enqyoob wrote:No (that was no to satyarthi, not shauryaT), the times have changed. Tsar-Bomba may have impressed the world in 1970, but since it can't be done atmospheric, it won't be very impressive anyway. It will just cause anger and contempt.
Same money spent on a space shot is better bang for the buck, far more visible, and will demonstrate accuracy/precision to scare the right people. That's the other reason why I say, sent one to the Sun. Sooryayaan. Equipped with lots of POK sensors, sending data straight to DAE.
ShauryaT:
The 123 is the only way there can be an international agreement with the US, AFAIK. As we have discussed b4, all it takes is for India to pass laws stating India's constraints, and India's signature is governed by those.
Other than that, you say: "If FMCT comes into force". But then India is still a nuclear weapons state, with the strategic program NOT subject to international inspection, so I still don't see the big deal there. Indian mined uranium, and spent/reprocessed fuel from India's strategic-sector reactors, are India's business. The N2TN ppl are basically saying what their equivalents in America say: IOW,
to all international agreements.
I don't disagree with that sentiment, but the stategic arguments seen so far do not show why testing will achieve anything that is worth the cost to the civilian economy, and to prospects for technological advancement in all areas.
And you can't escape by saying that it's my "superior argumentative skills" or "Pingreji" that's hindering you - in fact I regard these as unfair and scary tactics, given all the "Rona-Dhona" about "civility" etc. I am not abusive to anyone.
yes,
, yes, but personal abuse, no.
The fact is that the N2TN and I2T crowd were committing atrocities for weeks b4 I decided to check why I was getting such interesting emails like
"XXXXX, Go F*** Urself!" (one example)
It was pretty clear that not enough discussion was going into the motivations behind the I2T (because the "patriotism" and "jingoness" of the crowd was so much above question). So ppl were arguing about the veins in the leaves, and missing the forest.
The fact is that when we dig deep enough and cut out all the false reasoning, there is nothing left to justify N2TN, and some very uncomfortable realizations come about the motivations behind I2T.
We have also seen the detailed arguments put forward by the inside experts like P.Iyengar and the fringe expert commentators like Karnad. Each makes sense in his narrow frame of argument, but open them all out and shake them out into a heap, and you see that they don't point to testing as the best course (or even a sensible course of any sort) for the national interest.
Let's list the arguments listed:
1. Weapon reliability must be demonstrated again and again for statistical confidence. The successful tests may have been a fluke (actually no one has advanced this, but I will). This one actually makes sense, but I hold that deterrence is effective whether or not the deterrent will actually explode if dropped on the targets, as long as there is no testing to show the precise statistics.
2. 1MT class weapons are needed for deterrence. I disagree, and this is clearly explained by shiv as well. 1 MT class weapons are doomsday weapons, but doomsday can just as well be celebrated with 10KT weapons and those are far more survivable since they can be sent in large numbers, with small delivery vehicles.
3. Also, in our particular context, 15KT to 20KT weapons (or even 1KT) may be far more relevant to stopping genocidal invasions. These are far more scary to the enemy, since these can be used without invoking the final Doomsday option or causing very large collateral damage.
4. S1 did not get past 45KT, and this suggests that the tritium gas was not fully "burned". But it is also seen that the yield was carefully limited to contain the damage, given the proximity of the Rajasthani village. As it stands, the village suffered pretty serious damage (DDM whined about that). This means to me that the yields (and/or their effects) were greater than the designers actually anticipated. So what S1 showed was the ability to control yield in such a boosted-fission weapon, even though burn was very partial. It is also seen that S1 class weapons cannot be scaled to 1MT anyway, (but see (2) and (3) for why this is irrelevant.
5. "1MT is needed for ICBMs". I argue (and no one seems to pick up on that) that an offence based on ICBMs is not credible any more, that it can be completely defeated. OTOH, a strategic offence based on independent, cruise missile delivery systems, is not defeatable by anything I can see in development.
So from all the above, it seems clearly demonstrated that the POK-2 tests achieved the maximum that the planners really intended, and in fact they cut it very fine indeed. This is the perfect place to leave the deterrent and go on to build enough warheads.
The emphasis should shift to developing delivery systems, full speed, because there will be efforts to put "limits" on testing missiles, in the very near future, and cruise missile development will be banned, as being far too "destabilizing". So the window is very limited there, and we don't want to be caught being the bad guys in the MNPT (missile non-proliferation treaty) or the CMTBT. Right now, UQ and France are behind in hypersonics, but that won't last for very long (they have well-advanced projects). When they get there, CMTBT will be rushed through. India has to stay ahead.
The rest of the arguments, like "Show us that the economic damage from testing will be too much" are just not serious things to debate. Not to ppl who grew up in the 1960s and 70s and 80s.
There u go. In plan old Angreji, not superior Pingerji.
