar with Japanese nuclear strategy said the six-month figure for a country with Japan’s advanced nuclear engineering infrastructure was not out of the ballpark, and no expert gave an estimate of more than two years.

In fact, many of Japan’s conservative politicians have long supported Japan’s nuclear power program because of its military potential. “The hawks love nuclear weapons, so they like the nuclear power program as the best they can do,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. “They don’t want to give up the idea they have, to use it as a deterrent.”

Many experts now see statements by Japanese politicians about the potential military use of the nation’s nuclear stores as part of the “bomb in the basement” strategy, at least as much about celebrating Japan’s abilities and keeping its neighbors guessing as actually building weapons.

But pressure has been growing on Japan to dump some of the trappings of its deterrent regardless. The U.S. wants Japan to return 331 kilos of weapons grade plutonium – enough for between 40 and 50 weapons – that it supplied during the Cold War. Japan and the U.S. are expected to sign a deal for the return at a nuclear security summit next week in the Netherlands.

Yet Japan is sending mixed signals. It also has plans to open a new fast-breeder plutonium reactor in Rokkasho in October. The reactor would be able to produce 8 tons of plutonium a year, or enough for 1,000 Nagasaki-sized weapons.

China seems to take the basement bomb seriously. It has taken advantage of the publicity over the pending return of the 331 kilos to ask that Japan dispose of its larger stockpile of plutonium, and keep the new Rokkasho plant off-line. Chinese officials have argued that Rokkasho was launched when Japan had ambitious plans to use plutonium as fuel for a whole new generation of reactors, but that those plans are on hold post-Fukushima and the plutonium no longer has a peacetime use.

In February, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua published a commentary that said if a country "hoards far more nuclear materials than it needs, including a massive amount of weapons grade plutonium, the world has good reason to ask why."

Steve Fetter, formerly the Obama White House’s assistant director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, thinks China's concerns are not purely political.

"I've had private discussions with China in which they ask, 'Why does Japan have all this plutonium that they have no possible use for?' I say they made have made a mistake and are left with a huge stockpile," said Fetter, now a professor at the University of Maryland. "But if you were distrustful, then you see it through a different lens."

For at least four or five years, said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in Monterey, the Japanese plutonium stockpile has been mentioned as a threat in Chinese defense white papers.

Japan, of course, has its own security concerns with China and North Korea. North Korea's nuclear weapons program is a direct threat to Japan. Some of its Nodong missiles, with a range capability of hitting anywhere in Japan, are believed to be nuclear-armed. "Nodong is a Japan weapon," said Spector.

There have been confrontations between China and Japan over small islands north of Taiwan. The dispute has recently escalated. In October, state-controlled media in China warned "a war looms following Japan's radical provocation," Tokyo's threat to shoot down Chinese drones.

Most experts agree that China is the greater threat, because as one expert said, "If North Korea attacked Japan, the U.S. would flatten it"-- and thus China is the country Japanese officials, particularly the right, want to impress with their minimal deterrence.

But experts also note that another nation in the region seems to have been impressed by the Japanese “bomb in the basement” strategy, not as a threat but as a model.

There are fears that if Japan opens the Rakkosho plant, it will encourage South Korea to go the same route as its neighbor. The U.S. and South Korea have been negotiating a new civilian nuclear cooperation pact. The South wants to reprocess plutonium, but the U.S. is resisting providing cooperation or U.S. nuclear materials.

Jeffrey Lewis believes that the South Koreans want to emulate Japan, and says there is a “bigger bomb constituency in South Korea , about 10 to 20 percent [of the population],” than in Japan.

"The least of my concerns is that Japan would get a nuclear weapon," said Fetter. "But China and South Korea will use this as an excuse, each in their own way."

And, in fact, not everyone believes that Japan COULD go all the way. Jacques Hymans, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, believes the process would be thwarted by what he calls "veto players," that is, government officials who would resist a secret program and reveal it before it reached fruition. He wrote recently that Japan has more levels of nuclear bureaucracy than it once had, as well as more potential “veto players” inside that bureaucracy because of Fukushima. He said that any attempt to make a bomb would be "swamped by the intrusion of other powerful actors with very different motivations."

Still, even without a bomb, Japan has achieved a level of nuclear deterrence without building a bomb and suffering sanctions. That may be a more impressive achievement than actually building a bomb.

[shiv]

http://bharatkarnad.com

Let me state what I find objectionable about Bharat Karnad. My background is science and my view can safely be ignored and discarded and let Bharat Karnad be declared as perfectly correct. No need to read beyond this point actually but I will have my say. I have bolded the parts that make Karnad sound foolish to me

Karnad says

The seismic reading of 5.1 on the Richter Scale, in that rock hard substratum, translates to yield in the 50-100 kiloton range.

What experts believe is that given the relatively small yield for a fusion design but an apparently nearly flawless performance of the critical radiation channel that directs the fission energy from an atomic explosion into the tritium fuel package (that is the two stage system) in order to set off a full thermonuclear burn, the very good possibility is that the Pakistani designers have achieved something even more challenging — a successful tailored yield device and that too in miniaturized form!

In science there is a thing called "evidence" that is required before a statement can be accepted as true - until then it is pure speculation/guesswork

Statement 1:

nearly flawless performance of the critical radiation channel

Here Bharat Karnad has revealed the exact design of the Koran device and has stated it to be a Teller Ulam device. How does he know. There are other simpler devices that use Tritium. In terms of efficiency a boosted fission device is perfect up until about 100 to 150 kt. It is when you want 500 kt and upwards that it starts getting necessary to make a fission-fusion device. How does Karnad judge this.

Statement 2:

What experts believe

Which experts? Is Karnad not an expert himself?

Statement 3:

The seismic reading of 5.1 on the Richter Scale, in that rock hard substratum, translates to yield in the 50-100 kiloton range

How is he so sure of this when it was all uncertain for Indian tests?

Statement 4:

Pakistani designers have achieved something even more challenging — a successful tailored yield device and that too in miniaturized form

Tailored yield? What is that? Pakistani scientists did it? Not Koreans?

The limit of his bullshitting comes here:

The 2013 test carried out in North Korea was of an FBF (fusion-assisted fission) device. The present test was of an enhanced FBF system.-there’s likely to be still another test in the series which will be full-fledged thermonuclear,

Excuse me? He has already spoken of a test with a "radiation channel". the only device that uses a radiation channel is a Tellar Ulam device. So how come this test was a Teller Ulam in the beginning of the article and "FBF" near the end of the article

To me this only confirms what I found when I heard Karnad speak in person. he has no idea about any technical aspects. he does not even have an elementary physics background to comment knowledgeably about these things and takes advantage of general ignorance to tell white lies

Karnad says:

This is a remarkable technical achievement even with Chinese weapons experts assisting and helping in configuring the design and vetting it before final engineering, for Pakistan to get right at the first shot — something India failed to do, whatever R. Chidambaram may say by way of obfuscatory explanations about the S-1 test in May, 1998.

He is talking about a North Korean test and calling it a successful "tailored yield" Teller-Ulam device make by Pakistanis.

How can this man expect to be taken seriously by anyone? Has he no sense? He is frantically hand waving and he may be 100% right - but his method is so wrong.

He has his heart in the right place and he has a point when he says some things - but he comes across as a bluffing ignoramus when he tries to talk technical stuff. And guess what - when a person with a science background hears bluffing, all sorts of warning bells go off - even if Karnad is perfectly right in his strategic conclusions. Self goal

[shiv]

Questions:
Does North Korea become more dangerous with a "proper thermonuclear" device?
If so, why?

[ShauryaT]

Shiv ji: Just to annoy you a little more, I know you do not like BK's approaches, regardless of intentions or conclusions. Did not post this earlier as was disturbed by the Pathankot events, but for the record and may answer some of your questions, highlighted.

A thermonuclear test by the ‘rogue triad’ imminent?

In February 2013, I had warned about the China-Pakistan-North Korea “rogue triad testing an FBF (fusion boosted fission) device at the North Korean test site in the Hamyongg Mountain range in the northeast of that country. I had referred to the fact that the Punggye complex at the site, complete with the instrumentation bunker, closely resembled the Ras Koh complex in the Chagai Hills. And the extreme likelihood of China transferring the tritium and highly-enriched uranium (HEU) needed for the device designed by Pakistani scientists and vetted by Chinese nuclear weaponeers, by road across the mountainous border with North Korea in the Jiangsu province to avoid aerial detection. I had said that that the 30KT yield recorded by sensors of the pure FBF device actually proved better than the Indian S-1 hydrogen test in 1998. (See “http://bharatkarnad.com/2013/02/08/rogu ... omb-tests/ and http://bharatkarnad.com/2013/02/12/noko ... ndian-s-1/).

The rogue triad is now upping its game. There is now evidence of a new angled deep tunnel being bored in the Hamyongg mountains to best buffer shock waves in rocky stratum, and suggests preparations for a thermonuclear test. If it succeeds, Pakistan will have access to bonafide two-stage thermonuclear weapons tested by the nuclear outlaw North Korea on its territory, and hence attracting no sanctions or other other harsh reaction. China is in the top tier and immune to American pressures. And it will achieve for the Pakistan Army something it has been pushing the Pak N-weapons establishment quickly to attain — equalization with India, and bridging the remaining qualitative gap with India — this even though, post-1998 moratorium on testing, the Indian thermonuclear weapon is more fiction than fact in that some fundamental design problems relating, for instance, to the radiation channel remain. These are amenable to solutions worked on with computational means, but the rejigged design still needs to be proved and its performance cannot be verified except with a battery of new open-ended testing of fusion designs incorporating the engineering and other changes.

And new tests is what GOI — advised by R Chidambaram who has stayed on as S&T adviser to PM and continues to misguide the Indian govt about the non-necessity of new tests — is not permitting, fearful that it will upset the applecart of the N-deal with Washington and sink Indo-US “strategic” relations, not that this country has gained much from the special relationship with the US.

In any case, Delhi, I suppose, won’t wake up or do anything meaningful, until the Special Plans Division, Chaklala, announces fusion weapons in its armoury and announces their yield range and their raison d’etre, as Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai, longtime SPD head, did vis a vis tactical nukes at the 2015 Carnegie event. The slumbering-lumbering Indian nuclear weapons programme will be caught in a catch-up cycle which it has been trapped in since J. Nehru failed to test and weaponize after reaching the weapons threshold with the plutonium reprocessing plant in March 1964 and ten years later when Indira Gandhi refused to conduct further tests after the single 1974 test, being deterred, for political reasons, from going ahead and weaponizing. It will then be outclassed in a comprehensive way by its Pakistani counterpart. In this scenario of design-wise flawed, untested, and potentially nonfunctioning Indian thermonuclear weapons, the incomparable delivery systems in the Indian Agni missiles will be able to carry the nation’s security interests only so far. This will be the outcome because GHQ, Rawalpindi-qua-Pak govt, has always taken nuclear security more seriously than the strategically confused, fog-brained, nuclear deterrence illiterate, Indian government.

This is not turning out well for India.

[shiv]

To my mind North Korea and Iran are perfect examples of US weakness and the uselessness of a policy of sanctions. Unfortunately the opposite is also true, Pakistan is an example of the uselessness of a policy of engagement and mollycoddling.

The exclusive global non proliferation regime is breaking down gradually. I see this as a gradual shift in world power out of the hands of the west. the powers that were closest to the west are the ones that come under increasing risk. It may not be a welcome development but we have to get used to change. The US propped up both China and Pakistan to counter the Soviets. China propped up Pakistan to counter India and North Korea to counter the West. The West is now ceding ground to China and that makes Pakistan and Korea that much more powerful.

I do not see a short term increase in risk to India with improvement in NoKo weapons. Pakistan already has nukes that threaten India and it is only a matter of time before nuke designs will be improved by anyone who has them. NoKo on the other hand wants to theraten the US directly. India is desperately trying not to be threatening to the west

[ShauryaT]

Questions:
Does North Korea become more dangerous with a "proper thermonuclear" device?
If so, why?

More capability for sure, more dangerous is a matter of intent and will. Does someone become more dangerous with more capability? If N. Korea has the intent and will then this additional capability does make them more dangerous.

[ShauryaT]

To my mind North Korea and Iran are perfect examples of US weakness and the uselessness of a policy of sanctions.

True. There are many things about N. Korea that are not transparent to us, as news is western dominated. Its relationship with China provides a cushion against sanction not only to the regime but its people too.

[shiv]

Shiv ji: Just to annoy you a little more, I know you do not like BK's approaches, regardless of intentions or conclusions. Did not post this earlier as was disturbed by the Pathankot events, but for the record and may answer some of your questions, highlighted.

A thermonuclear test by the ‘rogue triad’ imminent?

Karnad calls it a "rogue triad" which is a good move - linking the three.

I expect that Karnad's pseudo-technical bluffing has been noticed by others and he may have been insulted - perhaps that is why his comments are vicious, but Karnad leaves out a host of other things that can be done to get reliable yields up to 100 or 150 kt with just boosted fission - which is exactly the route that (experts say) will be taken by a low to medium tech nation that cannot test devices. Most often it is the warhead weight and availability of fissile material that is a constraint. If payloads in missiles can weigh 1 ton and 1 meter diameter warheads are allowable then large yield warheads are a certainty, even if the are not megaton. That was true for Pakistan even before this Korean test

Karnad assumes that Teller Ulam devices have been built by India and that they remain untested. Whatever the reasons he remains unconvinced of India's arsenal and wants testing to be done because the rogue triad are getting away and ahead.

But Karnad uses his logic to paint a geopolitical picture that he likes. He says India is sucking up to the US while the rogue triad are getting away. Karnad does not for a minute include the US as part of the rogues - a rogue quartet. It is all very well to blame India in the ways that Karnad does, but the fact is that the US has as much to do with keeping the Pakistan threat alive as China. Nuclear experts are there in such large numbers nowadays that everyone is agreed that even low to medium tech nations can acquire working nuclear weapons. It is only fissile material that is the problem. The US is complicit in helping Pakistan along the path of developing a fissile material producing program. The US may have tried to make amends somewhat by allowing India to get into the game, but the US role is very much "balancer".

The US has no capability to check Pakistan now, and is continuing to play "balancer" with Pakistan as Sunni nuclear protector or Saudi Arabia. What does Karnad hope to achieve by calling China-NoKo-Pakistan as "rogue triad". It is the US that does not see Pakistan as a rogue. The US presents Pakistan as a working democracy with an India problem. For India the US is part rogue, part friend. While India may gain nothing much from US friendship, we gain nothing by behaving like NoKo.

Karnad sees India as a weak state that will soon be overwhelmed by Pakistan. Maybe he is 100% right, but that is not how the US and the rest of the world see India. They see a huge non Muslim India as a genuine threat faced by Pakistan and do not believe for a minute that Pakistan could overwhelm India. If India were to go down the testing route now it would only justify Pakistan's stand and increase Western support for Pakistan against a destabilizing India.

Maybe Karnad is right. He makes some good arguments about national power - but his logic is so convoluted and conflicting and his technical comments are so laughable that he is doing no one a favour. He cannot be taken seriously the way he chooses to pose his views. Karnad is trying to say that we must ruthlessly follow a doctrine that promises to rain nuclear devastation on Pakistan, China and whoever else may want it. That viewpoint has its plus points - but I think Karnad would do better to make himself more acceptable to those who are in the most influential positions to make a difference. He defeats his own arguments by using technical arguments about weapons esign and yields that can be dismissed on various trivial and non trivial grounds.

There is a dgree of Western cockiness in the Teler Ulam design. there is a kind of silent pride they have and a general feeling that much testing is required to perfect it. There is, also a general sidelining and ignoring of original Rusian thermonuclear work like "Sloika" which are relatively easier designs but not that easily miniaturizable. But if weapons diameter is not a constraint a "Sloika"/layer cake design is easier than Teller Ulam. Western experts are generally sneery about such things. For them Teller Ulam is the only god and Thermonuclear is his name. Teller Ulam's "radiation channel" design is best for more bang per kg of fissile material. if you are willing to waste more fissile material or if you have many years of production behind you - one may go for less efficient designs that give big bang but waste more fissile material.

Korea and Pakistan may have gone down less technically difficult routes and Karnad does not allow for that and he does not allow for the possibility that India to may have gone down less technically challenging routes. So Karnad's mind is a mix of Western dependent information but an otherwise independent mind. But who will ask him?

[ramdas]

@Shiv:

Bharat Karnad is indeed often clumsy with details. But he has access to sections of the security establishment and might be conveying their assessment. What I would gather from BK is as follows:

The current NoKo test (given the 5.1 Mb) could be anything upto 30kt. This could well be a two stage Teller-Ulam with a primary and a very small secondary : basically a test to gather experimental data prior to a full fledged TN test. Such tests are known to have been done by others in the past. The Chinese CHIC 12 test is thought to be one such. Having no information, India should assume the worst.

I would expect a full fledged NoKo TN test of 100-x00 kt yield next. Whether it is TSP scientists who have designed the NoKo device or NoKo scientists, the fact is that what is with NoKo eventually ends up in TSP hands. This can never be ignored.

Now, our S-1 test was also most likely an experiment of the above kind meant to gather data rather than a device meant for the stockpile. We however, refrained from the next step, i.e, test of a full fledged weaponized TN. Also, there is a controversy regarding the success of the S-1 test.

A TSP nuclear superiority would erode the credibility of our deterrent. T ensure parity or better for the foreseeable future, we would need to test again. Hope GoI does the needful. It is not about behaving or not behaving like NoKo. It is about ensuring the credibility of our deterrent.

[ramdas]

@shiv: Teller-Ulam is not only for bang/kg of fissile material. It is also for yield/weight ratio: necessary if we wish to develop MIRVed missiles. Given the PRC investment in missile defences, MIRV's will become necessary for us. Whichever way you look at it, Teller-Ulam ensures a massive increase in firepower for the same resources.

Similarly, if TSP has a Teller-Ulam, they will have a massive increase in firepower vis a vis us. As Bharat Karnad observes, this will erode the credibility of our massive retaliation doctrine. This I agree with: earlier it was like if TSP used a tac. nuke. TSP loses apron. 15 million people for a similar loss on our side. Now TSP would lose the same but have the ability to inflict 100 million deaths on our side. From a TSP point of view, that is a victory in nuclear jihad.

Our doctrine will now require us to have the ability to obliterate TSP in a second strike and inflict as many deaths upon them as they upon us. 20 kts are OK if they are available in the low thousands (along with enough delivery systems) after a first strike. Hundreds of 150-200kt weapons would be perfect (keep in mind the need to deter PRC as well). Having MIRVed missiles ensures as many of them as possible are deliverable after a first strike, especially if we rely on SLBMs (which, when deployed will be a a few dozen in number). Thus the need for TNs.

Even with sloika, what is the proof that we have tested anything like a sloika ? Teller-Ulam is much more scalable than a sloika.

[shiv]

The current NoKo test (given the 5.1 Mb) could be anything upto 30kt. This could well be a two stage Teller-Ulam with a primary and a very small secondary : basically a test to gather experimental data prior to a full fledged TN test. Such tests are known to have been done by others in the past.

This is not about you - it is about the chicanery in Karnad's argument. You see the statement you have made above is exactly the statement made by Chidambaram on India's nuclear test.

Why is the Indian test in doubt but the Korean test a resounding success?

[ramdas]

The only reason the Indian test is in doubt is Dr. K. Santhanam's statements. Correct or not, they have cast a doubt given his role in the 1998 tests.

The Korean test should be viewed as a success from our point of view mainly because we ought to assume the worst about our adversaries' capability unless absolute proof to the contrary emerges.

The other issue is of course, the final step in weaponization: testing a weaponized TN device based on the S1. This we are yet to do. NoKo will do this sooner or later given that they have no moratorium.

[shiv]

@shiv: Teller-Ulam is not only for bang/kg of fissile material. It is also for yield/weight ratio: necessary if we wish to develop MIRVed missiles.

bang per kg is yield/weight.

Fission bombs can be made that go up to 400 kilotons, but will be very bulky and very costly in fissile material. Not so with a Teller Ulam design. A nation can make many many more very large yield nukes using the same amount of fissile material with a successful Teller Ulam design. The problem is how Bharat Karnad concluded that the NoKo test was a Teller Ulam design? There is a real reason why the argument about design is completely useless - or at least tends towards becoming pointless after a stage.

The argument you make is that Pakistan, with Teller Ulam design thermonuclear warheads becomes more dangerous to India that it is now. This is what Karnad has always argued. I have a serious problem with this argument and it is as follows and it can be expressed in this way

1. Situation today: Pakistan has an arsenal that does not include Thermonuclear weapons and that we can simply destroy Pakistan if it uses those weapons on us.

2. Situation tomorrow: Pakistan has large TN warheads and can devastate us before we devastate them

If this is the argument being made by you and Karnad it means that there is a level of nuclear punishment that India is willing to take but if some unspecified boundary of nuclear punishment is crossed, India will be unable to take that punishment and we will lose.

How is this a valid argument? How many deaths and how many bombs are we willing to eat? If Pakistan throws 100 x 5 kiliton warheads at us we feel it is OK. But of Pakistan throws 100 X 500 kiloton warheads it is not OK.

What is the calculation that says that the former is OK but not the latter. No one has ever explained this to me. Certainly not Karnad

[shiv]

The only reason the Indian test is in doubt is Dr. K. Santhanam's statements. Correct or not, they have cast a doubt given his role in the 1998 tests.

The Korean test should be viewed as a success from our point of view mainly because we ought to assume the worst about our adversaries' capability unless absolute proof to the contrary emerges.

Note that other than exaggerating the yield of the current NoKo test, Karnad has only said about it what RC said about S-1.

For exactly the same reason that our tests are a failure, the Korean tests are a success, based on the rhetorical argument that "we ought to assume the worst about our adversaries' capability unless absolute proof to the contrary emerges.". This is completely unconvincing.

In other words rhetoric trumps technical issues?

Why would Korean and Karnad's rhetoric trump Santanam's or Chidambaram's rhetoric? At least Santanam and Chidambaram both made feeble technical arguments. Even that is unavailable for the Korean tests. it is all rhetoric.

[ramdas]

@Shiv:

We cannot destroy Pak. as of now. 100 or so 20 kt fission weapons (that is what we have in the worst case) would kill roughly 8% of Pak's population or 1-1.5% of our population. 100 5 kt nukes will eliminate less than 1% of our population.

100 500 kt nukes would kill 8-10% of our population. Clearly, there is an order of magnitude difference in the consequences. Moreover, an exchange with 15 million dead Pakis and 120 million dead in our country will be seen by some Pakis as worth going for (given the Jihadi mindset).

Since Pakis obtaining 100 500 kt nukes is inevitable, the only solution is to have the ability to obliterate Pakistan i.e, destroy 50% of its population. This requires 100 nukes in the 200-500 kt range.

[ramdas]

any national security conscious planner plans for the worst case situation in the abscence of full technical information. What else should be expected ? "Assuming the worst" is therefore, not a rhetorical argument.

[shiv]

any national security conscious planner plans for the worst case situation in the abscence of full technical information. What else should be expected ? "Assuming the worst" is therefore, not a rhetorical argument.

Assuming anything without information remains an assumption. The number of assumptions that need to be made decrease with an increase in the amount of real information that is available.

I would leave out this line of argument because it is pure rhetoric whichever way one looks at it. Deterrence is a mix of information and assumptions