Missile Defence

Missile defense in IndiaBy Bharath Gopalaswamy 27 February 2009
Article Highlights
Recently, Indian officials approached the United States about purchasing a missile defense shield.
New Delhi's once casual interest in missile defense has intensified as its regional threats have increased.
The United States believes that a strong New Delhi can help protect U.S. assets in South Asia and counterbalance China. A few weeks ago, Indian officials held preliminary talks with the United States about purchasing a missile defense shield from it. "India is a partner of ours, and we want to provide it with whatever it needs to protect itself," a U.S. official told the Financial Times. Already, Indian officials and scientists have witnessed some simulations of the U.S. missile defense system, along with a couple of live tests. Washington even has offered to sell the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system to India.India's interest in strategic missile defense dates back to 1983 when New Delhi initiated an "Integrated Missile Development Program." The program included not only offensive missiles such as the nuclear-capable Prithvi and Agni, but also the Akash, a surface-to-air missile that had the potential to provide India with theater missile defense capabilities. Later in the 1990s, India's Defence Research & Development Organization and the country's military discussed initiating conceptual missile defense studies. Around the same time, the Indian military had a few conversations with Israel and Russia about how they could help New Delhi advance its air defense systems. Although such talk clearly demonstrated an Indian interest in missile defense, it was confined to professional military officers and low-level bureaucrats.The interest of India's elected leadership intensified a few years later, their support growing for a variety of reasons. First, 9/11 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan turned Pakistan into a U.S. ally, triggering speculation that the Pakistani government might be overturned by anti-American Islamic fundamentalists who would then control Islamabad's nuclear arsenal. And if Pakistani nuclear weapons fell into such hands, India feared it might be the first target.Secondly, some in India believe that a domestic missile defense capability might be able to check Pakistan more generally. Ever since Islamabad obtained nuclear weapons, it has emboldened its strategy of supporting insurgencies within India to settle outstanding political differences--i.e., Kashmir. Missile defense, the argument goes, would prove instrumental in providing New Delhi reassurance and protection since Pakistan's nuclear weapons could be countered both offensively and defensively.Finally, few countries in the world face the missile threats that India does. Of course, there's Pakistan and its Ghauri and Shaheen missile series--both of which possess ranges longer than 1,000 kilometers. But there's also nearby China, a fellow nuclear-armed state equipped with DF-21 missiles that can travel more than 2,000 kilometers. So it's no surprise that the upper-echelons of the Indian government have begun to show significant interest in defense technologies that can, at least theoretically, combat such threats.A ballistic missile flight from Sargodha, Pakistan, could reach New Delhi in about 5-7 minutes. As such, Indian missile defense proponents envision the system working as follows: A technically complex and vast constellation of early warning sensors would detect the missile immediately after it is launched. This part of the system is already more or less in place; the Green Pine radar, which India purchased from Israel around 2002 and is situated about 200 kilometers north of New Delhi, can detect a missile 90 seconds after it has been launched--at least on a preliminary basis. The next step is to determine whether the signal picked up by the radar is that of an incoming missile or a false alarm.Complicating matters is that India and Pakistan share a border, making for shorter ballistic missile flights. For example, the estimated total missile flight times are 8-13 minutes for ranges of 600-2,000 kilometers. The flight times can be even less if the missile is flown in a depressed trajectory.Such a short time period places stringent conditions on procedures for evaluating and verifying warnings. There would be no time to consult or deliberate after receiving this warning. In other words, any response would have to be predetermined, presenting a significant likelihood of accidental nuclear war from false alarms.Oddly, despite such potentially catastrophic consequences, in India the debate about missile defense has become a debate about India's burgeoning ties with Washington as a part of New Delhi's "Next Steps in Security Partnership"--a 2002 diplomatic initiative between the United States and India to expand their cooperation in civilian nuclear activities and civilian space programs, along with broadening their dialogue on missile defense to promote nonproliferation and to ease the transfer of advanced technologies to India.For the United States, missile defense initially was only one aspect of its budding bilateral relationship with New Delhi. But over time missile defense has come to represent something larger in the relationship. Quite simply, it represents Washington's implicit support for India against Pakistan, without, of course, supporting an explicit Indian recourse to offensive military strategies. Along these lines, there's every reason to expect the United States to continue to be supportive of India's emergence as a counterweight to China.Ultimately, technology will decide the operational capability of missile defense in India. But for the time being, it can be assumed that New Delhi's decisions with regard to missile defense are strongly linked to the changing tenor of U.S.-Indian relations. http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/missile-defense-india

Obama's Team

US report on anti-Muslim long war tactics

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analysis: Imperatives of counter-terrorism —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

Any surgical airstrike, limited war, or Cold Start will drag the region into full war. Neither India nor Pakistan can afford a full-fledged conventional war or even the kind of eyeball-to-eyeball military brinkmanship they engaged in 2001-02The post-Mumbai strategies of India and Pakistan reflect their immediate political concerns rather than long-term, coherent and shared perspectives on counter-terrorism. India is trying to extract maximum diplomatic dividend against Pakistan by activating multilateral channels and applying direct pressure. Pakistan is engaged in damage control in an extremely difficult diplomatic situation created by the Mumbai attacks.Pakistan has banned the Jama’at-ud Dawa, sealed its offices and arrested several of its leaders and activists. One wonders why the government had to wait for a UN Security Council resolution and prodding by the United States to act. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies must have enough information on the activities of hard-line and militant groups, as well as on their linkages with the Taliban. It is also well known that a good number of non-Pakhtun Pakistanis are involved in the Pakistani Taliban movement. Similarly, Pakistani agencies would know if JuD was a front for banned terrorist group Lashkar-e Tayba.The present Pakistani government and military top brass view the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups as a major threat to Pakistan’s internal political and societal stability. This is a shift from the past when General Pervez Musharraf’s regime pursued a dual policy of taking some action against these groups but leaving them enough space to continue with their activities in a low-key manner.The present government asked the military to launch the ongoing operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in some tribal agencies, and the operations have made significant gains in Bajaur and Khyber. Militants were also pushed back in Swat, though they are far from being fully contained. Given that the security forces had their hands full in the tribal areas, the government did not want to open a new front against militants in mainland Pakistan.However, consensus at the international level on the involvement of a Pakistan-based group in the Mumbai attacks left Pakistan with no credible option but to take immediate action against militant groups in the mainland. These groups are transnational and use all possible means, including violence, to pursue their agenda with total disregard to the imperatives of Pakistan as a nation-state in the comity of nations. They want Pakistan to be subservient to their agenda, and do not respect Pakistan’s sovereign status and territorial boundaries.Should these movements be allowed to impose precarious foreign policy situations on Pakistan? If Pakistan is to function as a coherent and effective state, it cannot allow non-state actors to engage in violent and disruptive activities inside or outside its boundaries.Pakistan’s policymakers need to do some hard and realistic thinking on the current situation and terrorism-related issues. Indian policymakers need to do the same. They need not descend into traditional India-Pakistan polemics to deflect criticism of internal security lapses and the probability of terrorism having domestic roots.The Indian government has not blamed the Pakistani government of direct involvement in the Mumbai attacks, but maintains that a Pakistan-based group planned and executed them. This places indirect responsibility on the Pakistani government, given that it is seen to have allowed such a group to use Pakistani territory for a terrorist attack abroad.However, semi- and non-official Indian circles rarely maintain this distinction and project Pakistan as an irresponsible terrorist state. They find encouragement to adopt this position in India’s official effort to extract the highest possible diplomatic dividends against Pakistan at the international level. As citizens of a number of states were killed in the attacks, India has found it easy to mobilise support. It is interesting to note that Indian expats in the US are fully involved in the campaign to get Pakistan designated as a terrorist state and to get UN approval for Indian airstrikes in Pakistan.A review of this ongoing Indian diplomatic campaign gives a strong impression that India is more interested in undermining and isolating Pakistan at the international level to further India’s wider regional agenda rather than evolving a shared regional counter-terrorism strategy. The present strategy may meet India’s immediate domestic needs, but it does not serve the long-term need of countering terrorism holistically and effectively. This long-term objective cannot be achieved without working with Pakistan.A large number of people in India’s official and non-official circles want to emulate the United States: the argument is that if the US can launch airstrikes in Afghanistan and invade Iraq in response to attacks on its soil, India can do the same to counter terrorism originating in Pakistan.As early as April 2003, while commenting on the US invasion of Iraq, Yashwant Sinha, the then Indian external affairs minister, described Pakistan as a ‘fit case’ for Iraq-like military action because Pakistan possessed weapons of mass destruction, sheltered terrorists and lacked democracy — a charge-sheet similar to the one issued against Iraq by the US. A couple of days later, he made a similar statement in the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament, that Pakistan should be tackled with pre-emptive airstrikes.Similar ideas are now being advocated in India that it should launch surgical airstrikes against ‘terrorist training camps’ in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and mainland Pakistan. There is also talk of trying out what Indian strategic experts describe as ‘Cold Start’ to occupy some Pakistani territory at more than one point through a coordinated, swift and massive ground and air operation. This will, it is argued, enable India to deal with Pakistan from a position of strength.Any surgical airstrike, limited war, or Cold Start will drag the region into full war. Neither India nor Pakistan can afford a full-fledged conventional war or even the kind of eyeball-to-eyeball military brinkmanship they engaged in 2001-02 as both face enormous economic challenges. Further, as both possess nuclear weapons, a conventional war could escalate into a nuclear exchange, with devastating consequences for both countries. Therefore, war is not an option.The major reason, then, why some people in India are talking of the military option against Pakistan is the tendency to overestimate India’s capacity to wage a successful war and underestimate Pakistan’s capacity to defend itself.Pakistan’s effort to control Islamic militancy will be strengthened if India provides it with some credible evidence of the involvement of Pakistani groups in terrorist acts in India. This evidence can be combined with the evidence available in Pakistan to endure judicial scrutiny of action against militant elements.Terrorism is a threat to both India and Pakistan. More people have died in Pakistan during 2007-08 by terrorists than in India by so-called Islamic Pakistan-based terrorists. Both countries need to cooperate to deal with the terrorist threat, else they will both not succeed.Further, India should also investigate its domestic sources of terrorism. There are several alienated groups in India, including a significant section of its huge Muslim population that appears to have lost confidence in the Indian political system. The sooner India recognises this reality and deals with it, the better.The imperatives of counter-terrorism, therefore, are cooperation between India and Pakistan; consistency in Pakistan’s efforts to contain militancy within its boundaries; and Indian efforts to cope with domestic sources of terrorism.

Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

Is Pakistan ready for a no-first use?

Is Pakistan ready for a no-first use?

Rabia Akhtar
The POST
Dec 05, 2008

The comments on Pakistan's nuclear no first use made by President Asif Ali Zardari, Chairman National Command Authority (NCA), in his address at the Leadership Summit by the Hindustan Times, New Delhi warrant serious contemplation. Not because such vague statements are subject to various interpretations adding to the ambiguity that already surrounds Pakistan's nuclear doctrine but because it signals a departure (if it is in fact) from Pakistan's current nuclear use doctrine. Regardless of whether President Zardari's statement was intentional or unintentional, it has gained considerable attention. What needs to be addressed is whether Pakistan is ready for a declared No First Use (NFU) policy as opposed to the current ambiguity which can be termed as a No No First Use (NNFU) posture?Pakistan's nuclear doctrine rests on the pillar of unpredictability whereby Pakistan has achieved strategic parity vis-à-vis India beyond the traditional theatre of war. Pakistan's nuclear red lines are ambiguous at best leaving the adversary in disarray as to when does nuclear first strike stand warranted and that has precisely been the advantage over the decade of overt nuclearisation. The very uncertainty of a Pakistani response limits the Indian room for manoeuvre thus imposing strict limitations on New Delhi's willingness to take risks. Drawn in an asymmetric relationship with India, in the absence of negative security assurances by the international community, it seemed justified to have resorted to an ambiguous no first use posture as a measure of credible deterrence. Pakistan's ambiguity about a NFU comes from that fact that superior Indian conventional forces make the nuclear option imperative to save Pakistan in an event where India launches a debilitating conventional military attack on Pakistan. If India does not cross the un-stated but understood nuclear thresholds and continues engaging Pakistan in a peace process, then what President Zardari has stated stands its ground that we hope 'we never get to that position' of using nuclear weapons at all. As for the current strategic environment prevalent in and around Pakistan, the ambiguity about NFU is integral to Pakistan's nuclear doctrine. It stands as a viable policy and it is rational to keep pursuing it for times to come. Various factors contribute to the viability of this doctrine and its continuity as a solution in the shape of offence/defence balance to our security dilemma. First, the Indo-US nuclear agreement has raised enough controversies worldwide and according to various studies and estimates, the deal provides India the leverage to use its domestic uranium reserves for nuclear weapons build-up. Second, the statements that have originated post Indo-US nuclear agreement with respect to India's sovereign right to nuclear testing, hold considerable policy and doctrinal implications for Pakistan especially because India proposes to graduate its deterrence from a minimum position once it acquires a significant number of nuclear weapons that are beyond the current 'minimum' stockpile. It could very well be that since Pakistan's minimum deterrence posture is relative to that of India, an increase in India's nuclear weapon stockpile coupled with its prospects of acquiring a ballistic missile defence would demand an increase in Pakistan's nuclear stockpile to manage and sustain deterrence as well as strategic parity. Pakistan since 9/11 is in a precarious position surrounded with both short and long term threats. Various threats need to be analysed which include US nuclear submarines patrolling the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) with an operational 'first use' doctrine; NATO's future role in the IOR with an operational 'first-use' doctrine coupled with US/NATO joint force presence on Pakistan's western borders. Moreover, the prospects of being sandwiched between a nuclear India and a nuclear Iran suggest an 'offensive defence' doctrine that rests on a NNFU policy. Given the rapidly changing international environment, it will only be rational that Pakistan should not revise its current ambiguity about its NFU policy at any cost. Under the prevailing circumstances, it could very well be that Pakistan might need to enter into multilateral deterrent relationships besides the existing bilateral one with India in times ahead.

The writer is Chair Department Defence and Diplomatic Studies at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi

Mumbai Terror: Evidence being deliberately ignored!

Strange that none of the media (TV or Print) have picked this up at all. Or have they been deliberately ignoring it?

Have a look at the above picture of one of the terrorists. [Another angle]

Notice the orange thread / band on his right hand.

Tying a red thread or cord around the wrist is a Hindu practice and it is unlikely a Muslim, especially one politicized enough to carry out an attack such as this, would observe it. I think this provides more evidence that this was a false flag operation or at least an attack by a non-Muslim group. For more information about the significance of the red thread see wikipedia and this blog post. [Thanks to Uruk]

Additionally, the terrorists inside the Nariman House Building were reported to have stocked up on supplies on Wednesday evening, buying not just food items but liquor, among other things, from a local store [Source]. Again, it is highly unlikely that a Muslim, let alone a 'Mujahid', and especially one politicized enough to carry out such an attack, would consume liquor in normal life, let alone hours before his inevitable 'martyrdom'.

Don't let them ignore it. Circulate this to as many people as you can as we strongly believe it wouldn't have been ignored if the terrorists were carrying a copy of the Qur'an, or a taveez.

KalavaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kalava (Sanskrit: कलावा) is the sacred Hindu thread. It is worn while performing Hindu rituals like Yajna or Puja. It is tied by a priest on the wrists of all the people attending the prayer ceremony. Kalava is tied on right hand of males and unmarried females, and on left hand of married females. Sometimes it has small yellow parts in between the mostly red string. It sometimes has knots which are tied up while reciting Sanskrit mantras to invoke God and is worn to ward off evil from the person

Are Indian N-Assets Safe?

Are Indian N-Assets Safe?

Two of the crown jewels of the Indian nuclear program and a number of other sites that possibly house Indian nuclear material are a stone throw’s away from Mumbai, where ten young me infiltrated the city, patrolled its streets, killed India’s top antiterrorism official, and faced off hundreds of India’s elite soldiers for 60 hours. The question is: How safe are India’s n-assets?

By Akhtar JamalMonday, 1 December 2008.
WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD – If one is to believe the Indian claim that ten young militants engaged more than 3000 of India’s top commandoes, intelligence and police officials for 60 hours and killed 200 people in Mumbai city, then we must seriously be worried about the safety of India’s nuclear arsenal, radioactive material, and nuclear power plants. Two prominent experts on Pakistan and India today expressed their fear that if ten militants in their early twenties can hold a city of 15 million people, which houses a number of sensitive nuclear and radio-active plants, then how safe are India’s nukes. Speaking to TVOneNews program, ‘Siyasat aur Pakistan’, strategic experts Zaid Hamid and Ahmed Quraishi also warned that Hindu hawks may try to grab India’s nukes. According to reports, two of India’s most important nuclear installations are located near Mumbai. Tarapur’s two 160 MW nuclear plants are already functioning near Trombay while two more 500 MW PHWRs power plants are under construction near Mumbay itself. These two plants are designed to work as fuel fabrication facilities and are not safeguarded under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nor effectively protected.

India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and a number of other nuclear plants and uranium conversion facilities (UF6) are also not part of IAEA safeguards. A fuel fabrication facility is also not far from the city and is considered unsafe by most accounts. What surprised India experts is the fact that militants reportedly entered the city on boats crossing the eyes of the Indian navy and marines and carried not only heavy arms but also tens of kilograms of military- standard RDX explosives. According to an article published Monday in the Washington Post, “In just minutes, Mumbai was under seige” by young gunmen. After landing, the gunmen fanned out across the city, most likely in groups of two or three. Within half an hour, they had hit about five sites: the city's main rail station, a Jewish center at the Nariman House, the Leopold Cafe, and the Oberoi and Taj hotels.

Washington Post quoted a photographer for the Mumbai Mirror newspaper, Sebastian D'Souza, as saying that, "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station, but none of them did anything,” D'Souza told reporters afterward. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them! They're sitting ducks,' but they just didn't shoot back." Mr. Jamal can be reached at PakPressATYahoo.com