India's ICBM
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New Delhi risks upsetting Asia’s delicate weapons balance
Sometime over the next three months,perhaps as early as
December, Indian defense officials are scheduled to test the country‘s
first truly intercontinental ballistic missile, the Agni-V, which
theoretically brings India’s weapons program within range of most of
China.
Officials insist that India has a no-strike-first policy and that the
weapons are no threat to any other country in the region. Said VK
Saraswat, the chief of the Defense Research & Development
Organization, the federal body that oversees the country’s indigenous
arms development: “We are not looking at how many missiles China or
Pakistan has. With a 'no first-use' nuclear weapons policy, we only want
a sufficient number of missiles to defend the country in the event of a
crisis. Ours is a defensive-mode strategy, even if others have
offensive postures.”
However, as governments have pondered during the missile age, how much
is a sufficient number? Tthe implications for the balance of power in
the region are obvious. India’s two-decades-old missile program has
mostly been aimed at nullifying nullify the threat from its immediate
and unremittingly hostile neighbor, Pakistan. That appears to be
changing. While shorter versions of the Agni missile series cover
Pakistan, Agni III and beyond are part of India’s efforts to guard
against China.
The ICBM, named for the Hindu god Agni, the god of fire and the acceptor
of sacrifices, is referred to by Indian officials and scientists as the
“China killer,” hardly a peaceable phrase, due to its ability to target
cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and reach the northernmost tips of the
country.
Yet with only a handful of missiles and believed to possess only 70
nuclear weapons, India has a long way before it couldmatch up to China’s
arsenal, with its missiles capable of delivering payloads up to 14,000
km, covering much of the globe. China is believed to possess at least
410 nuclear weapons. This is probably a race the world does not need,
as the western powers proved from the 1960s on. The United States and
Russia have slowly and reluctantly been reducing their missile capacity
for almost a generation, although both retain a vast suf ficiency enough
to wipe out the planet several times over.
Nonetheless, Agni-V allows India to join a select group of nations
including the US, China, the UK and Russia, which possess ICBMs with the
capability to strike targets at least 5,500 km away. India’s program
director, Avinash Chander, said that Agni-V would be ready for
incorporation into the armed forces by 2014.
Agni V’s predecessor, Agni IV, which is capable of carrying nuclear
warheads with a range of 3,500 km, was tested two weeks ago, almost a
year after a previous test was unsuccessful. New Delhi called the test a
“stupendous success” and suggesting the test puts India’s missile
capability a notch higher than Pakistan’s.
Although India’s record in developing indigenous weapons --tanks or
fighter jets -- is abysmal, such as not been the case with its ballistic
missile program. Some of this is due to progress in launching and
installation of broadcast and remote sensing satellites in space under
the aegis of the Indian Space Research Organization.
This is despite sanctions US sanctions imposed on India’s dual-use
technologies. The advances in missile technology have occurred
concomitantly with strides in space research as the motors used in the
launch vehicles of satellites have been incorporated into missiles.
The Defense Research & Development Organization, which has an
otherwise spotty record of weapons development, claims Agni-V is built
almost fully with indigenous technology, although Indian scientists are
known to copy readily available blueprints from Russia.
Agni-V must undergo two to four more “repeatable” tests before the
weapon goes operational, Avinash Chander said. “Our aim is to take just
two to three years from the first test to the induction phase.”
In June, the now-retired Air Chief Marshal PV Naik said India's rising
global stature demands developing the ICBM and long-range attack
capability possessed by elite nations.
“India should pursue an ICBM program to acquire ranges of 10,000 km or
even more,” Naik said. “Breaking out of the regional context is
important as the country's sphere of influence grows. We have no
territorial designs on any country, but India needs the capability to
match its sphere of influence.”
India’s deepening interest in ICBM’s has occurred even as the US has
opened its defense armaments market, including dual-use technology, for
Indian use, definitely moving away from a sanctions-ridden policy
paradigm that harkened back to the Cold War era when India was aligned
with the erstwhile Soviet Union.
Events such as the Kargil war of 1999, during which the country nearly
went to war with Pakistan and the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks
orchestrated by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists have only
heightened India’s insecurities and led to efforts to refine its ability
to attack and protect itself.
Since the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, India has also accelerated
its ballistic missile defense program with help from its newly friendly
defense partner America, to protect against a sudden missile attack,
possibly nuclear tipped, particularly from rogue elements in Pakistan.
The defense expertise can also be extended to space to protect India’s
remote and communication satellites, especially after China conducted an
anti-satellite test in 2007, in what is seen as a potential “Star Wars”
arms race between the two Asian nations, with America strategically
siding with India.
Given the closed nature of China’s polity, nobody is quite sure what
kind of investments and developments are happening in China’s defense
sphere. Some analysts believe that China’s military capabilities today
could be superior to America’s although US defense expenditure dwarfs
that of the rest of the world combined.
Pakistan is no patsy either, with a missile program that is actively
promoted by China, and with the country having developed its own nuclear
capability. Several of its attack ballistic missiles with the potential
to destroy Indian cities are a copy of those in possession of China.
The country has test-fired the Shaheen-2, a 2000-km range missile.
Pakistan, meanwhile, continues to receive military largesse from America
as a partner in the global war against terror, though India has long
held that such stockkpiling of weapons only adds to instability in the
region.
New Delhi feels that US-supplied armaments to Pakistan are more potent
against a conventional enemy rather than the amorphous terror networks
that also spread over Afghanistan and need effective intelligence and
pinpointed operations, such as the one that killed Osama Bin Laden, to
neutralize.
India has thus been implementing a massive defense modernization effort
over the past few years. Given the country’s incipient domestic
inability to manufacture military hardware, most arms are imported
despite the fact that the missile program remains an indigenous effort
that breeds off the successes in India’s space program.
In its latest report, Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute, has said that India has become the biggest arms
importer in the world and in the process overtaken China, though Indian
observers say that a major portion of Beijing’s arms budget continues to
be hidden, secret and unknown to the world.
(Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist. He can be reached at
sidsri@yahoo.com.)
“Singapore
is way ahead and I would like to point out that Indonesia is improving
very fast and may overtake us because Indonesia has shown some will,”
said TI-M secretary-general Josie Fernandez (picture).
