Strategic Analysis

Strategic Analysis:
A Monthly Journal of the IDSA

May 2001 (Vol. XXV No. 2)

 

Nuclear Command and Control
By Jasjit Singh *

 

Command and control of nuclear arsenals is a complex subject and involves many issues. There are different models, as we have seen in other countries, which are built on their doctrines, goals and type of adversary capabilities. There is a lot we can take from there and a lot we need not take from there. I would like to focus on what I consider to be a few central principles on which command and control of nuclear weapons should be established in India. It is not sufficient to say, let us take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and let us put it together in some form. Or even allow single Service ambitions or turf to be promoted unless it serves the larger purpose. The stakes are very high. This is not a business where failure at any level or in any form can be condoned or compensated by some other steps or organisations. It will be disastrous for this country if our system of command and control does not function the way it must function. How do we want it to function? To get the answer, we need to decide first what is the task we expect the system to perform.

Doctrine and Strategy

The core element is that the nuclear doctrine that we adopt will decide the nuclear strategy. Nuclear strategy in turn will decide the nature and substance of the command and control system which is going to execute the strategy in accordance with that doctrine. There is a linkage here-between the doctrine, strategy, and structure. If we are clear that our doctrine is going to be deterrence only, rather than fighting a nuclear war, the arsenal will have to be designed for that purpose and the command and control will have to correspond to that goal. Considering that nuclear threats to India are likely to emerge essentially from the immediate neighbourhood across the country's territorial boundaries, the very short time of flight due to the proximity factor will need to be catered for in the strategy. 1 It is also clear that there is no conceivable political purpose which would require India to initiate a nuclear threat first, leave alone use of nuclear weapons first. 2 The central elements and objectives of our doctrine should be:

  1. First, to deter nuclear threat and possible use by another state against us. This rules out deterrence of war as such (which would require inclusion of conventional forces into the spectrum of threats to be deterred) and an acceptance of the reality that nuclear weapons cannot deter each and every type of threat to national security (which may include transnational terrorism, for example). Deterrence of nuclear weapons could be achieved by adopting an offensive or defensive strategy. In 1999, the National Security Advisory Board of the National Security Council (NSC) had proposed the defensive strategy and recommended a doctrine and strategy based on the principle that India would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. 3 The Indian political leadership had also affirmed, both before and after the nuclear tests, that India would not be the first to use nuclear weapons.
  2. Second, if deterrence fails (and an aggressor launches a nuclear strike against India or its forces), our nuclear forces should be able to immediately retaliate with adequate power to inflict an "unacceptable" level of punishment and destruction on the aggressor. Taken together, these two principles imply that India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons and, therefore, will also not be the first to threaten another country with nuclear weapons. With a defensive strategy of deterrence there would be no requirement of continuing control of nuclear forces during a nuclear exchange as was the case in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) strategy of flexible response.
  3. Third, the proposed strategy of "no-first-use" would require a single massive retaliatory punitive strike more in tune with what was the French strategy during the Cold War. 4 A no-first-use strategy also means that our nuclear arsenal does not have to be maintained at hair-trigger alert of operationally deployed and instantly ready weapon systems like the two superpowers maintained during the Cold War. The command and control of nuclear forces, therefore, will have to be created and operated on that basis.
  4. Fourth, the nuclear strategy and posture must ensure a very high level of credibility and effectiveness that there will surely be a massive retaliatory punitive strike which would inflict unacceptable punishment. In the context of giving up the first strike option, this requires a very high degree of survivability of the nuclear arsenal, including its command and control system. This means that the command and control must be able to survive and continue functioning with high efficiency to achieve the political goals even after absorbing a first (attempted decapitation) strike. A high level of survivability has to be built on a combination of measures including:
    1. High degree of mobility of assets, particularly the delivery means and warheads, separately as well as complete weapon systems. The greater the mobility of the arsenal, the greater would be its survivability. For example, a nuclear-powered submarine launched nuclear missile force would provide the greatest survivability and, hence, would require the smallest size of arsenal. 5
    2. Extensive dispersal, including frequent moves and relocation of these assets along with an ability to operate from a myriad locations.
    3. Extensive deception measures, including decoys and dummies. We are partly fortunate that overall Chinese surveillance capability (of course, Pakistan's is even less) to track in real-time or near real-time the position of the Indian nuclear arsenal in any form is not very strong. The Chinese capabilities will keep building in the coming years, but we must capitalise on the technological weaknesses of our neighbours to be able to execute a real decapitating strike. We need to build an arsenal of highly mobile delivery systems and high capability to match the delivery systems with nuclear warheads in a short period of time. The logic for the national planning parameter is that we need the capability to be able to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike within a very short time, say, 30 minutes, if the forces are already on a degree of alert, following a certain amount of tension or precautionary measures. If not, then within a maximum of one to two hours. The technical reasons of fusing/putting it together, putting on the warhead, aligning it, the process of loading it, should not exceed that, and the weapon systems must be launched within that time-frame. If it gets launched in two hours, it should be considered acceptable. But I think it is very important that we reduce this to a minimum credible period.
    4. The fourth important element for command and control is the question: will India acquire battlefield nuclear weapons, or nuclear weapons for use in the battlefield scenario-in the conventional normal sense that we have understood use of weapons in the past? My answer is a categorical, absolute "NO" to tactical nuclear weapons. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, there is no tactical use of nuclear weapons of any size or yield which will not result in an impact that is not strategic. If that is so, then the linkage and its escalation into a full-fledged strategic exchange can be considered as almost inevitable and automatic (unless the adversary does not possess nuclear weapons). Even if it is argued that escalation may not take place or gets controlled, then you land up with a situation on the other side that the local exchange of nuclear weapons between the two armies gets delinked from the larger strategic equation. This implies fighting a war with nuclear weapons. I don't have to spell out the implications of that. It may well be the preferred option of some people and foreign governments at that stage, to try and stop such exchange at that point which most certainly implies not only a substantial loss of life, but also implicitly that India would lose that war.

Some Principles

The second set of issues here revolves around the question: what should be principles on which we should build our command and control system? There are accepted norms of command and control systems for military formations. Military power itself is an instrument for achieving political objectives and, hence, constitutes a political instrument of the state. Similarly, a nuclear weapon essentially exists as a political tool which must also, in the extreme case, be employed as a military weapon, although with little military utility as such. To maximise the political utility of nuclear weapons, therefore, the following must be kept in mind:

  1. First, firm political control over the nuclear arsenal. I will revert to that later.
  2. Second, a highly efficient and responsive military command and control system. With that I mean that decision-making must remain at the highest political level with the advice of the military and other experts, but essentially the operational command and control system as such must remain with the military forces for a series of reasons.
  3. The third principle is that there must be minimum disruption of well-tested existing organisations and procedures. Our goal should be to see where they need to take on additional responsibilities, with minimum modification. It would be a gross mistake of truly monumental dimensions to attempt an organisational revolution to manage a multiple set of things-fundamentally new type of weapons, new set of command and control systems and a new set of procedures to handle these. Any major experimenting or violation of basic principles of controlling military systems will lead to serious and irreversible problems for many years, perhaps decades, to come. Therefore, we must build on existing systems and procedures wherever they exist, and do so in an incremental form, review these constantly as we go along, and then at a future stage, if we still need to introduce significant changes, we should do so in an incremental, planned manner. A conservative approach will be well worth the effort. We are entering a stage where not enough thought has been given to the details of the circumstances and the way in which nuclear weapons are to be used. The military in particular has been kept out of most of the decision-making and examination of the implications in this process. The case of chemical weapons is symptomatic. Therefore, it is essential that we move into the nuclear weapons command and control through an incremental, evolutionary process built on existing capabilities, procedures and past experiences.
  4. The fourth principle is that costs must be minimised, otherwise we are likely to land up with an expensive system which may or may not work. Experimenting or rushing into something here is the last thing we should be thinking of. If that is so, do we have any models that exist at least partially, in which the military at least has handled similar tasks in the past? I would like to draw attention to the command and control of "Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) Targets" which have been effectively managed for more than four decades, in peace and war. The three Services, under the sanction and direction of their chiefs, have evolved the framework and procedures which authorise their staff to work out the targetting policy for a set of targets considered of central and strategic value, as the strategic targets to be released under the combined authority of the three chiefs of staff. Targetting and planning for this purpose has been maintained by the Indian Air Force (IAF) in all its details. The planned air effort takes into account the commitment for the COSC targets. The concept, in principle at least, is no different from targetting with nuclear weapons. Targetting with nuclear weapons needs additional factors to be considered, but lesser involvement of all three Services will be necessary if the delivery systems belong to one Service only. But the basic requirements and parameters of management are not very different, either in terms of organisational needs or management techniques. Secondly, the IAF has been undertaking, like air forces in other countries, strategic reconnaissance missions over the decades. The way command and control has been managed and the lessons derived from decades of highly successful operations would be extremely relevant to the issues related to command and control of strategic strike with the nuclear arsenal
  5. The fifth principle is that the bulk of the work related to effective management of the nuclear arsenal has to be done during peace-time. This involves scenario building and assessing the other country's postures, likely trends, changes that may take place, signalling of intent, etc. For example, what are the implications when the Chinese say during a crisis situation that "Los Angeles could burn?" Or if Pakistanis threaten grave destruction? How seriously should such pronouncements be taken? Do they constitute a firm form of escalation moving towards use of nuclear weapons or not?
  6. Last, but not the least, is the issue of assessment of what it will take to deter the other side under different sets of circumstances. This will remain a matter of judgement, but one derived from extensive and deep study of the cultural, socio-political and strategic factors affecting the likely response of a country to the threat and use of nuclear weapons. I am sure many more aspects and principles can be added to what the command and control system should be expected to do, and what it can do in the framework of a time horizon.

Having considered this and a few other factors, it is obvious that at the political level, command and control of nuclear weapons, in the ultimate analysis, must be exercised by the prime minister of India. Given our political constitutional system, it cannot be anybody else. This can change only if the constitutional basis of our governance changes. A concurrent issue is that there is a need for a consultative group or a decision-making group to assist the prime minister at that level of political leadership. This has two aspects. One relates to the chain of command to cater for a contingency if the prime minister is not available or is incapacitated. The Constitution lays down the succession process very clearly. But the process may be inadequate since it did not visualise the need to plan a response with nuclear weapons. So we have to evolve a suitable system of national command authority. Whatever system is evolved, the prime minister of India will have the prerogative to make changes to it. What is required is that each prime minister, at any one time, should have a well-defined system of national command authority for command and control of nuclear weapons. Which one it is, is not the point. It may also not be possible to formally declare the system, nor is it necessary, as long the operating formations that have to execute the orders are clear about the chain of command. In fact, there are strong reasons for not publicising the chain of command for obvious reasons besides the potential for domestic political difficulties of the type experienced often when a deputy prime minister was appointed. So let the prime minister decide who will be his successor. The prime minister, who selects his Cabinet ministers, will always have the prerogative to make even frequent changes to the chain of command; but he will have to ensure that the new person(s) concerned are briefed thoroughly and they understand the role fully.

At the same time, a decision-making-cum-planning body at the political-strategic level is needed which will then authorise the planning of targetting policy and the force development and deployment policies. If the NSC functions, then the Cabinet Committee would be the obvious organisation. Even in that case, there is a need to immediately resurrect the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) with the three chiefs in attendance, on a permanent basis, not just on invitation, which should start taking the planning process forward. Their attendance implies that they would not participate in the deliberations of the Cabinet, but will be available to answer queries and provide explanations where needed.

It may be recalled that when the higher defence organisation was reorganised in 1947, it was based on the experiences of the UK and the USA (the latter being a nuclear weapon power) during World War II. In fact, Lord Ismay, who planned the post-War higher defence organisation for the UK and the USA was also the person who planned the organisation for independent India. This was based on corporate decision-making at each level with a Defence Committee of the Cabinet at the apex, with a Defence Minister's Committee, the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Joint Planning Committee, a Joint Intelligence Board and another dozen committees of the government to take decisions concerning various aspects of defence below that within the governmental framework, located in the Cabinet Secretariat. Interestingly, the Joint Planning Committee was to be in permanent session with a permanent staff "in particular to prepare plans for the joint employment of the three armed forces." Unfortunately, the permanent staff was never set up. In 1986, the government established a joint Defence Planning Staff of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. However, its relationship with the Joint Planning Committee was never clear. The result was that the operations branch of the individual Services kept operating nearly autonomously. This, in turn, created numerous incidents that have tended to increase the gap of mutual understanding of roles and missions, especially between the army and the air force. Over the decades, the effort of the army and the navy then has been to try and bring as much of the air power as possible under their own control. But classic cases of failure of joint planning naturally arose out of the failure to establish the requisite structures for this purpose which in turn also adversely affected the development of a culture of jointness that is so much talked about but rarely practised these days.

There is a need to address the question of where the inputs to the DCC or the Cabinet Committee on National Security would come from. These inputs will be a mixture of the military elements and political-diplomatic implications of decisions. Thus, an increasing amount of military component gets introduced into the command and control system as we move down the ladder of national command and control of the nuclear arsenal. The logical locus of such component of the management system is the Ministry of Defence. Other ministries and departments like the Finance Ministry have an important role to play in the force planning though their role in force employment would perforce be limited. In my view, the Defence Minister's Committee (DMC) should be resurrected (with some modifications) at an early date with the clearly defined role of decision-making about strategic planning and force structure planning, including that for nuclear weapons. The DMC would naturally be chaired by the defence minister, and have as its members, the minister for state for defence, the three defence Services chiefs, the defence secretary, the foreign secretary, secretary Department of Atomic Energy, the home secretary, scientific adviser (SA) to the defence minister, the chairman Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the finance secretary. The DMC should be logically served by a professional strategic planning staff under the defence minister (in the Ministry of Defence) which should be able to situate the nuclear strategy and policy within a broader strategic planning for defence.

Below the ministerial level, the requirement shifts to more military-specific planning and direction-the nuts and bolts, so to say. This is really what should be treated as a task of what may be termed as the Nuclear Planning Group which would work out the detailed targetting policy. This is the sort of function that the IAF has been undertaking for decades in respect of COSC targets. The Nuclear Planning Group should preferably be headed by the defence minister himself with the three chiefs of staff, SA to the defence minister, and the defence secretary as members. The Defence Planning Staff is really now in a position to perform the role of an integrated staff and provide staff support for the Nuclear Planning Group that will go into detailed planning in respect of targetting policy, dispersal policy, deception policy, survivability policy, communication policy, etc.

Operational Command and Control

That takes us down to a different level, that is, operational command and control of the nuclear forces. In this case, the authority for exercising the overall operational command and control over the nuclear arsenal, and certainly the control aspect should rest with COSC. If and when we have a permanent chairman, chiefs of staff, or a chief of defence staff, then obviously he will become the spokesman for the COSC but even then a Defence Planning Staff will be needed which should operate through the COSC.

Below the planning and management level, what we need is an operational force with requisite command and control to suit the doctrine and force structure. For quite some time, the primary nuclear delivery system will remain the combat aircraft. The overall IAF infrastructure provides a sound building base for implementing the strategy to operate the nuclear strike component from widely dispersed sites and maintain deception and dispersal strategies. Conceptually, the task at the operational level is the same that is performed by the IAF day after day. Strike aircraft of today are capable of performing dual-role (conventional as well as nuclear weapon delivery) tasks. The optimum approach would be to reassign some elements of the IAF strike aircraft assets for the nuclear delivery role. In order to optimise the command and control capabilities, it would be useful to create a Strategic Air Command through reorganising of existing assets. Very few changes will be needed to create a Strategic Air Command which would have operational command and control of nuclear delivery assets. Such an organisation would be ideally capable of absorbing surface-to-surface ballistic missiles into its structure as and when they are ready for induction-a process that is bound to be spread out over time-and be able to keep taking in and absorbing additional models of surface-to-surface missile systems as we go along and they are inducted into service. The reasons for this approach are fairly simple. This will have the main strike aircraft component that will also obviously have a dual role. They could be armed with conventional precision guided munitions (PGMs), possibly to take out even a nuclear facility or elements of the nuclear arsenal of the other side, or to undertake a nuclear strike Where do we draw the line between strategic strike with conventional weapons, PGMs and strategic strike with nuclear weapons, especially of different yield?

The surface-to-surface missile, especially land based, in terms of its operational utilisation, in terms of its management, in terms of its command and control, is no different than the strike aircraft. We must make sure that we do not have strike forces, especially aircraft, heading on their own under different commands, different authority, and surface-to-surface missiles under a different one, and try to do coordination at that stage. That could spell disaster. There has to be unity of command of strategic strike capabilities and, hence, a single operational command to employ capabilities, including nuclear weapons. This will obviously include suitable electronic warfare systems, requisite strategic reconnaissance systems, a suitable space-based and ground-based electronic early warning system, and if and when we get these, anti-ballistic missile systems. Should this remain an Air Force Command totally? I don't think so. I think it should have on its staff officers from the other Services to be the primary advisors to the commander of (conventional and nuclear) strategic forces. What are the larger implications of this beyond turf battles and loyalties?

The third element concerns the assumption that seems to have gathered strength over time that the nuclear warheads would or should be held in the jurisdiction of the scientists. The warhead making process, its maintenance, its overhaul, its efficiency and everything that goes into it, certainly is a scientific job to be managed within the scientific establishment. Also, for a different reason, which is more related to nuclear arms control and nuclear diplomacy, I recommend that we establish a clearly demarcated military facility within the Department of Atomic Energy so that warhead construction and maintenance can be linked to the military side without interfering with the civil programme for peaceful purposes. I firmly believe, although it needs to be debated in the years to come, that the defence forces must hold the nuclear warheads. If nuclear scientists are required for field maintenance and handling, they should be coopted from the Atomic Energy establishment. But they will have to be brought under the Army, Navy or Air Force Act.

To handle safety and the management and maintenance of the warheads at the end point, the main work would continue to be undertaken by the Department of Atomic Energy. There are two issues to be considered. First, who would control the warheads? Second, this will also decide who releases them to those who control the delivery systems. In my view, the warheads should be controlled by the Indian Army. The Indian Army is the most suitable agency really capable of providing the type of security and physical safety to the warheads that will be required in highly dispersed conditions across the country, with many of them being shifted in a variety of ways. The Indian Army itself will have to create an elite type of force for such a purpose for it is quite likely that for every one actual warhead, we may require a number of dummy warheads which will still have to be protected the same way. That is the only way we can enhance their survivability. There are many lessons we can draw from the experiences of the air forces of the world, not only just ours, on how they manage their survival, deception and duplication plans. It is useful, for example, to see how Iraq managed deception with dummy missiles and the movement of missiles all over the place. It is an essential element that I think the army has the basic ability and organisational capabilities to handle. There would be a parallel chain of command where this links up with the HQ of the Strategic Command to be able to ensure that the release of nuclear warheads is carried out only when there is an agreement between the senior air force man, the senior army man and senior naval man there. This would build in security locks in terms of utilisation of warheads in a contingency.

Communications are going to be the crux of the command and control system and they will also determine how the system will operate in an emergency after absorbing a first strike. The starting point is to accept the philosophy and the doctrine that the nuclear arsenal will be widely dispersed, mobile, will be moving around at frequent intervals, so that at no stage can the adversary have a clear idea or possibility that he can actually decapitate the nuclear capabilities in a preemptive strike. So we need to make sure that the first strike by an adversary does not degrade our capabilities to an extent that we cannot impose a counter punishment that is unacceptable to him. Deterrence requires that the adversary should be sure that there would be a substantive surviving nuclear arsenal that will hit back within a very short period. This requires gearing up of the communications systems. We may have to seriously think of setting up an integrated Defence Communication Command (or agency) under the COSC where obviously the Indian Army would be the major partner. We must ensure compatible and inter-operable communication systems and frequencies.

One last word. A lot of parameters will be altered if tactical nuclear weapons are introduced into the equations, since this will alter the requirements of command and control very fundamentally. So that is one decision that must be clear early on, and then a clear posture, publicly taken on that issue, must be adopted. We must not even have any suggestion that we will have tactical nuclear weapons or that we will in any way engage in the use of nuclear weapons in a battlefield situation. If we have nuclear warheads of sub-kiloton range, they are perfectly usable on very specific, specialised target systems, but still for strategic impact and not in terms of tactical or battlefield effect. Nuclear deterrence must rest firmly on assured retaliation in strategic terms, finally but clearly linked to a response that will inflict unacceptable damage on the potential aggressor even with the surviving arsenal, after absorbing a first strike.

Postscript

In recent times a view has been propagated that we should have a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) as a single point of advice on military matters and he will also command a tri-Service nuclear Strategic Command for operational purposes. The merits or otherwise of having a CDS and its utility and efficacy before we have a modicum of integration between the top military hierarchy and the Ministry of Defence require serious consideration. But this is not the place for it, except in its implications for nuclear command and control.

For a long time, the main (and in the shorter period of the next 5-6 years, the only) delivery system for nuclear weapons operationally available would be strike aircraft. The number of such aircraft (essentially the Su-30s and Mirage 2000s) would remain limited to around 80 aircraft for many years to come. Jaguar strike aircraft will have to be limited to the western sector alone for a variety of reasons. The Su-30s and Mirages would constitute the primary strategic strike force with conventional as well as nuclear weapons. Aircraft for escorting the strike missions (normally equal to or more than the number of aircraft armed for strike role) would also have to be found from the same pool. Thus, we are looking at a serviceable and operationally available fleet of around 25 strike aircraft. The question that operational planners will have to struggle with is how to define the chain of command for nuclear strike and that for conventional strike if the authority for controlling such strikes is not the same?

If the CDS is to be the operational commander of nuclear forces, then the strike aircraft designated for nuclear strike will have to be placed under his command and control. How many out of the 25 should be so designated? The issue really is that the moment we start distributing strike capabilities into penny packets, violating the central principle of employment of air power, we will run into serious problems, undermining our nuclear deterrence posture. Incidentally, this problem of duality of command would also exist if a separate operational command chain outside the air force is created for the nuclear arsenal. To make such a system work, we would need to create sufficient assets for the two different and separately designated roles of conventional and nuclear strikes. That implies increasing the size of aircraft-based strike forces with consequent rise in costs and force levels without any concurrent benefit in terms of credibility and operational effectiveness of strike capabilities. After all, we do not expect to fight a nuclear war, nor does it make sense to prepare for one if for no other reason than that there would be no winners from the consequent holocaust called war.

What is even more critical is that as long as India adopts a doctrine and strategy of no-first-use, survivability of the nuclear arsenal would be the key to the efficacy of the credible minimum deterrent. It is also clear that the nuclear arsenal would be the primary target for an adversary who must aim to take out the arsenal if it is to preempt a retaliatory strike and its punitive effects. It would, therefore, be vital to ensure dispersal and deception of assets to enhance survivability. If we are to designate the nuclear strike force from within the present size of strike forces and place it under a separate operational command authority, we would be creating conditions for presenting a smaller target system for the adversary's preemptive decapitating strike and, thus, making its task easier. Under these circumstances, we would not only be going in for a significant quantity (and proportion) of idle (nuclear armed) strike assets which would be required only for nuclear retaliation, but also risk erosion of survivability of the nuclear strike force.

As regards ballistic missiles, once again a degree of confusion and turf battle seems to be affecting rational objectivity. In the early 1980s, when the Integrated Guided Missile Programme was initiated, the Indian Air Force and the Indian Army came to the mutual understanding that all systems beyond 25 km of the forward line of our own troops would belong to the air force both in terms of ownership as well as operational command, control and employment. However, the army gradually sought the Prithvi-150 surface-to-surface missile to cover a range of 150 km. It may be recalled that this missile was not to be armed with nuclear warheads and five types of conventional warheads were being developed for it. The issue even at that time was the risk of inherent lack of coordination of finite number of missiles and aircraft (for COSC targets) for strategic strike, controlled and operationally employed by two separate Services whose leaderships have often agreed that coordination between the two Services in the past had often been weak. The late General K. Sunderji, who is acknowledged as the architect of nuclear strategy in the Indian Army, as the chief of Army Staff, believed and accepted that the longer range Prithvi-250 was to be an air force system. And there was no doubt at that time that the longer range IRBMs (intermediate range ballistic missiles) like the Agni and its follow-on variants would be air force systems. Strike capabilities are not dependent only on aircraft and missiles, but involve the complete system of reconnaissance, surveillance, target intelligence and command and control. These have to be integrated into the overall strike capabilities.

However, after the overt nuclearisation in 1998, we seem to have suddenly sought a separate tri-Service command whose contours are not clear. This clarity is vital in ensuring that a potential adversary does not derive conclusions that coordination of nuclear (aircraft and different missile) strike forces could be weak and might offer an opportunity which it could exploit. This sort of conclusion could encourage adventurism as we have seen Pakistan indulging in, in the past, based on flawed assumptions. With nuclear weapons, this is no longer a matter of victory or defeat, but of mass destruction and survival of the state and society.

One last, hypothetical scenario for consideration. In the worst case, an adversary hits India with nuclear weapons first. The most logical target for him to concentrate on would be the national command authority, the alternate command post and the nuclear delivery systems. Assuming that the adversary succeeds in neutralising at least the command posts with nuclear weapons, it would be necessary for the surviving residual Indian forces to deliver a punitive retaliatory strike which would impose "unacceptable punishment" on the attacker. This is the central logic of the no-first-use strategy to deter a nuclear attack. There are two choices for an efficient command and control under the degraded situation. One is the tri-Service command which would require forces, bases, infrastructure and redundancy to operate a retaliatory strike under these circumstances. The other is to use the existing air force infrastructure, capabilities, procedures, systems and forces. How would a tri-Service command operate under these circumstances? Would it not be necessary to create another independent force (like the US Strategic Command which its navy refused to join even with the nuclear armed nuclear submarines) with its own redundant command and control infrastructure and manpower? Would such a strategy require hundreds if not thousands of nuclear warheads and delivery systems? The latter approach, however, would utilise existing air force infrastructure across the country and the regional commands and their chain down to the operational delivery units, with systems and procedures tested in wars and refined over the decades. We would then require only a minimal extra communications systems and a couple of dozen with an existing higher survivability potential. In the former case, the alternative would be the readiness and willingness to use nuclear weapons first, even if for pre-emption. Then we would be back to a complex, costly and elaborate command and control system to manage a much bigger arsenal and nuclear force like the first tier nuclear weapon states did at costs which obviously would be unaffordable for us and far more risky, with trigger alerts and much greater delegation down the line.

Endnotes

Note *: Research Officer Back.

Note 1: This would be so also in the case of nuclear coercion by a task force of the type symbolised by the USS Enterprise in 1971.Back

Note 2: This is why it would be necessary to maintain a high level of conventional military capability which should provide the requisite superiority for effective defence of our borders.Back

Note 3: Jasjit Singh, "Nuclear Doctrine for India," in Jasjit Singh, ed., Asian Strategic Review 1998-99, (New Delhi: IDSA, 1999).Back

Note 4: Shaun R. Gregory, Nuclear Command and Control in NATO (London: Macmillans Press Ltd, 1996), p.139.Back

Note 5: The British reliance on the Trident-based deterrent flows from this logic. It must, however, be noted here that there are other difficulties of a submarine-based nuclear deterrent, especially with regard to effective command and control.Back