Managing India's Nuclear Forces

Nuclear Hardware

122 M Managing India’s Nuclear Forces 5 Nuclear Hardware The term ‘nuclear hardware’ covers bombs and warheads, missiles, missile submarines, and the wide range of equipment required for the effective performance of C&C. All of this hardware must be capable of safe and reliable operations. Possibilities of design error and component malfunctioning are myriad in these systems, involving as they do both high technology and high interactional complexity. Technical problems could disable a weapon or produce a nuclear or a non-nuclear accident. As strategic weapon systems are dangerous, expensive and few, the need for reliability and flawless performance is very high. According to Ashley Tellis, the biggest challenge facing the Indian deterrent is technical reliability. He fears that the Indian missile systems may experience performance failures, not because of anything specific but because Indian manufacturing quality control has been weak. He is concerned about the reliability of the various ‘systems’ that make up the Indian deterrent and feels that the lack of an appropriate oversight capability is the most dangerous aspect in this regard.1 Deterrence effectiveness of hardware is achieved through many enabling factors such as performance, safety, reliability, robustness, survivability, C&C responsiveness, and ease of operations. Because of their high profile, bombs and missiles symbolise nuclear hardware to most people. And within them, two factors — the explosive power of bombs and the range of missiles — tend to be used, often in an over simplified fashion, as the metrics of hardware quality and even of deterrence potency. While these metrics achieved in test conditions are very important, what matters even more is the ability to transfer these and many related metrics to the actual operating environment. 1 Ashley Tellis in a personal mail to the author. Nuclear Hardware  123 Warheads The availability of fissile material, which had been a major constraint on India, has been removed as a result of the 2008 agreements with the NSG and the IAEA. The country can now run its power reactors using imported uranium and use the uranium available within the country, as well as a part of the reactor grade plutonium stocks it has accumulated over decades for weapon purposes. India can also use eight of its heavy water power reactors, which do not come under IAEA safeguards, to produce weapon grade plutonium. These units can produce about 130 kg of plutonium each year, and even more if a low burn-up regime is used. India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), expected to come on stream in 2012, is also safeguards free. The PFBR can, if necessary, ‘launder’ into weapon grade some of the large stocks of reactor grade plutonium the country possesses. It is warhead design, not fissile material availability that has always been India’s bigger problem. Warhead design is dependent on test data, and India’s limited data base is a major inhibiting factor. India’s defence and nuclear scientists have generally been very upbeat about the country’s warhead design capabilities. The then head of DRDO, Abdul Kalam, speaking on behalf of both DAE/AEC and DRDO, stated in May 1998 that The nuclear tests of May 11–13 this year and May 1974 have given us the required data. Besides, the tests have also enhanced our design and simulation capability. Many of our institutions have supercomputers and simulation is not difficult. We believe that subscribing to the CTBT will not affect our status as a nuclear weapons state (Kanwal 2001: 213–14). The then chairman of AEC, Rajagopala Chidambaram, stated separately, ‘We have enough data and we don’t have to test again’ (Ram 1999: 73). These public statements have been carefully phrased and they do not make any explicit claims about thermonuclear or even boosted fission capability. But such claims have been reportedly made in confidential settings. These assertions have been contested within India and outside. Chidambaram’s immediate predecessor at the AEC, P. K. Iyengar has written, ‘It is unscientific to embark on a long programme of weaponisation, and develop elaborate plans for maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent, all based on just one, low-yield thermonuclear test, 124  Managing India’s Nuclear Forces (Sawhney 2002: 390). Iyengar has also written that ‘If we have a very accelerated programme of testing, then may be in 5, 6, 10 years we can be confident’ (Iyengar 2000: 30). Ashley Tellis has written that To the degree that India can live with greater uncertainty in these...