NRao - all the articles I have read suggest tactical nukes to be in the range of 2 kilotons or less.NRao wrote:
Well, the article also mentions a 15 kt.
I wonder what is a small or tactical nuke in their dictionary. Need to research it a wee bit.
This logic doesn't make any sense to me. The country of Punjab is run by the Pakistan Army which is a criminal enterprise and hence a rational actor. It isn't concerned with war with India. It is concerned with losing control over the buffer zone states like Sindh and Balochistan. Hence, TNW fit the target profile.ShauryaT wrote:Shiv ji: CFair has wisely side stepped the whole issue of an Indian response. You are welcome to stick to official doctrine. As for Fair, she has wisely side stepped the whole issue of an Indian response to a TNW that Pakistanis should be afraid of. A careful observation would note that India has its own operational plans in place, in light of our doctrine and such a strike will entail a response as per current doctrine, pending executive decision.
Just one more clarification, I was clear that this is what I think the Pakistanis are thinking, not what I think will be the Indian response/non-response be. I do think Pakistan has good reason to doubt the Indian "massive" response. This reasoning does not stop at the words of the doctrine. My own position has been clear and I maintain that while "massive" response to a first strike can be appropriate, we need more tools than ONLY that approach in our toolkit. I understand you do not want that change in the official doctrine.
The people who designed this doctrine were ready to absorb a first strike - even a massive one. Times have changed, people have moved on. NO ONE I have read or spoken to any long believes that India will "absorb" and not pre-empt an imminent first strike - this is despite the NFU doctrine. My simple point is people's reasoning does not stop at the words of the doctrine. The doctrine itself needs an update to reflect evolving threats, capabilities, goals and objectives.
Does she?CFair has wisely side stepped the whole issue of an Indian response.
and,The first reality that should discomfit ordinary Pakistanis is that there is really no such thing as a “tactical nuclear weapon.” Even the smallest so-called tactical nuclear weapon will have strategic consequences. (Simply calling them “battlefield nuclear weapons” does not obviate this serious problem.) If Pakistan should use such weapons on India, there is virtually no chance that India will be left responding alone. The international community will most certainly rally around India. The response to Pakistan breaking a nuclear taboo that formed after the Americans used atomic bombs on Japan will most certainly be swift and devastating.
On the topic of modifying Indian doctrine, my thinking is that such a change would play into the hands of yahoos like Pakistan (Army).Even if, for the sake of argument, one assumes that Pakistan deploys its one hundred odd weapons of 15 to 30 kilotons at India’s major cities, it is unlikely that Pakistan would be able to deploy all of these weapons to conduct a “splendid first strike,” by which Indian capabilities are completely destroyed.
Moreover, it takes considerably fewer weapons of similar magnitude to utterly destroy Pakistan. Pakistan has thoughtfully concentrated all but three corps in central the Punjab region, which is also its most populous province and the country’s industrial and agricultural center. In short, Pakistan will cease to be a viable political entity while India, though grievously hurt, will survive as a state. Even if Pakistan obtains a functioning triad and retains launch capabilities from submarines, they will be launched in defense of a state that, simply put, no longer exists.
Shaurya with respect I see some conflicting elements in your views, right or wrongShauryaT wrote:
Just one more clarification, I was clear that this is what I think the Pakistanis are thinking, not what I think will be the Indian response/non-response be. I do think Pakistan has good reason to doubt the Indian "massive" response.
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The people who designed this doctrine were ready to absorb a first strike - even a massive one. Times have changed, people have moved on. NO ONE I have read or spoken to any long believes that India will "absorb" and not pre-empt an imminent first strike - this is despite the NFU doctrine. My simple point is people's reasoning does not stop at the words of the doctrine. The doctrine itself needs an update to reflect evolving threats, capabilities, goals and objectives.
I DO NOT THINK the doctrine needs changing because I think the Pakistanis think a certain way! My thinking on the Indian doctrine is INDEPENDENT of Pakistan's postures. In order to not conflate and be clear on these two very separate and distinct paradigms, I will write a separate post on MY thinking on the doctrine itself. Request you to not conflate the two.shiv wrote:You think that Pakistanis have a particular viewpoint about Indian nukes (and quote others who think like you.) That is your prerogative. It is this fundamental feeling that you have that makes you feel that the doctrine itself needs changing.
Large agreement. 1. India does not need to publish a written doctrine. 2. The response options should have a fair degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. The written doctrine cannot be a crutch to limit our response and force projection options and capabilities. In that, I view nuclear weapons as force projection assets NOT just to deter as our written doctrine assumes. This is where my disconnect with the current doctrine stems from. This is not to say NFU or massive response are NOT to be professed at all. Where I disagree with you is the need to have this "in your face" document, that professes a limited set of responses only, while reality may present us with more options. This is where the current doctrine lacks "credibility" in the eyes of many - for varied reasons.shiv wrote:In one post you said that India may not retaliate if its forces are hit within Pakistan. In a later post you are saying that India may not wait for a first strike. You are listing out every way in which India's nuclear doctrine can be abrogated, ignored and discarded by India and then you want all these to be put down in writing as an official "updated document"? I think that is totally wrong. It is the uncertainty and ambiguity of Indian responses that are key to deterrence - not the paper doctrine itself. The paper doctrine is presented as an "in your face" plan that India claims that it will follow. And as you have pointed out, Indian actions may range from not retaliating at all to pre-emptive action. No one knows. Least of the all Pakis.
Largely, yes. This is where the problem begins, for new questions are asked. Questions that are "outside" the realm of the doctrine. At root, the disconnect is not viewing nuclear weapons as power projection assets but viewing them ONLY in a moralistic frame as coded into the doctrine.The problem is as follows. India's force structure has to be based on its doctrine. I assume that India's current force structure is based on its published doctrine.
Maybe. All I know for sure is, we are not going to wait to absorb and will pre-empt an imminent strike.If on the other hand, India's idea of abrogating the doctrine involves "pre-emption" by first use, then we need a completely different type of arsenal. I assume here that the expression "pre-emption" here means somehow "taking out" Pakistani capability to nuke us. I firmly believe that this is a pipe dream .
You said it, which others term as not credible.Given these realities, the existing doctrine is the best symbolic indicator of Indian intentions. Whether we follow it or not is something that any adversaries will have to worry about. And Pakistan certainly does.
This is where the problem begins to cast issues exclusively in the moralistic frame and not include the realm of power and interests. Pakistan being irresponsible does not irk enough to destroy her or wage war against her. As long as Pakistan is primarily a threat to Indian humanity, there are many others who are willing to "help" stir that threat. Who these are should be obvious enough. Some here want this threat to be extended to people outside the region so that they can feel the same pains. However laudable the objective, do not think it is likely to be a reality. So, how many dollars has Pakistan received AFTER OBL was found in their den? How many J17's? How many Hell Fires, F-16 and Harpoons? AIP based subs too, soon after India gets one!NRao wrote: I think Pakistan has played right into the hands of India. She is certainly the irresponsible state, a threat to humanity and therefore needs to stand down.
The threat from Pakis has not changed.As long as Pakistan is primarily a threat to Indian humanity
I have often stated on these threads that the world will respond to a nuclear strike, but I don't mean that someone will nuke India or Pakistan. If a nuclear exchange were to break out between two nations, maybe India and Pakistan, "the world" will sit tight. But I see the response coming in the following way:ShauryaT wrote:
Fair says the world will respond, do you really expect India to take that seriously? When the balloon goes up, we are all alone!
Shiv ji: Just in the above example, you have provided scenarios, where Indian response may not be massive but still maintain that the written doctrine should stay! I do not know, how much of this is for psychological or operation reasons, for you are clearly not limited to the responses by the doctrine only. Me having critiqued the doctrine, it does serve some purposes. Namely, allows SFC to build its operational plans and relevant capacities. Provides to the executive these limited plans to choose from to execute, making the decisioning process simpler. One of the big issues we face is the lack of civilian expertise or better a military-civilian interaction group that debates nuclear war constantly and refines the plans periodically to reflect new thinking, objectives, threats. In that respect, Pakistan has it better - civilians are just not part of the game!shiv wrote: If Pakistan uses a small tactical nuke or nukes within Pakistani territory, those nukes actually have to stop an Indian advance. If teh nukes are really small they will not stop an advance. Only a few dozen tanks will be hit and overall any Indian offensive will simply continue. If Pakistan tries to avoid this by using more and more and more nukes within its own territory to stop an Indian advance they will do more damage to themselves along with the damage they do to an Indian advance. Beyond a point Pakistan's use of multiple nukes against Indian forces will be difficult to hide or pass off as an Indian trick. At this stage India still has the option of retaliating massively or just "punitively" or watching to see how much damage Pakistan has done to itself and how lakhs of people in border villages can survive the effects of multiple Pakistani nukes designed to take out an Indian attack. In the fog of war - assuming Pakistan has used up a dozen nukes against Indian forces, India can easily lob a nuke or two in a couple of areas and pretend that the Pakis did it. After all - all the nuclear explosions will be inside Pakistan and started by Pakistan. Nobody need know.
The Paki tactical nuke plan is not a good one and does not necessarily call for a change in India's current nuclear posture as stated.
I think this requires some qualification.ShauryaT wrote:, TNW is only the latest ruse to further its objective of showing to its sponsors, its need to fulfill its claimed security objectives and this time with a gun to its own head, with its population as ransom. If it were a real strategy, it is the cheapest way to deter a conventional attack by India
Yes, much qualification is required. When Pakistan says TNW, these are really battle field weapons like the ones the 2nd artillery of the PLA is said to have. In classic western lingo, tactical nuclear weapons would be all assets with less than 300KM ranges, the raison d'etre for the MTCR. What India wants is classical nuclear stability and CBM's though asset signaling. It means non-use of "tactical" weapons for strategic uses. Pakistan seeks the opposite, complete instability by mixing asset classes, first use and indeed down to battle field weapons, including artillery and rockets, if they can - like the PLA does.shiv wrote:I think this requires some qualification.ShauryaT wrote:, TNW is only the latest ruse to further its objective of showing to its sponsors, its need to fulfill its claimed security objectives and this time with a gun to its own head, with its population as ransom. If it were a real strategy, it is the cheapest way to deter a conventional attack by India
Weapons grade Plutonium is listed as costing US $ 4000 per gram. A Tactical nuke for a medium tech power would require about 5 kg - (5000 grams) or US $ 20 million for just one weapon - which will give just a 1-2 kiloton blast. The weapons itself is more expensive than the damage it could do. Assuming ten weapons - we are looking at 200 million USD for just the Plutonium alone without the other materials, delivery and security probably double that if you include everything else like "wastage" while shaping the core and other materials and stuff.
Eating grass is definitely what they are planning.
As we are witnessing in the ME and now in newspapers such as NYT, Wash Post, etc, yahoos are no different than the common Muslim. They cannot be. Given a choice between Islam and the US, no brownie points which way the PA will head. push comes to shove all that investment will go to janat only.The US does not want that yahoo scenario to occur and they have put their bets on the PA to achieve the same.
I suspect for quite similar reasons the Americans demurred and provided all sorts of other stuff to PakistanIn the early 1990s, the People's Republic of China requested information to develop its own PALs.[18] The Clinton administration believed that to do so would give too much information to the Chinese about American weapon design, and therefore, refused the request
Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.
But with the future of that country’s leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan’s reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.
The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.
A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age.
Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that he was confident about Pakistani security. While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used.
That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing.
The American program was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration debated whether to share with Pakistan one of the crown jewels of American nuclear protection technology, known as “permissive action links,” or PALS, a system used to keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorizations.
In the end, despite past federal aid to France and Russia on delicate points of nuclear security, the administration decided that it could not share the system with the Pakistanis because of legal restrictions.
In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.
While many nuclear experts in the federal government favored offering the PALS system because they considered Pakistan’s arsenal among the world’s most vulnerable to terrorist groups, some administration officials feared that sharing the technology would teach Pakistan too much about American weaponry. The same concern kept the Clinton administration from sharing the technology with China in the early 1990s.
The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.
Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.
The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.
In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. “I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy, but clearly we are very watchful, as we should be,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.
Admiral Mullen’s carefully chosen words, a senior administration official said, were based on two separate intelligence assessments issued this month that had been summarized in briefings to Mr. Bush. Both concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was safe under current conditions, and one also looked at laboratories and came to the same conclusion.
Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to provide access has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced — including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
The secret program was designed by the Energy Department and the State Department, and it drew heavily from the effort over the past decade to secure nuclear weapons, stockpiles and materials in Russia and other former Soviet states. Much of the money for Pakistan was spent on physical security, like fencing and surveillance systems, and equipment for tracking nuclear material if it left secure areas.
But while Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal, which is the pride of the country.
“Everything has taken far longer than it should,” a former official involved in the program said in a recent interview, “and you are never sure what you really accomplished.”
So far, the amount the United States has spent on the classified nuclear security program, less than $100 million, amounts to slightly less than one percent of the roughly $10 billion in known American aid to Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks. Most of that money has gone for assistance in counterterrorism activities against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The debate over sharing nuclear security technology began just before then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was sent to Islamabad after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the United States was preparing to invade Afghanistan.
“There were a lot of people who feared that once we headed into Afghanistan, the Taliban would be looking for these weapons,” said a senior official who was involved. But a legal analysis found that aiding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program — even if it was just with protective gear — would violate both international and American law.
General Musharraf, in his memoir, “In the Line of Fire,” published last year, did not discuss any equipment, training or technology offered then, but wrote: “We were put under immense pressure by the United States regarding our nuclear and missile arsenal. The Americans’ concerns were based on two grounds. First, at this time they were not very sure of my job security, and they dreaded the possibility that an extremist successor government might get its hands on our strategic nuclear arsenal. Second, they doubted our ability to safeguard our assets.”
General Musharraf was more specific in an interview two years ago for a Times documentary, “Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?” Asked about the equipment and training provided by Washington, he said, “Frankly, I really don’t know the details.” But he added: “This is an extremely sensitive matter in Pakistan. We don’t allow any foreign intrusion in our facilities. But, at the same time, we guarantee that the custodial arrangements that we brought about and implemented are already the best in the world.”
Now that concern about General Musharraf’s ability to remain in power has been rekindled, so has the debate inside and outside the Bush administration about how much the program accomplished, and what it left unaccomplished. A second phase of the program, which would provide more equipment, helicopters and safety devices, is already being discussed in the administration, but its dimensions have not been determined.
Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the United States’ nuclear arms, argued that recent federal reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous.
“Lawyers say it’s classified,” Dr. Agnew said in an interview. “That’s nonsense. We should share this technology. Anybody who joins the club should be helped to get this.”
“Whether it’s India or Pakistan or China or Iran,” he added, “the most important thing is that you want to make sure there is no unauthorized use. You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”
In the past, officials say, the United States has shared ideas — but not technologies — about how to make the safeguards that lie at the heart of American weapons security. The system hinges on what is essentially a switch in the firing circuit that requires the would-be user to enter a numeric code that starts a timer for the weapon’s arming and detonation.
Most switches disable themselves if the sequence of numbers entered turns out to be incorrect in a fixed number of tries, much like a bank ATM does. In some cases, the disabled link sets off a small explosion in the warhead to render it useless. Delicate design details involve how to bury the link deep inside a weapon to keep terrorists or enemies from disabling the safeguard.
The most famous case of nuclear idea sharing involves France. Starting in the early 1970s, the United States government began a series of highly secretive discussions with French scientists to help them improve the country’s warheads.
A potential impediment to such sharing was the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars cooperation between nations on weapons technology.
To get around such legal prohibitions, Washington came up with a system of “negative guidance,” sometimes called “20 questions,” as detailed in a 1989 article in Foreign Policy. The system let United States scientists listen to French descriptions of warhead approaches and give guidance about whether the French were on the right track.
Nuclear experts say sharing also took place after the cold war when the United States worried about the security of Russian nuclear arms and facilities. In that case, both countries declassified warhead information to expedite the transfer of safety and security information, according to federal nuclear scientists.
But in the case of China, which has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s and is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Clinton administration decided that sharing PALS would be too risky. Experts inside the administration feared the technology would improve the Chinese warheads, and could give the Chinese insights into how American systems worked.
Officials said Washington debated sharing security techniques with Pakistan on at least two occasions — right after it detonated its first nuclear arms in 1998, and after the terrorist attack on the United States in 2001.
The debates pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against federal officials at such places as the State Department who ruled that the transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and under United States law.
In the 1998 case, the Clinton administration still hoped it could roll back Pakistan’s nuclear program, forcing it to give up the weapons it had developed. That hope, never seen as very realistic, has been entirely given up by the Bush administration.
The nuclear proliferation conducted by Mr. Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built a huge network to spread Pakistani technology, convinced the Pakistanis that they needed better protections.
“Among the places in the world that we have to make sure we have done the maximum we can do, Pakistan is at the top of the list,” said John E. McLaughlin, who served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, and played a crucial role in the intelligence collection that led to Mr. Khan’s downfall.
“I am confident of two things,” he added. “That the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”
That is a pretty broad statement to make but needs to be made, if that is what you believe - hopefully with adequate reasoning. It is also a legitimate view on this thread, for I suspect a lot of people's responses to the issue of deterrence and nuclear war is underpinned with these type of non-negotiable and apocalyptic beliefs that are held. It is a legitimate view on the thread and after all even in the cold war, the underlying presumption of many was this belief that those bad, evil, crazy communists are out to get the people of the west. MAD was also premised on the idea that the other side is not open to reasoned and humane ideas.NRao wrote: As we are witnessing in the ME and now in newspapers such as NYT, Wash Post, etc, yahoos are no different than the common Muslim. They cannot be. Given a choice between Islam and the US, no brownie points which way the PA will head. push comes to shove all that investment will go to janat only.
Posting from smartphone, so unable to type more.
Is that not even more concerning?But, it has been ascertained that they have a PAL system (not the US version).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_LinkIn 2007, the UK Government revealed that its nuclear weapons were not equipped with Permissive Action Links. Instead, the UK's nuclear bombs to be dropped by aircraft were armed by just inserting a key into a simple lock similar to those used to protect bicycles from theft. The UK withdrew all air-launched bombs in 1998. The current UK Trident warheads can also be launched by a submarine commander with the support of his crew without any code being transmitted from the chain of command.
Wasn't the US supposed to have helped the Pakistanis implement some form of PAL? I hope it was more substantial than a cycle lock & key. There was a lot of talk of this around c. 2002 timeframe and some announcement later that it has been done so. We had a lot of discussion here on that.wig wrote:the UK as per Wiki uses this kind of PALs. I doubt the Pakistan nukes would have developed substantially different PAL then this
Not long. Buddha will smile again.SSridhar wrote:So, how long will it be before Pakistan claims it has a fusion bomb?