Nuclear Threat From Pakistan : Boom or Bluff ?

Karna_A · Post by **Karna_A** » 07 Feb 2009 03:35

Rudradev,

That's an excellent analysis.
The right way of dealing with this issue is not hoping that TSP has all duds which is probably not true but taking the worst case scenario like you did and gaming it through. Your analysis is right on point that 90 won't cause death blow to India, and India would recover in 10 years. Comparatively Russia lost 15% of its population in 2nd world war and still became a superpower. That 15% for India is 20+ crore.

One thing that India could immediately do is create underground Metro in top 10-15 cities that can also act as WMD shelters. That would neutralize most of existing threat and save a lot of Gas/petrol money going to SA.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 07 Feb 2009 03:39

karna, it's not a question of hoping that TSP has duds.
the TSP design was a dud.

Raj Malhotra · Post by **Raj Malhotra** » 07 Feb 2009 10:42

I think that the max of Pak nukes is two dozen aircraft delivered and minimum is zero. So we should estimate arund 2-6 hits in India of 25kt nukes with a couple of 2-5kt.

p_saggu · Post by **p_saggu** » 07 Feb 2009 15:30

Ramana,
This I found when I searched for the Desoi Plains on GE.
The area is indeed around 37 Kms north of the LOC very close to Drass - tololing. There is a forzen lake - the sheosar lake, along with surrounding hills with deep ravines, any of which could be what you suggest.

p_saggu · Post by **p_saggu** » 07 Feb 2009 15:43

I don't know about Chaklala air base, but Dhamial Army Airbase 8 kms south of Chaklala is a very good candidate for such storage. It is basically a helicopter base but has a smallish runway too.

PS I have uploaded my Google Earth placemarks of Pakistan's strategic sites here. The major airbases have the known types and number of aircraft written in.

Rapidshare Link

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 07 Feb 2009 16:44

One missing point is that Pak is merely the proxy of China.The manner in which Zardari gave a blank cheque to China to sort out with India a solution to the problems thrown up by 26/11,indicates that the Chinese have a role to play in the nuclear equation.

Chandragupta · Post by **Chandragupta** » 07 Feb 2009 23:03

Pakistan will never risk a Nuclear exchange with India, no matter how hard our sissy media will like us to believe. The biggest wet dream that the Pakistanis have is to achieve total superiority over India, to see Pakistan as a prosperous Islamic state & India as a poverty ridden, gloomy third world country. Despite all their taqya & iman, they will piss their pants at the thought of Indian nukes exploding over Slumabad & Lawhore & ending the existence of Pakistan. That is unacceptable for them. If & when a situation arises that can trigger a nuclear showdown, expect Houristan to do what it does best, shit their salwars & run over to Uncle & Chichi to get their asses wiped & washed. And then, just like old times, "We will develop Hydrogen bombs, even if we have to eat grass..". By now, they'd have had plenty of practice of eating grass.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 08 Feb 2009 00:29

Right now the Pakistani Establishment makes an impression of being full of Whiskey-Jihadists, Crore-Commanders, and GUBO-Addicts. It would be much easier to deal with a war with such a bunch, than with the likes of some who start believing in their own Jihadi-BS. The tendency is towards radicalization. So if we want to test the bluff theory, it will be better to test it now.

Karna_A · Post by **Karna_A** » 09 Feb 2009 00:45

Rahul M,

Can you please elaborate on that as your statement though desirable is not factual.

What do you think is not there?
(a) TSP does not have 25Kg of Enriched U235
(b) TSP does not have a timer that combines the separated Uranium at the same time. (An ITI student can make such a timer)
(c) F16s are not modified to carry a 50Kg load. (Modification is not needed!)

The first is the most difficult, rest all are easy.
However, miniatarization for missiles a whole different ball game but with Chicom help that was probably solved after 1999.
Morover, Indian preprations should be to take the worst case scenario and prepare for that.
Hoping TSP has all duds is a wish, not a policy planning tool.

Rahul M wrote:karna, it's not a question of hoping that TSP has duds.
the TSP design was a dud.

Hariprasad · Post by **Hariprasad** » 09 Feb 2009 01:05

Considering Rudraji's scenario we should(if not already) heavily fortify Mumbai and Delhi with the best air defense systems, ABM systems money can buy, along with the indigenous systems complemented by Aerostat, AWACs and fighters.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 09 Feb 2009 02:32

Can you please elaborate on that as your statement though desirable is not factual.

do you bother actually looking up facts or do you prefer to pass opinion as fact ?

we are about 10 years from the date of the events when a concerted effort was made at BR to piece together the snippets and nuggets that appeared on the mysterious absence of U and its implications. only some of those have been stored in the BR archives.
sorry that I don't have the time to dig up the links for you.
but you can have a start here.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index.html
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... ?f=8&t=189

there was a strong view (backed by data from U-2 overflights, opposed by some) that TSP's tests showed only signs of Pu and not HEU which paki designs were actually based upon. and TSP certainly didn't have any Pu generation capability back then.

given the fact that the chagai tunnels were made much earlier and that TSP took an inordinate amount of time to test in spite of hectic activity at the test site since May 11, the proposition that there had been a dud test of a paki design before May 28 does look very very likely.

Of course you are free to believe that TSP has 1000000 nukes of 5000000 kT yeild, but I rest my case.
regards.

Karna_A · Post by **Karna_A** » 09 Feb 2009 03:51

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that Pakistan has built 24-48 HEU-based nuclear warheads, and Carnegie reports that they have produced 585-800 kg of HEU, enough for 30-55 weapons. Pakistan's nuclear warheads are based on an implosion design that uses a solid core of highly enriched uranium and requires an estimated 15-20 kg of material per warhead. According to Carnegie, Pakistan has also produced a small but unknown quantity of weapons grade plutonium, which is sufficient for an estimated 3-5 nuclear weapons.

No, I don't believe TSP has 1000000 nukes of 5000000 kT yeild, but there are good chances that TSP has 50-90 nukes of Hiroshima size and Indian planning should be based on that. Whether the Nukes are of Chicom design or TSP design, won't affect the number of casualties.
False belief in duds reinforces "No need for planning" groups aka Roys and Gujrals of India which does not help in long term.

Rahul M wrote:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index.html
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... ?f=8&t=189

Of course you are free to believe that TSP has 1000000 nukes of 5000000 kT yeild, but I rest my case.
regards.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 09 Feb 2009 07:17

A thing to consider. TSP's working nukes are those that PRC can spare. PRC by the best estmates has between 300 to 450 nukes. Does anyone think that PRC which itself has a small arsenal compared to the two super powers would spare for TSP a third to a fifth of her arsenal? Isnt it case of a guy surviving on toned milk giving malai to his goon? Is it possible?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 09 Feb 2009 07:45

Ramanaji,
my potshot is that nukes if any are held under PRC command somewhere in North Kashmir, not far from the Karakorum highway. As you pointed out, the Deosai plains are likely, and they are also not far from the highway either. PRC will keep them close to the highway, so that have a backup route to remove them to safety if necessary. They will keep them close to main PRC border, for the same reason. They will place the delivery systems in North Kashmir, to target northern India, but equally also to target US troops in eastern AFG or if US presence reaches north TSP. They will maintain a large number of duds for psy-ops, but only few of them will be armed with tactical nukes. In all negotiations with other powers about the nukes, TSP will drag discussions and delegate to PRC directly or indirectly.

India should place nuke capable carriers and subs when feasible to target coastal PRC from Pacific and south China sea. That will call the PRC-TSP bluff. I have my own doubts about the technical feasibilities of placing a large number of nuke missiles in the area indicated for long - the conditions could simply be too "harsh". It is one thing to place troops and supply them. It is another to maintain state of the art ground relays/control centres and supply nuke bases in that terrain. I have trekked and climbed solo both above and below the snow line in terrain very close and similar. Here in BR probably many active servicemen share even more experience definitely. Been QM for some expeditions too. With my very limited experience, it does not seem very likely to have a lot of active warheads if any.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 09 Feb 2009 09:56

Rahul M wrote:there was a strong view (backed by data from U-2 overflights, opposed by some) that TSP's tests showed only signs of Pu and not HEU which paki designs were actually based upon. and TSP certainly didn't have any Pu generation capability back then.

Rudradev-saar and Rahul-saar

FAS does make a note of the U2 incident

"According to a preliminary analysis conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory, material released into the atmosphere during an underground nuclear test by Pakistan in May 1998 contained low levels of weapons-grade plutonium. The significance of the Los Alamos finding was that Pakistan had either imported or produced plutonium undetected by the US intelligence community. But Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other agencies later contested the accuracy of this finding."

On the other hand, reliable data for Nuclear tests are hard to come by. But playing the devil's advocate, if we dismiss the report from Unkil on India's own yield as "psy-ops" (under reporting our Smiling Buddha yield, the confusion about the thermonuclear Shakthi test), why should we not consider the Pu traces as either psyops or bad science ?

Pakis having duds is the ideal scenario, but the possibility of that, IMHO, is quite remote. Given that they had a design from the Chinese and a test at Lop Nor, it is conceivable that they have a few (maybe 2-3 dozen) working bombs. In any case, after 10 years, they definitely would have made amends or their tallel than mountain friends would have contributed working designs/expertise. There was uncle's GOAT in between (just like the soviet jihad days), for unkil to look the other side and work out a deal (for curbing activities of AQK vis-a-vis proliferation and his exports, in return for Pakis getting chini assistance to secure their own arsenal). After all, they did in fact look the other way during the soviet jihad days when AQK stole designs, chinis gave expertise and saudis pumped in money. All of these are are more likely than Pakis having duds.

Given that they do not have duds, and two dozen to three dozen weapons, the effectiveness of the delivery mechanisms and Paki willingness to use bombs and the targets would be the next logical question. In this case Paki options are:

1. Use conventional BM strikes on Mumbai and Delhi with the threat that any conventional strike by India would be interpreted as a Nuke strike and hence will invite a Nuke retaliation. This has the potential to send SDREs in knots, with months on months of inaction. (Dont believe me ? look at what happen in Kargil with the SDREs respecting "the sanctity of LOC" or after Mumbai with the SDREs afraid to strike, debating if "surgical strikes" are an option)

2. Use low yield or full yield weapons on Indian force concentrations within Paki terrory or inside India's borders in the desert area, with a warning that a Nuke retaliation will invite a Nuke strike on India's population centers. SDREs would hesitate to do the only thing which will reduce or eliminate that option - to initiate a full scale genocide of the Pakis.

These options of Paki nukes are uninteresting. What is interesting is the interplay of Nukes vis-a-vis Paki and SDRE psyche. Consider these:

Now the Pakis, idiotic and blood thirsty jihadis that they are, have completely misused their nuclear weapons. Since they are brilliant tacticians, they are using their nuke weapons against Indian retaliation to provocation: Attack with terrorists, threaten to use Nukes if India retaliates. This is a Kargil redux on a smaller scale (occupy peaks, threaten to retaliate with Nukes if India escalates). This is a metastable state and will happen again and again. Till the SDREs figure out creative ways of dealing with the problem.

Overt ways of dealing with this problem is time consuming, costly and do not guarantee 100% success. These include BM defence, air defences, enough options for conventional attack against Paki delivery mechanisms. SDREs are working towards that. But eventually, SDREs are likely to lose their patience and start with covert options. Diplomacy with Unkil, having offensive assets inside Pakistan to set off a few in lahore, arming the various freedom movements inside pakistan, expanding our interests in afghanistan and generally making life much takleef for Pakistan, without the Pakis being able to point at a single thing and threatening nuclear retaliation (they cant threaten nuclear retaliation if their aid dries up due to SDRE diplomacy or if their exports are not competitive, can they), to trying to split up Pakistan by convincing Unkil that a stable seperate Balochistan can provide a land route to A'stan, pipeline route from central asia to Gwadar port and can be used to dominate Iran.

What the Pakis should have done instead, is to give up terrorism and evolve a nuclear doctrine that instability in P'stan will result in nuclear retaliation against SDREs. This would have made SDREs fall head over heels to improve economic ties, and work towards P'stan stability. RAPEs would have benefited immensely with each and every SDRE trying to woo them, wine and dine them.

But then rabid dogs cannot be taught philosophy, can they ?

Raj Malhotra · Post by **Raj Malhotra** » 09 Feb 2009 10:31

Rudradev wrote:
It follows that a nation which repeatedly ups the ante with terrorist attacks, and casually blackmails its enemy with "redlines" of nuclear devastation at every stage of the game, very probably has no capacity whatsoever to inflict nuclear devastation. Not only this, but it must be very sure that the government against which it is using such blackmail ALSO knows that it has no capacity to inflict such devastation (or it might end up getting nuked).

Therefore: there must exist, for other reasons, a compact between the Govt of India and the Govt of Pakistan to pretend that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and the capacity to use them... thereby giving the Govt. of India an excuse for its own strategic, operational and tactical inaction.

If this is true, then a fraud is being perpetrated on the Indian people by the Govt. of Pakistan AND the Govt.of India... probably with the collusion of other governments (like Unkil's) as well. The Indian people are being defrauded into accepting Pakistani terrorism as a fact of life that cannot be retaliated against because doing so will invariably lead to an escalation that causes a nuclear exchange. They are being systematically frightened into swallowing the myth of the Pakistani nation as a "fanatical Muslim nuclear-armed suicide bomber "which should not be messed with, even when its terrorists come in to their streets and markets and railway stations and kill their husbands and wives and children. And all the while, Pakistan is behaving like anything BUT a genuinely nuclear-armed nation.

This immediately suggests that Pakistan has no nukes to threaten India with; and that the GOI knows this, and is treasonously colluding with Pakistan and the "international community" to avoid mounting a military response that would invariably upset Unkil's agenda in Afghanistan.

We are being fooled into believing that Pakistan has WMD, just as the American people were fooled into believing that Saddam had WMD... though the GOI is using this pretense as an excuse for inaction while the Bush regime used it as a pretext for invasion.

I agree, I have been saying now for ten years on BRF that there is NO evidence that centrifugal technology can produce "weapon" level enriched uranium.

Compare Pakistan with Iran, Iran has same tech, more money & resources but no bum!

Why did Rajiv Gandhi did not hit pak nuke sites? as they were not relevant to Pak nukes!

China did supply but only a couple of nukes to Pakistan, which also were taken back post 9/11!

Why did the Army chief and DM disdain Pak nukes at the height of PARAKARAM?

Why is US only afraid of dirty nukes and not real nukes from Pakistan-jihadis?

Ans-PAK is NUKE NUDE

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 09 Feb 2009 10:56

Allocate 2 out of 10ton PU for Hu from Indian stockpilethen go on cleaning Pakjab in 2014.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 10 Feb 2009 04:53

brishaspatiji

...
I have trekked and climbed solo both above and below the snow line in terrain very close and similar. Here in BR probably many active servicemen share even more experience definitely. Been QM for some expeditions too. With my very limited experience, it does not seem very likely to have a lot of active warheads if any.

Wow! Looks like we have modern day Hurree Babu*!its amazing the experience we get on BRF.

for others:
*Ref to Kim by Rudyard Kipling. Hurree Babu was the govt agent helping the Lama in his explorations.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 10 Feb 2009 05:48

Ramanaji,
my slip of tongue, should have shut up!

but would love to see greater organized participation in mountaineering from youth and no-so-young. A great perspective to toughen up even if "rejected by the military", smell the country, get a feel of the "people", learn to see that a lot of "necessities" are not necessities at all, and a great deal of "skills" and "innovation" training. OT

But I know to a much smaller scale, what it takes to supply and maintain advanced tech in such hostile conditions. Instruments simply fail to perform - the more sophisticated the worse. That was the main reason for the comment. Only possibility if they have stabilized and reinforced concrete tunnels and "caves" - still doubtful, the whole area is geologically unstable - its really unpredictable how the "shocks" of initiation will act on the "hideouts" themselves or on the as yet unfired ones.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 10 Feb 2009 06:06

On the subject of the depth of the PRC-Pakistani nuclear relationship, and the question of design reliability, has everyone forgotten Los Alamos nuclear scientist Danny Stillman's revelations? He's been trying for almost 10 years to get his book published, but has faced legal obstacles from the CIA and DoD, but what little he has been able to say in articles should be considered seriously.

People might find another book he wrote with a Lawrence Livermore guy on nuclear proliferation ("The Nuclear Express") to be interesting

There are also some damage assessments of various scenarios, including a 5kt nuke emplaced at the old World Trade Center. Very sobering.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 10 Feb 2009 08:48

Err, What did he reveal Johann?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 10 Feb 2009 09:30

ramana wrote:Err, What did he reveal Johann?

Not much that the rakshaks dont know. I kept a scrapbook in Google notebook. Here are some:

NYTimes

Thomas C. Reed, a veteran of the Livermore weapons laboratory in California and a former secretary of the Air Force, and Danny B. Stillman, former director of intelligence at Los Alamos, have teamed up in “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation” to show the importance of moles, scientists with divided loyalties and — most important — the subtle and not so subtle interests of nuclear states.

“Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”

Secret cooperation extended to the secluded sites where nations tested their handiwork in thundering blasts. The book says, for instance, that China opened its sprawling desert test site to Pakistan, letting its client test a first bomb there on May 26, 1990.

That alone rewrites atomic history. It casts new light on the reign of Benazir Bhutto as prime minister of Pakistan and helps explain how the country was able to respond so quickly in May 1998 when India conducted five nuclear tests.

The book, in a main disclosure, discusses how China in 1982 made a policy decision to flood the developing world with atomic know-how. Its identified clients include Algeria, Pakistan and North Korea.

Alarmingly, the authors say one of China’s bombs was created as an “export design” that nearly “anybody could build.”The book sees a quiet repercussion of China’s proliferation policy in the Algerian desert. Built in secrecy, the reactor there now makes enough plutonium each year to fuel one atom bomb and is ringed by antiaircraft missiles, the book says.

Why did Beijing spread its atomic knowledge so freely? The authors speculate that it either wanted to strengthen the enemies of China’s enemies (for instance, Pakistan as a counterweight to India) or, more chillingly, to encourage nuclear wars or terror in foreign lands from which Beijing would emerge as the “last man standing.”

IEEE Spectrum

An article by a former U.S. Air Force Secretary in this month's Physics Today magazine says that China turned over the blueprints for its own first atomic bomb to Pakistan, started to provide Pakistan with nuclear weapons technology as early as 1982, and likely helped Pakistan conduct that country's first nuclear weapons test at a Chinese test site. The article, by Thomas Reed, whose career started with nuclear weapons work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the early 1950s, is based largely on allegations by Danny Stillman.

Stillman was impressed by the sophistication of the instrumentation the Chinese were using for nuclear test diagnostics, which he says "were every bit as good as those used in American nuclear tests." But he found an alarming absence of automated controls on Chinese nuclear weapons in the early 1990s; the Chinese basically were relying on human guards deemed loyal and trustworthy.

New Yorker

The first of China’s atomic tests took place on October 16, 1964; the most recent occurred on July 29, 1996, just before China acceded to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.

Particularly intriguing is test number thirty-five, conducted on May 26, 1990, which Reed lists as a “probable test” of a Pakistani nuclear weapon, a bomb that he reports was likely based on a Chinese design. It has long been believed that China used its testing facilities to mask one or more Pakistani bomb tests, but the full story of the interaction of these two weapons programs remains uncertain.

US News

Why , as you say in the book, did the Chinese give the technology to Pakistan?
Pakistan can be explained by a balance of power: India was China's enemy and Pakistan was India's enemy. The Chinese did a massive training of Pakistani scientists, (just like the Russians had done for them) brought them to China for lectures, even gave them the design of the CHIC-4 device, which was a weapon that was easy to build a model for export. There is evidence that A.Q. Khan used Chinese designs in his nuclear designs. Notes from those lectures later turned up in Libya, for instance.

Wall Street Journal

Which brings us to the weakness of this often informative book. The authors are nuclear-weapons designers, not students of international relations -- and it shows. When they depart from their discussion of technology and enter the realm of politics, they make many strong assertions, some of which are questionable or worse. Tracing the flow of technology from Islamabad to Riyadh, for example, Messrs. Reed and Stillman tell us that "the peoples of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are culturally close, indistinguishable in person." Wrong on both counts.

WSJ Again

Every nation should consider its nuclear tests to be giant physics experiments. The Chinese understood that very well; other proliferants do not. The latter often consider their early nuclear shots to be demonstrations and/or simple proof tests. In contrast, the instrumentation of even the first Chinese nuclear test was sophisticated in the extreme.

Data from a nuclear test is collected in several ways. Prompt diagnostics involve pipes or tunnels that allow the collection of real-time data and its conversion to electrical signals before the entire "laboratory" is blown away. A hundred optical, coax, and multi-conductor cables confirm the operation of the detonation process to trailers, nearby but out of fireball or shock range. Optical and electromagnetic instrumentation, located still farther away, can give a quick estimate of internal device performance. Radiochemistry (the collection of post-explosion bomb debris by aircraft and/or excavation) can provide good insight to a foreign observer, but it is indispensable to the host organization. Nuclear device designers usually position trace elements at key locations within their experiments so as to later ascertain temperatures, neutron flux, burn efficiencies, and so forth, as the explosion proceeds—an event that unfolds fully in less than an instant. From the very beginning, Chinese nuclear tests employed all of these diagnostic technologies.

At an earlier time, on the morning after their arrival in Shanghai, the two men took an after-breakfast stroll around their hotel. They went into a bookstore that offered many items of interest, including Chinese-language flash cards. The cards obviously had been there for some time, since they were covered with dust. Hawkins was interested in learning Chinese, so he opened the box, riffled through the cards, but decided against a purchase and replaced cards and box on the display table. During this time Stillman browsed through some English-language paperbacks on a rotating display. After a brief interlude, both men decided to proceed, unencumbered, with their morning constitutional. Twenty minutes later, en route back to their hotel, the travelers decided to buy those flash cards and books. They returned to the bookstore, but the boxes of flashcards were gone; every book that Stillman had touched was also gone. With some agitation the clerk explained that they had just been sold. Clearly the counterintelligence service of the Ministry of State Security had followed the men into the store. They had picked up anything touched by the foreigners, looking for intelligence-related drops to "contacts" in China. Hawkins and Stillman are intelligence professionals, but they never knew they were being followed. So it was throughout every visit: bugged hotel rooms, attentive companions, and a well-orchestrated symphony of nominally-academic questions, day after day.

anjali · Post by **anjali** » 10 Feb 2009 09:34

So here is a hypothetical question-

It may be entirely conceivable that TSP has little to no nukes in their possession today, and again they may very well have enough to cause significant but not crippling damage to us

But if we do not take them on in combat now , wouldn't it be reasonable to conclude that the wait (5years-10 years)would only serve to allow them time to enhance their weaponry (what little they may or may not have currently)

They could potentially stockpile enough to ....cause devastating and total damage to India, at some hypothetical point in the future.

Given their erratic behavior until now, what credibility does their 'nuclear doctrine' really have ? What would hold them back from wanting to resort to a first attack nuclear war, without any provocation at some point in the future, if it meant that India would be left with little to no retaliatory power for a second attack? An attack that could eliminate large poplulations of 12-20 cities and a large chunk of our armed forces? What if this was simultaneously combined with a multifront attack from PRC/BD and TSP with every weapon in their command?

The risks(sanctions/world ostracism etc ) would be far outweighed by the benefits in this scenario, and I find it hard to believe that they would forego a chance such as this from fear of any financial troubles that this might impose upon them for a finite period in their future.

I worry that the time for this scenario is not far, and that in our preoccupation with trying to avert a nuclear war today...we might be playing into something worse and far more damning in the future

Thanks

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 10 Feb 2009 12:27

Ramana, Anujan,

It it is the question of a test in 1990, especially put in the context of the events;

10 APR 1990: Prime Minister VP Singh states that Pakistan was inciting insurgency in Kashmir and Punjab. If this did not stop, Pakistan should be ready for war. The war would not be a short one. It would be fought until India had "achieved its strategic objective".

SPRING 1990: Pakistan reportedly reacted to Indian Army war game maneuvers near its border by preparing to drop one of seven weapons from a specially configured C-130 cargo plane. [02 December 1992 NBC News report by Robert Windrem]

MAY 1990: Pakistani deterrent placed on alert; issues nuclear threat.

20 MAY 1990: Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates visits Pakistan and India. Briefs Bhutto on the Pakistani nuclear programme, and demands it be capped. Also meets President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Army Chief of Staff.

26 MAY 1990: Underground nuclear test at Lop Nur in the PRC. Most likely ~10 kilotons. [Stillman and Reed believe it to be a test of a Pakistani CHIC-4 derivative]

JUN 1990: Indian government leaks information that China has rejected Pakistan's request to use the Lop Nur nuclear weapons test site.

27 JUL 1990: PAF test drops 'final' version of deliverable weapon from F-16 [Pakistani claims that emerged post-Chagai]

2 AUG 1990: Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.

6 AUG 1990 Benazir deposed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Bhutto believes that she may have triggered the coup by attempting to make the nuclear programme accountable to her.

14 AUG 1990: Dr. A.Q. Khan receives ‘Man of the Nation’ Award.

OCT 1990: President George H.W. Bush announced that he could no longer provide Congress with Pressler Amendment certification that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear weapon. Pressler Amendment sanctions come in to effect, cutting off US aid to Pakistan.

RayC · Post by **RayC** » 10 Feb 2009 19:57

A Bit of Kiteflying, if you will.

If Pakistan drops a nuclear bomb on India, what are her chances of survival thereafter?

Will India sit pretty?

Would it not be heaven sent for the US and allies to send the country that is the womb of terrorism and pain to the western world to Kingdom come as also send a message to the other wannabes?

Would China not heave a breath of relief that Xinjiang has been given a realistic message to quit their Islamic pro-activeness and come down to Mother Earth?

Would Russia be any way displeased since it would give the same message to the Chechnyan rebels?

vics · Post by **vics** » 10 Feb 2009 20:28

Hariprasad wrote:Considering Rudraji's scenario we should(if not already) heavily fortify Mumbai and Delhi with the best air defense systems, ABM systems money can buy, along with the indigenous systems complemented by Aerostat, AWACs and fighters.

Hari understand your concern....

But you know this concern is the fuel for Pakis generals so even if we loose in the worst case scenario couple of crores of our population out of the hundred plus crores its fine coz the survivors can leave in peace as Pakis will not exist any more.

So bring them on lets face it ....its better than dying on a daily basis.

Aditya G · Post by **Aditya G** » 10 Feb 2009 23:19

from http://www.heritage.org/research/asiaan ... bg1562.cfm

Chinmayanand · Post by **Chinmayanand** » 11 Feb 2009 00:54

anjali wrote:So here is a hypothetical question-

It may be entirely conceivable that TSP has little to no nukes in their possession today, and again they may very well have enough to cause significant but not crippling damage to us
-----------------------------
Thanks

It's not a hypothetical question , it is pretty real. After a pre-emptive nuke strike by porkistan , GoI's response will be " We condemn such attacks.Our patience should not be mistaken as weakness and we will give a befitting reply if porkis commit any further nuke attacks." GoI has been reading it like a parrot for two deacdes.

Baljeet · Post by **Baljeet** » 11 Feb 2009 00:59

Durgesh that was

Amitava · Post by **Amitava** » 11 Feb 2009 01:03

RayC wrote: If Pakistan drops a nuclear bomb on India, what are her chances of survival thereafter?

400%

Will India sit pretty?

No. Some tamasha will be put up.

Ethnic cleansing of the Valley,
Assembly house in Srinagar,
Parliament in Dilli,
Kaluchak,
.. .. .. .. .. ..

What's a nuclear bomb? Just another big bomb.

As long as there is no will, there is no hope.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 11 Feb 2009 01:09

You cannot become a Dragon unless you eat a serpent, said Francis Bacon long time ago .
You cannot shout HarHar Mahadev unless you can drink HALAHAL.
You cannot have peace unless you Destroy/Finito/Bury/ Crush or Cremate .......

You cannot destroy terrorism unless you Destroy/Finito/ Bury/ Crush or Cremate.....

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Feb 2009 01:11

Ethnic cleansing might start with WKK first. For all we know it could lead to a new govt and invoking emergency powers. FOr one thing the govt that is in place when cush an attack takes place will not survive and if it does it might get cleansed along with the WKK who allowed this situation to happen.

RayC, Its possible that the P-5 will also nuke India to prevent a retaliation leading to escalation. That was the gist of the wargame with Karl Inderfurth held in UK.

The nuke deal is one way to reduce that threat.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 11 Feb 2009 01:38

The will do everything it can to preserve TSP, and with the newfound intensity of alliance with PRC, UK will sing PRC+TSP tunes through to its own fall to Jihad. In the timeline is a gradual and subtle acceptance of the Sharia in Britian, and greater penetration of the Chinese. UK will take a more conciliatory attitude towards Islam, and to a certain extent it has already given up the fight against Jihadi terror. It will now take a more political attitude of appeasing rather than confrontation. European society deconstructed its own religious heritage to cross into modernization but in the process destroyed the antidote to future prosleytizing faiths. UK has allowed its own most virulent creations to thrive on its soil - TSPians, Saudis, Muslim Africans, the list is long. So, UK will be under tremendous pressure to see to it that India does not retaliate. It will do everything possible to ensure that the current GOI setup gets re-elected as it ensures some degree of submissiveness on the part of India. So UK is more likely to pre-empt Indian capacity to resist and retaliate rather than see TSP vanish and risk its own Jihadis as well as economic Jihad from PRC.

We should not give in to those in India who either innocently or deviously believe that we can rely on UK and its connections to source our military hardware - especially in nukes. PRC is buying up EU, and nuclear collaboration with EU members should be under serious scrutiny.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 11 Feb 2009 22:36

Cross-posting from paki thread:
Holy mother of AK47-and-Tony
Pakistan's nukes not a deterrent for India, says Antony

Defence Minister A K Antony on Wednesday dismissed suggestions that Pakistan's nuclear capabilities may be a factor in any hesitation by India to carry out a surgical strike against terror camps and said its restraint should not be construed as a weakness.

"It (nuclear weapons with Pakistan) has nothing to do with that (decision not to strike). India's restraint should not be taken as a weakness," Antony told reporters on the sidelines of the Aero India show in Bangalore.

Blaming 'responsible elements in Pakistan' for the November 26 Mumbai [Images] terror strikes, he said the attacks were inspired and sponsored by these sections in the western neighbour.

Stating that the security situation in the region would not change in the near future, the minister said, "I do not think there is going to be a big improvement in our vicinity."

He said modernisation of the armed forces was a top priority of the government and added that the meltdown, though it had impacted the nation's economy, would not be allowed to affect the budgetary allocations for defence of the country.

"We all know that there has been some impact of recession. Compared to other countries, we are less affected. But we still have problems. Despite this, modernisation of the defence forces will be our highest priority and it will continue," he added.

p_saggu · Post by **p_saggu** » 12 Feb 2009 00:33

^^^
That's as clear a statement as any that is going to come out of GOI. But all this has been said before.

But then what were the considerations that stopped India from "going in"?

Baljeet · Post by **Baljeet** » 12 Feb 2009 02:01

RayC wrote:A Bit of Kiteflying, if you will.

If Pakistan drops a nuclear bomb on India, what are her chances of survival thereafter?

Will India sit pretty?

Would it not be heaven sent for the US and allies to send the country that is the womb of terrorism and pain to the western world to Kingdom come as also send a message to the other wannabes?

Would China not heave a breath of relief that Xinjiang has been given a realistic message to quit their Islamic pro-activeness and come down to Mother Earth?

Would Russia be any way displeased since it would give the same message to the Chechnyan rebels?

RayC
As the saying goes, Actions speak louder than words. Pakis know very well neither their's nor our nukes are upto mark. That is leaving aside the jingoism, shakti1, shakti2 etc. First test in 1974 was a conceptual test validation. It just proved we have the know how to produce Nukes. That bum was so heavy it took Mil Transport plane to carry it. Shakti Tests validated the technology to manufacture nukes. We need more tests to prove yield, jump to higher yield, big bum capability, miniaturized bums for mizziles. Pakis know our weakness, do we know their weakness. Why is it we never call their bluff, all our leaders do is just drop their dhotis and squat. If we had the destructive capability as we proclaim it is, pakis wouldn't even dare to keep launching Terror Strikes on this nation.

Even in case of a nuke boom from pakis, we will keep doing what we do best, "enough death and destruction already, we are going to restrain our response, we are a responsible nation who does not want to destroy innocent people, there are some non state actors who were responsible for this tragedy, pakistan itself is a victim of terror."

enqyoob · Post by **enqyoob** » 12 Feb 2009 03:21

Today's reality is that if one major Indian city is destroyed by a nuclear weapon, Indians will rationalize inaction by saying: "let's not provoke them to destroy another city - at least this time they didn't destroy MY city!"

Sorry... that is the clear message conveyed by the GOI by its "action" post-November 2008. Deterrence has ceased to exist, and it is Open Season on Indians and India.

US and China will both be very happy because US influence in South Asia will rise exponentially with the demise of the Indian state. Or so DC will convince itself.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 12 Feb 2009 03:25

Ever read of a houbara hunt?

Book Review of margret Weaver's book

One of those better chapters chronicles the hunting of the houbara bustard, a shy desert bird that can be found across the Middle East. The hunt, pursued by the rich sheiks of nations like Saudi Arabia and Dubai, imposes a tremendous toll on both Pakistan and the bird itself. Equipped with tens of millions of dollars in the latest custom built vehicles and radar, and carefully trained – and enormously expensive – prized falcons and handing out bribes when necessary, the powerful Arabs live in elaborate tent cities while they bring down hundreds of birds each before departing all in the belief that the houbara, an endangered bird, serves as a powerful aphrodisiac.

The hunt serves as a powerful allegory for Pakistan itself. Like the houbara bustard, Pakistan too has been the prize in many people's elaborate games. It has been used by the Gulf States to house and train their Islamists, the fodder for the war in Afghanistan, and by the United States as a conduit for arms and money for anti-Soviet forces. It was given the cold shoulder by both once the last Russian tank departed. Like the devastated desert after a houbara hunt, Pakistan was left a wasteland of heavily armed and angry militants and a socio-economic situation that threatens to turn the country completely towards militant Islam.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 12 Feb 2009 03:46

ramana wrote: Like the devastated desert after a houbara hunt, Pakistan was left a wasteland of heavily armed and angry militants and a socio-economic situation that threatens to turn the country completely towards militant Islam.

What about the neighboring countries and region who have take the burden of these terrorists in the collateral damage.
It is always important to control the neighborhood so that it does not become a wasteland.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 12 Feb 2009 03:56

ramana wrote:Ever read of a houbara hunt?
Book Review of margret Weaver's book

I have not read the book (yet). But I suspect that the book rethrashes the age old story: "Americans/Saudis came in, set up a Jihad factory and left Pakistan after their strategic objectives were met in Afghanistan. Poor Pakis, American/Saudis should have continued to give them Baksheesh". Hypothetically let us assume that aid and arms supplies were never stopped. What would Pakistan do differently now, say, when compared to the 80's ?

Assumption 1: Pakis will invest in human capital and infrastructure, making their society a service/manufacturing superpower and hence wont be a basket case anymore: Wrong ! What happened to 8 years of aid from 2001 to 2008 ? Why is Pakistan a worse basket case in 2008 than it was in 2001 ? Especially, when in this time period, pakistan was no 1 recipient of american aid and the saudis extended the SOF ?

Assumption 2: Pakis will use the economic prosperity to lure people from Jihad mode and set up a (civilized) civil society. Wrong ! Pakistani establishment still nurtures Jihadi groups for *internal* political power and leverage. Mushy/MMA/PML-Q were not too long back.

Assumption 3: Pakis will use American backing to beef their security and wind up Jihad against India and stop meddling in Afghanistan. Wrong ! British Bombing,Kabul Embassy, Mumbai, .....

The troubles for Pakistan did start from the Soviet Jihad days, but most authors have gotten the reason backwards. Pakistan simply exploited the opportunity granted by the Soviet invasion to radicalize its society to send jihadis to India, use islamists for internal leverage, and to line the pockets of the establishment. This has caused the sprouting of 10,000 jihadi groups and made Pakistan a economic a basket case. Re-starting financial and military support simply means more money for the establishments, more jihad factories and better armed jihadis and a bigger basket case.

Someone should write a book "Please dont give money to Pakistan. We gave it to them once, and look at what they did"