THE BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT: INDIA

The opinions expressed here are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CDISS or any of its members.

Further information on India's missile programme, including rare images of the Prithvi SRBM and Agni IRBM, can be found in National Briefings These documents have been contributed by Jim Hackett of Titan Corp. in San Diego, California. Hackett is an occasional columnist for the Washington Times, and served in senior arms control and national security positions in the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

One of the most dangerous missile competitions in the world today is the one between India and Pakistan, because both have nuclear weapons and both have ballistic missiles to deliver them. The longstanding feud between the two countries almost led to nuclear war in 1990. It has been estimated that India has enough nuclear material and weapons components to quickly assemble about 25 nuclear weapons and Pakistan an estimated 15. In March 1995, the CIA was cited as saying that Pakistan had nine or ten nuclear weapons already assembled.

Indian missile developments are the most advanced. They have been closely related to the Indian space program and show what a determined developing country can do with a long-term, measured approach to the development and production of satellites, missiles, and space-launch rockets. The first Indian satellite was launched on a Soviet rocket in 1975. Four years later, in 1979, India put a remote-sensing satellite into space, also on a Russian rocket. But by 1980 India was able to launch a 155 lb Rohini spacecraft into low-Earth orbit on its own SLV-3 space launch vehicle.

India's second-generation rocket, the Augmented Space Launch Vehicle (ASLV), was successfully launched in 1992, putting a spacecraft into a 450 km orbit. If the five-stage solid-fuel ASLV were used as a ballistic missile, it is estimated that it would have a range of 4,000 km. That is substantially more than India's Agni ballistic missile, which has a range of 2,500 km.

India has produced two ballistic missiles, the short-range Prithvi that comes in 150 km and 250 km models, and the medium-range Agni, a two-stage solid and liquid fueled missile with a range of 2,500 km. Prithvi has undergone at least a dozen flight tests in a highly successful development program and is being deployed by the Indian Army against Pakistan.

The Agni program, which began in 1983, has recently enjoyed success. The second flight test in 1992 had a succesful launch but encountered difficulties on reentry. The third flight test in 1994 was a complete success and featured a maneuvering warhead that splashed down on target 1,200 km out in the Bay of Bengal. The Agni can cover all of Pakistan and reach deep into China with twice the throwweight needed to carry a nuclear weapon, according to Indian sources. Five more flight tests are planned, to be followed by full scale production.

India also is developing a series of space launch vehicles that can easily be converted into true intercontinental ballistic missiles. India's ASLV space-launch vehicle program led to the more advanced Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) programs. The four-stage PSLV is a heavy-lift launch vehicle that puts India in the company of the U.S., Russia, China, France and Japan, as the nations that can launch heavy satellites into orbit. The complex PSLV has solid-fuel first and third stages, liquid-fuel second and fourth stages, and six solid-fuel strap-on boosters. The 66-foot long first stage is one of the most powerful solid rocket motors in the world.

In 1994 the PSLV successfully launched a one-ton Earth observing satellite into orbit. On March 21, 1996, the PSLV made its second successful launch, placing a 1,770 lb remote-sensing satellite into a 900 km polar orbit. It is estimated that if the PSLV were used as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) it would be able to attain a range of at least 8,000 km.

The next advance in the Indian space program will be to flight test the GSLV, which is planned to be an Ariane-class booster capable of putting a 5,500 lb satellite into geostationary orbit. The GSLV will use the PSLV first stage, but the six strap-on boosters will be replaced with four more powerful boosters derived from the PSLV second stage. The GSLV will use a single cryogenic rocket engine bought from Russia as its upper stage. The British Centre for Defence and International Security Studies estimates that if the GSLV were used as a ballistic missile it would be a major ICBM, capable of delivering a nuclear warhead up to 14,000 km. The first flight of the GSLV is expected to take place in 1997 or 1998.

In 1991 General Sundarji, the Indian Army Chief of Staff, said that the "Gulf War emphasized once again that nuclear weapons are the ultimate coin of power. In the final analysis the U.S. could go in because it had nuclear weapons and Iraq did not." India clearly sees nuclear weapons as a source of power and has made a decision to maintain nuclear weapons and to develop ballistic missiles of various ranges to deliver them.

India now is producing and selling satellite imagery on the world market. In 1992 Professor U.R. Rao, Chairman of India's Space Research Organization, said that enormous opportunities were opening for Indian industry to sell satellites, rocket engines and even space launch vehicles for export. Mr. Rao noted that the Indian version of France's Viking rocket engine compares with the best but costs much less. India could, therefore, become a major source of ballistic missile technology and components for countries trying to develop a long-range missile capability.

The longstanding feud between India and Pakistan almost led to nuclear war in 1990, when then-deputy NSC adviser Robert Gates was sent to defuse the situation. Pakistan is believed to have had a few nuclear weapons at that time, deployed on F-16 fighter-bombers. Pakistan subsequently bought some 300 km M-11 missiles and launchers from China, making Pakistan, like India, a member of that exclusive club of countries that have both nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them. Pakistan also is developing its own family of ballistic missiles to deliver its nuclear weapons. Known as the Hatf I, II and III, they have estimated ranges of 80, 250 and 600 km.

Based on French technology, the Hatf I and II are now operational; the longer-range Hatf III, believed to be based on the 600 km Chinese M-9, is still in development. When operational, it will enable Pakistan to launch a nuclear weapon at New Delhi. Pakistan has leap-frogged the slow process of developing its own ballistic missiles by buying a complete system from China, the M-11. Despite numerous promises not to transfer such technology, the Chinese have done so. It would not be surprising if Pakistan, anxious to keep up with India, were to make additional clandestine purchases of missiles or missile technology from China.

China has sold missiles and advanced technologies to Pakistan, while Russia has sold rocket engines and military equipment to India. It appears that India and Pakistan, and other developing countries as well, can get almost any technology they are willing to pay for. Also, we must assume, on the basis of statements by their own officials, that when these countries have advanced technologies they may well make them available for export. Thus, the nuclear missile capabilities of India and Pakistan, in addition to creating the danger of nuclear war on the subcontinent, may also be sources of nuclear and missile technologies for the rogue regimes most likely to use them.

WASHINGTON: The United States, which tried its darnedest to stymie India's progress towards achieving cutting edge space capability after giving its space programme an initial boost, Wednesday acknowledged the country's technical virtuosity evident in the successful launch of its top-end GSLV.

"It is an indication I guess that India has a great deal of technical prowess," one US official said on background. "Very few countries in the world have such technical capability."

Amen, Indian scientists might say, and for good reason. The Indian space programme began in the 1960s in a run down church in Thumba, Kerala, where with the help of American scientists, Indian space cadets knocked together the first rockets in a cowshed that served as a lab and a bishop's lair that served as an office.

But after more than two decades of cooperation that even endured India's 1974 nuclear test, Washington began to put the squeeze on India in the early 1990s, suddenly becoming conscious that the country"s defence establishment could ride on the many dual-use civilian space technologies.

The crunch came when the Clinton administration began to lean on Russia to stop the sale and technology transfer of cryogenic engines that would have helped India made a generational leap from its PSLV - which helps put modest-sized satellites into a orbit close to earth - to a GSLV.

The GSLV can carry satellites weighing more than a ton and place it in a geosynchronous orbit - which means it goes round the Earth at the same rate as the planet turns, so the satellite is always over the same point on the Earth's surface. To do so the satellite needs to reach a very high orbit of 36,000km from the Earth, which will literally and metaphorically, be the high point of this launch.

Thanks to US cussedness, the GSLV launch set for 1997 was delayed by four years. Meanwhile, under a renegotiated contract, Russia sold India seven cryogenic engines without the tech transfer, forcing Indian scientists to work on designing their own engines, a mission that is still underway.

Still, Wednesday"s GSLV launch sent a murmur of excitement through the American commercial and military space establishments.

"This is huge, this is a big deal," Jim Banke, a senior producer for space.com who has covered launches at Cape Canaveral for 15 years said. "This puts India into the big league. Imagine someone introducing a new car into the US market. Imagine how GM and Ford will react. This is going to send shock wave through the aerospace industry."

The initial reading is the successful GSLV launch gives India the capability and the confidence to eventually enter the commercial satellite launch market that is estimated to be in the range of $10 to $20 billion annually. Currently only the United States, European Union, Russia, China, and Japan have the capability. The EU space agency Ariane commands nearly half the market, followed by the US, Russia, and China.

The US scientific community also appeared pretty sanguine about the potential military implications of the GSLV success. Although Space.com's Banke said the GSLV clearly signalled that India had achieved a ICBM capability, John Pike, a security expert formerly with the Federation of American Scientists and now Director of Global Security.org, said that capability has already been demonstrated with the PSLV.

"The only difference between India's satellite launch vehicles and a ballistic missile is a coat of paint," Pike said.

"The only difference between a launch vehicle and a missile is the payload. The payload can be a satellite. Or it can be a nuclear bomb," agreed Banke.

But the US officialdom, which tried to scuttle the transfer of cryogenic engine technology to India to cap such capability, maintained a studied official silence on the development.

In fact, against the backdrop of the latest launch, the Indian space and nuclear establishment is having one of its rare contacts with the US scientific dispensation next week. The top minds of the Indian scientific and security apparatus including Dr Raja Ramanna and Prof U R Rao will be here for a dialogue with the United States Centre for International Security and Arms Control.

Well, you can figure that no matter how far behind us the "Third World" lags, they will eventually catch up to where we were in 1960, and be capable of at least speculatively landing a nuke on us. It's just a question of when and how long, not if, and even if they aren't able to beg, buy, or steal the technology, "what one man can invent, another can discover", to quote Sherlock Holmes.

So the real issue is how do we defend ourselves. The potential for massive retaliation worked well enough to keep the Russians from trying to obliterate us - but, of course, the Russians individually and collectively have behaved much more rationally than our contemporary adversaries Elsewhere. If you think security in the Russian weapons program was bad, imagine what it must be like in India. Moreover, does anyone think that one of Iran's ayatollahs would hesitate to launch on us, even at the expense of destroying his country completely, in the name of the Religion of Peace?

We're just going to have to perfect an antimissile defense... and I do mean *perfect*. At least for the moment, we are technologically sophisticated enough to be able to maintain a commanding technological lead in that area. (All bets are off for the future, however, if we continue to devalue employment in engineering to the point where our engineers are leaving the profession to become accountants and pharmacists...)

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