• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Misguided Missiles

[FBIS Transcribed Text] Even as missile prowess is
increasingly being flaunted in international relations and
missile transfers to client states rise, there is an eerie
silence in India on the present status of its missile
systems heralded as successes years ago. With strategic
attention centered on the nuclear test ban treaty [CTBT],
missile-related issues have hardly figured in the national
debate this year. Focused discussion in and outside
Parliament can help break the inertia, indeed somnolence, in
missile policy fostered by the last Congress Government. 
Developments this year illustrate how missiles have
become the key component of modern military machines and an
idiom of a country's political and coercive power in inter-
state relations. India's smiling-but-spiteful neighbour,
China, set the most menacing example of the use of missile
power for political ends by employing ballistic missiles as
instruments of psychological warfare and terror against
helpless Taiwan. It showed that to make an adversary quiver,
the missiles do not have to be armed with live warheads. So
effective were the Chinese missile-firing war games last
March that three of Taiwan's major ports were shut and the
US naval fleet kept a safe distance from the scene of
action. 
Now, the United States has delivered a new political
lesson but with cruise missiles. By unleashing a series of
ship-launched Tomahawks and air-delivered AGM-86s against a
powerless country already stripped of its national
sovereignty by UNSCOM [expansion unknown] and unable to
properly feed its citizens in the face of harsh, unremitting
international sanctions, the United States has pointed to
the price of defencelessness for any nation. Iraq was used
this month as a happy testing ground for upgraded Tomahawks
still not completely purged of their Gulf War target-
locating defects and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles refitted
with conventional warheads as part of the US-Russian
"disarmament" accords. 
Not content with flexing their missile muscles, the
leading powers have been arming their allies with missile
systems. The Chinese shipment of ready-made M-11s to
Pakistan is an old story, but the more recent transfer of M-
11 production technology and equipment is in line with
Beijing's "talk-friendship, be-perfidious" policy towards
India. The Hatf missiles touted as indigenous by Pakistan
are anything but indigenous. Both the M-11s and the longer-
range, New Delhi-reachable M-9s, employed as instruments of
terror against Taiwan, are likely to be locally produced in
Pakistan in the guise of the Hatf series missiles. China's
clandestine nuclear and missile assistance to Islamabad,
aimed at offsetting Indian technological advances, is driven
by a strategy to tie India down south of the Himalayas by
building a counterweight. 
The United States has announced missile sales to
several countries this year alone. It is also aiding
Britain's nuclear and conventional missile modernisation and
collaborating with Israel in an anti-tactical ballistic
missile (ATBM), the Arrow 2, whose intercept capability was
tested live for the first time last month. Washington could
spark a regional missile race in India's neighbourhood by
selling a new lethal war-fighting technology, the Amraams,
to Thailand, as it has pledged to do if Malaysia bought the
similar but less sophisticated AA-12 "Adder" air-to-air
missiles from Russia. The Australian Navy is seeking the
long-range Tomahawks for its Collins class submarines, even
though the captain of the first sub-commissioned recently
has said the Collins will largely be used for intelligence
gathering and communication intercepts. 
The scramble for cruise missiles, whose attraction
springs from their accuracy, manoeuvrability and
survivability, is evident from the new projects in China,
Japan, Taiwan, Iran, South Africa and Europe, including
Britain's Casom and Jassm and the French Apache. China,
which has acquired two major types of Russian cruise
missiles, currently is testing a 600 km nuclear-capable
cruise missile and aiding Israel in refashioning its Delilah
unmanned air vehicle (UAV) as a 400 km cruise missile. It
will not be long before Beijing provides cruise-missile
technology to Pakistan, already armed with the deadly
Harpoon and Exocet cruise missiles. 
Events this year symbolise the growing role of missiles
in global power politics. The use of missiles is likely to
increase in the years ahead, especially against nations
lacking deterrent capabilities. While the slow-moving, low-
flying cruise missiles are ideally suited for precision
strikes, the larger and more expensive ballistic missiles,
with the advent of global positioning systems and
improvements in guidance technology, will become even more
effective for blackmail and terror without the need to carry
nuclear, chemical or bacteriological warheads. India, with
no missile deterrent in place, can ignore the emerging
strategic realities at its own peril. 
The lack of a missile-deterrent force constitutes the
biggest chink in Indian defences today. India cannot allow
its independent foreign policy and national-security
strategy to be circumscribed by its glaring vulnerability to
missile strikes, blackmail and terror unleashed by regional
and extra-regional actors. No country can effectively
concentrate on the tasks of economic modernisation or aspire
to be an important player on its own continent if it baulks
at employing its resources and capabilities to plug basic
vulnerabilities against weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The nearly one billion Indians constitute the world's
largest WMD-defenceless nationality. Having demonstrated its
unflinching resolve to safeguard the country's vital
interests by standing up to the mightiest powers on the
test-ban treaty, Prime Minister Deve Gowda's Government now
has to put missile-defence policy on the right track. 
As a first step, Mr Deve Gowda should renew the Agni
intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) programme,
langushing for more than two-and-half years despite its
triumphant three test initial phase. Mr Narasimha Rao's
pusillanimity on the Agni was so conspicuous that Washington
declared the programme in a state of "hibernation" 18 months
ago. Mr Rao left office keeping the Agni in limbo, breaking
his own assurance to Parliament to resume its flight-testing
programme. The loss of precious time without a political
decision on the necessary Agni follow-up amounts to criminal
neglect of national security. By this time, India should
have been looking at longer-range, solid-fuelled missile
systems beyond the Agni. But more than seven years after the
first Agni test, it still does not have a single operational
IRBM system even as its external vulnerabilities have
enlarged. 
The Deve Gowda Government should decide swiftly to
utilise one of the IRBM options thrown up by the Agni
programme. It should heed the Parliamentary Standing
Committee recommendation that "the time has come when the
Government should review the Agni project and a decision is
expeditiously taken to go in for serial production of this
strategic missile for its induction into the armed forces".
A crash programme to manufacture a limited number of IRBMs
should be instituted. The restoration of the Agni flight-
testing programme is also necessary. The first prototypes
would need to be rigorously tested from mobile platforms. 
Little has been heard officially on the status of the
Prithvi short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) since the
January 27 flight-test of the 250-km model. The test
provoked Washington to publicly chide India for its
"mistake" as it should not be pursuing "any kind of
ballistic missile development programme". That launch came
after a troubling 20-month gap in a test programme geared to
building elementary second-strike tools of conventional
deterrence. The Rao Government intentionally equivocated on
whether the Prithvis were being produced and inducted to
rescue the Clinton Administration from the clutches of a
domestic law. Determined not to apply the law to China and
Pakistan despite the M-11 transfers, Washington found an
acquiescent ally in Mr Rao. An Indian admission about
Prithvi deployment would have compelled Pakistan to uncrate
its M-11s, blowing away the fig-leaf from the Clinton team's
legal cover up. 
With its commitment to "expand and strengthen
indigenous capabilities", the Deve Gowda Government should
give high priority to the missile programme, particularly to
the early production and deployment of missile systems vital
for national defence. In recent years, political rather than
technical barriers have decelerated the country's missile
advances. It is time the scientists were given full freedom
to turn their achievements into operational capabilities.
Besides the exigent requirement for deployed IRBMs and
SRBMs, the country also needs to go beyond the Akash and
develop an ATBM [Advanced Tactical Ballistic Missile]
system. The mounting use of cruise missiles with
conventional munitions calls for speeding up the development
of the sea launched Sagarika and Koral and employing UAV
[unmanned aerial vehicle] technologies from the Nishant and
Lakshya to build "smart" weapons configured for land attack.
THIS REPORT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION 
IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS