For a weapons delivery system

Prithvi and Agni, two of the five missiles developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. But the option is not without technological complexities.

ANAND PARTHASARATHY

THE demonstration of India's nuclear capability has focussed renewed attention on the country's missile programme which should provide the weapons delivery system, the next stage in the weaponisation drive.

The Indian missile programme was conceived in early 1983, when R. Venkataraman was the Defence Minister in the Indira Gandhi Government. Venkataraman, his Scientific Adviser, Dr. V.S. Arunachalam, and the man who now holds that post, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (who is known as India's "missile wallah"), gave shape to a policy document which, with the Cabinet's approval, led to the Integrated Guided Missiles Development Programme (IGMDP). It envisaged an ambitious plan to take up simultaneously the design and development of five missiles which would provide the nation a comprehensive missile-based defence umbrella within 10 years.

Fifteen years on, all five missiles - the short-range surface-to-air missile Trishul; the medium-range surface-to-air missile Akash; the smokeless high-energy anti-tank guided missile Nag; the short-range surface-to-surface missile Prithvi; and the intermediate-range ballistic missile Agni - have been test-fired. One (Prithvi) has entered service; two (Trishul and Prithvi) are in series-production; in the case of one (Agni) the technology has been "demonstrated"; and the two others (Akash and Nag) are almost at the end of their development cycle.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTS
Agni, the intermediate-range ballistic missile.

However - and, in hindsight, this was a crucial decision - all five were conceived as conventional systems. All of them barring Agni, which was projected as a "technology demonstrator", were designed to carry conventional warheads. (Frequently asked at public meetings if Agni could carry a nuclear warhead, Kalam had a standard answer: as an engineer, he said, he only designed the carrier; Agni could deliver flowers, if it was required to.)

The first nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974 was already a decade old when the missile programme was born. But it seems unlikely that anyone planned in 1983 for the missiles to carry nuclear warheads.

Nag, which is currently validating its twin "guidance" options - electromagnetic (millimetric wave radar) and optical (imaging infrared) - was designed as a "fire and forget" top attack system. In other words, it struck the tank from the vulnerable top rather than from the front or the sides. Anti-tank missiles normally have a range of less than 5 kilometres, and mounting a nuclear warhead on such a short-range system would have made little military sense.

The two surface-to-air missiles - the quick-reaction radar-guided Trishul and the active homer Akash - were designed as conventional defences against aircraft, helicopters and remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs). Trishul, which in its three configurations was an air defence weapon of the Army, the Navy or the Air Force, represented a last round of defence. In the event of enemy aircraft eluding the long- and medium-range defensive covers, Trishul's radar could pick up the incoming target and send a salvo of twin missiles on an interception path within seconds.

Akash had a more ambitious role - the acquisition, at longer range, of multiple targets with a sophisticated "phased array" type of radar. Powered by an innovative Ramjet motor that uses the air in the atmosphere to burn the fuel, Akash is India's answer to the Patriot missile defence against other missiles. (Patriot saw action during the 1991 Gulf war.) But the range of operations of these two surface-to-air missiles, which would typically be between 500 metres and 50 km, was again too low for anything except a conventional chemical explosive warhead.

THAT left only the two largest missile delivery systems, Prithvi and Agni. The tactical battlefield missile Prithvi was the first weapon system in the Indian programme to transit from breadboard to prototype to production version, and the Government has made no secret of the fact that it is inducting the weapon, that is, raising regiments of the Army specifically to deploy Prithvi. The original version was designed for ranges between 40 km and 150 km. It is designed to strike large enemy concentrations, ammunition dumps, air bases and other targets with accuracy and minimal damage to surrounding non-military formations.

According to a 'Technological Focus' review by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), several conventional warheads have been developed to neutralise different types of targets. Variants are known to have been tested which have a longer range, but unless a total physical system redesign is achieved, such longer range will come only at the cost of lethality. The missile can carry only so much payload: if more fuel is added to provide for a longer range, the size of the warhead has to be reduced.

Can Prithvi carry a nuclear warhead? It is certainly possible. Indeed, the global arsenal of missiles includes known tactical missile delivery systems of the surface-to-surface type to which Prithvi belongs, where a nuclear warhead is an option.

If and when Agni graduates from a "technology demonstrator" to a full-fledged missile system, it could be the classic nuclear delivery system. It is a strategic surface-to-surface weapon with a range in excess of 1,000 km, as compared to purely tactical battlefield missiles, including Prithvi.

Among the devices that were tested in this series at Pokhran were a thermonuclear device (a hydrogen-type fusion experiment) and a "low-yield" device, possibly a fission device. Many commentators have concluded that these indicate a nuclear option for Agni and Prithvi respectively. However, this may not entirely be the case.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTS
Prithvi, the short-range surface-to-surface missile.

Putting nuclear warheads on Prithvi and Agni, which have a combination of liquid and solid propellent technology, is not without complications. Prithvi, for instance, uses liquid propellent technology. Agni has one liquid stage and one solid stage. (Kalam's statements at the May 17 press conference in New Delhi, however, suggest that an all-solid-propellant Agni may be on the anvil.) Adding a nuclear warhead to such heterogeneous propulsion systems will create problems of safety and storage. These are reckoned to be technologically complex tasks which must be achieved to a time-table.

The fact that the five nuclear tests were held within two months of the assumption of office of this Government may have led many people to assume that nuclear tests can be arranged at a few weeks' notice. But that is not the case. One has only to read between the lines of former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Dr. Raja Ramanna's recent comments to conclude that the preparations would have started many months ago.

The same is true when it comes to translating the experience of a short series of underground tests into a battle-ready nuclear warhead. At that stage, no amount of laboratory or computer simulation can substitute for data obtained from an actual test-firing. The timer on the workbench where a nuclear warhead is being put together (if it is being put together at all) has only just started ticking.

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