The assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the defiance of militants and public unease with President Pervez Musharraf’s government have raised questions about the stability of Pakistan and the security of its nuclear armament. Exacerbating these concerns is a nervous neighbor. In January, weeks after an Indian missile successfully crashed into another missile over the Bay of Bengal, an official announced that India could deploy a defense shield against ballistic missiles by 2011.
By seeking to fend off its tenacious rival, India may have inadvertently increased the risk of a regional nuclear exchange. Furthermore, “missile defense will make it likely that greater damage will be inflicted on India” if such a war breaks out, argues Theodore Postol, a defense analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Experts have long considered the Indian subcontinent to be the likeliest flash point for the world’s first nuclear exchange [see “India, Pakistan and the Bomb,” by M. V. Ramana and A. H. Nayyar; Scientific American, December 2001]. Ever since India began the nuclear arms race in 1974, Pakistan has responded tit-for-tat to every development. The effort seems to have paid off for Pakistan: in 1999, when it sent paramilitary forces across the border, India repelled the attackers but did not pursue them home, reportedly because of threats of atomic retaliation.
India’s planners have now decided that a missile defense shield is the answer to their self-inflicted predicament. They have an ally in the Bush administration, which last year forged a deal that will allow India to purchase uranium from international sources for its civilian reactors. If the agreement goes through, India will be able to process all its domestic uranium for the military, adding 60 to 100 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually to its current stock (estimated at 600 kilograms). Earlier, in 2005, the U.S. had offered to share military technology, including that of missile defense, with India. Officials and military contractors from around the world have since been thronging to New Delhi in the hope of selling components of a defense system.
Many scientists have pointed out the inherent shortcomings of ballistic-missile defense [see “Holes in the Missile Shield,” by Richard L. Garwin; Scientific American, November 2004]. Defense systems of this kind cannot, for instance, distinguish decoys from real threats. In South Asia, short distances magnify the problems. “It’s pretty unlikely that you can expect to reliably intercept anything,” opines physicist Zia Mian of Princeton University, who studies nuclear proliferation and global security. India’s Defense Research and Development Organization claims that its planned defense shield will destroy an enemy missile three minutes after the missile’s detection by radar.
Early-warning radar, such as one that India has imported from Israel, could detect the missile and determine its course within 110 seconds after its launch. But a ballistic missile launched on a low trajectory from, say, a Pakistani air base could reach New Delhi in as little as five minutes, according to Mian and physicists M. V. Ramana of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore and R. Rajaraman of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
That could leave technicians with too little time to figure out if the warning is real. U.S. scientists once spent eight minutes determining that a warning of a Soviet launch was false. Indeed, false alarms are frequent when it comes to early-warning systems. A flight of geese or an incidence of atmospheric turbulence can fool radar, and anomalous reflections of the sun can trick satellite-based infrared detectors. Between 1977 and 1988—the only period for which data have been released—the U.S. recorded an annual average of 2,600 false alarms of ballistic-missile launches from the Soviet Union. Even if India responds to a false alarm just by launching an interceptor missile, that action could be interpreted by Pakistan as an attack.
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4 Comments
Add CommentThe basic thrust of this article is that India should give up the ABM capability. The article talks of Pakistan acquiring nuke technology. Pakistani nuke technology is basically what was gifted to Pakistan by China with US blessings with the sole aim of styming India. The US is trying its level best to remove the nuclear and ABM capability of India so that it can then interfere and make Kashmir an independent client state of US.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes it is true that the reaction time is low. Thats taken into account.
The greater danger is for the jihadis to use the Pakistani nukes against the west because they know that one or many attacks on India and Pakistan ceases to exist. They will never use it without being egged on by US as US egged on Musharaff and Shariff into the Kargil misadventure. The jihadis were the creation of the West. Now the west suffers. The west gifted nuclear weapons to Pakistan whose army will be jihadi when the senior officers are replaced by the present middle rung. Unless US denuclearizes Pakistan it will suffer. Thats what US should aim for and not attempting to denuclearize India while it faces China and its proxy, the US client State Pakistan both nuclear.
A very good psy-op article.
Amercians are funny, they end up supporting the wrong people and then fighting them. Nobody know better than Indians how hollow US calls for a free world are when they look to the support provided by US to its neighbours. They will support the jihadi Pakistani dictators but oppose Myanmar which has been peaceful for sucha long period. May be they dont like countries to remain peaceful!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia has the right to defend itself in the most hostile authoritative surroundings.
Amercians are funny, they end up supporting the wrong people and then fighting them. Nobody know better than Indians how hollow US calls for a free world are when they look to the support provided by US to its neighbours. They will support the jihadi Pakistani dictators but oppose Myanmar which has been peaceful for sucha long period. May be they dont like countries to remain peaceful!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia has the right to defend itself in the most hostile authoritative surroundings.
Amercians are funny, they end up supporting the wrong people and then fighting them. Nobody know better than Indians how hollow US calls for a free world are when they look to the support provided by US to its neighbours. They will support the jihadi Pakistani dictators but oppose Myanmar which has been peaceful for sucha long period. May be they dont like countries to remain peaceful!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndia has the right to defend itself in the most hostile authoritative surroundings.