Nuclear Navies in South Asia

Aaron Stein 0:06

Are listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic County's Rafik Kariri Center for the Middle East.

Ankit Panda 0:17

I'm Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a senior editor at the Diplomat based in New York City.

Vipin Narang 0:24

And I'm Vipin Narang, Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. I work on nuclear weapons and strategy proliferation. And it's good to be here with you guys. Is this your first ACW podcast? I think this is my second. I think I've done one before, back in the day, before you guys went all high-tech. The pre-Scott era? It's good to be back.

You know, North Korea took up so much of the mushroom cloud space here. It's good to have some South Asia back.

Aaron 0:53

Yeah, yeah. And Jeffrey's at an undisclosed location on the East Coast, so he's left his hermetically sealed containment bubble.

Vipin 1:00

He knows something we don't, and I'm a little terrified about that.

Aaron 1:04

We were trying to set it up today, and he just was. He's like, I'm on the East Coast. I have to do this on Thursday, so you just go ahead and deal with this. I'm like, okay, we can do that. Yeah, but I think he's out on the East Coast, and he and I will chat later this week.

But there's... There's some news, right? So like launch deterrence patrol get upon?

Vipin 1:24

Yeah, big news, you know, out of South Asia. Today, India announced its first deterrent patrol of its maiden SSBN, the Arihant. And there are a lot of questions about what exactly they did. And, you know, they announced the conclusion of the deterrence patrol. And, you know, I have to assume that that means that they loaded The SLBMs, the K-15s, which are 750-kilometer two-stage ballistic missiles.

I think the Arihant, Ankit, correct me if I'm wrong, 12 K-15s is the load, and the alternative is four longer-range K-4s, but the K-4 is still in development. And so when they say deterrence patrol, I have to assume that they loaded nuclear weapons on the SLBMs, and this would be the first publicly admitted Mid-peace time deployment of nuclear weapons in India's history that they've announced.

So it's a big day for India.

Ankit 2:24

Well, yeah, I mean, it is a big day. The only alternative that's kind of playing around in my mind right now is that they might have been a little bit generous with the wording here, and this was maybe about validating C2 and crew procedures before they load the big things that go boom on their submarine.

Vipin 2:42

Yeah, I entirely leave open that possibility. They could be playing fast and loose with deterrent patrol. And normally that implies that it's a fully loaded, fully armed system, but there would be, it's possible. They've done sea trials in the past, the Arihant. The last couple tests of the K-15, I believe were in August, they did three tests within two days.

So it wouldn't surprise me if the K-15s were on board, but It would be a big step if India actually loaded nuclear warheads on the SLBMs and put it out to sea. And then the other question, obviously, is how long this patrol lasted. There were reports, you know, Ankit had mentioned in August. So that would mean roughly a three month, two to three month patrol potentially.

Or was it, you know, just a shorter patrol? Test of the Arihant in this particular case. So we don't know the answer to several questions about what they did and how long they did it for.

Ankit 3:44

Yeah, I mean, the Indians are known for keeping a pretty good lid, especially lately on their nuclear activities. And the Arihant program gets special treatment, except with some notable exceptions. Like I think last time I was on Arms Control, Wong, Jeffrey and I talked about the snafu with the propulsion chamber filling up with seawater, which happened last year.

Somebody forgot to close the hatch.

Vipin 4:06

Yeah.

Ankit 4:07

So otherwise, we don't really know how long this patrol was, but we have sort of an idea about the upper bound limit. I mean, I think two months sounds like reasonable to me.

Vipin 4:19

It would be, but that would be a long time, I would think, to have a relatively noisy SSBN out there, especially if they actually loaded nuclear weapons on it. And given that the Arihant that had this major accident with the propulsion unit I would be, nothing is out of the realm of possibility when it comes to the Indians, but I would be very surprised if they were willing to risk such a long deterrent patrol and give adversaries a chance also to, you know, get acoustic signatures on this thing for two months.

My guess is actually, I would think if I were them, I would do it for a much shorter period of time. You wouldn't want it out to sea for this long. I would think on its maiden patrol.

Aaron 5:04

Yeah, let me jump in here just for the listener's benefit. I mean, maybe you guys want to back up a little bit about sort of the history of this submarine program and why this represents such a milestone. And, you know, it's always the question of who it is that they're deterring, you know, because, Vipin, I think on your sort of tweetstorm today that we can link to down in the show notes is that the range of the missile would suggest that it's not aimed towards China so much, but more towards Pakistan.

Yeah.

Vipin 5:33

Yeah, so the history of the submarine, let's start with the history of the triad, I guess, in India. Yeah, another way to put it. Nuclear submarines have been, I think, in India's mind in general since the 1970s, but mostly nuclear attack submarines. The idea of a nuclear armed submarine dates back to the draft nuclear doctrine in 1999, a year after India tested nuclear weapons.

And it had always been part of India's so-called the hallowed nuclear doctrine, which was officially adopted in 2003 after the 1999 draft. And so India has long been committed to the triad, but the submarine leg is obviously, like most countries, the slowest to develop given the difficulties of the reactor design, SLBMs, warheads that can be fitted. And India, it was always, with the land-based and air-based force, The kind of stewardship and command and control procedures that India preferred, which included either dispersed and demated weapons or fully actually disassembled weapons in some cases initially in the program, would be very difficult with an SSBN.

Over the last decade, we've seen India become, as the SSBN program has developed in parallel, we've seen India become more comfortable, I think, with a higher state of readiness on its land-based force. They're moving to canisterized systems, which are sealed. One has to think there's a decent probability that the warhead is mated before the hermetic seal is emplaced on the longer-range UGNIs.

We know that they've put gravity bombs in the same, co-located those with the aircraft. All of that has happened as the SSBN program has developed. So it's possible that command and control for the SSBN has enabled a higher state of readiness on land, but it's taken a while to develop the Arihant, which was a prototype. With Russian assistance for the reactor, or at least design assistance.

But it had this accident. It was developing the SLBMs, which are kind of grafted off some of the land-based missiles that India had been developing. So this interest in the triad had been from the beginning, and now we're seeing, I think, it come to fruition. And going to sea has its own challenges. There's long been a discussion.

I've questioned from the beginning what the point of the triad was. Because you could argue that from a survivability perspective, given India's geography and the lack of counterforce capabilities from China and Pakistan, India's survivability is actually probably pretty good on land. You have a variety of places to disperse the Agni family of missiles and the Prithvis, and command and control is easier.

And there's always this question about whether the strategic juice of the SSBN is worth the organizational, financial, and command and control squeeze that it imposes on the nuclear force. But India's always been committed to it. And there are a variety of hypotheses out there. It's because the major nuclear powers have it. It does maybe impart survivability if you think the SSBN is survivable.

But there are questions about whether the Arihan, for example, and its successor, the Aridaman, you know, have the acoustic signatures to really impart the kind of survivability that we normally associate with an SSBN. And then there's this question about the missiles. Like you said, the range of the first prototype here, the missile, the K-15s is 750 kilometers, which means to have any impact on China, you have to sail this thing out over to basically the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

And, you know, that's, That makes the SSBN extremely vulnerable. So 750 kilometers is really Pakistan specific. There's really not much you can do against China with an SSBN with just the K-15. And eventually I think they want longer range missiles, but right now they're stuck with an SSBN that basically gives them range only against Pakistani targets. And we can talk about what I think is this decoupling between India strategies, between Pakistan and China.

It's long professed credible minimum deterrence. It's long professed no first use, which was reaffirmed all today from the official doctrine in 2003. But there's a lot of flexibility that's been introduced about what minimum means and what first use would entail. And so I think we're seeing kind of South Asia itself as a subsystem moving in a very dangerous direction.

Aaron 10:04

Ankit, want to jump in there?

Ankit 10:05

Yeah, I mean, so the decoupling thing actually just, you know, brings to mind that these are pretty small SSBNs, right? So Vipin talked about the capacities. You have either 12K15s or 4K4 SLBMs. And India is going to have to, you know, provided it does get to the point where it has four of these, which is the envisioned force size for the SSBN force, it's going to have to make some tough choices in peacetime about how it's going to load these up if it is actually going to execute a continuous at-sea deterrence model.

And that's a really, that's a tough nut to crack. I mean, you really have to have Some pretty good planning that I don't think, you know, the United States and the Soviet Union and Russia don't really have to deal with that. China doesn't have to deal with that kind of a process in terms of divvying up payload.

So that's an interesting challenge that the Indians have to deal with. On the rationale for the Arihan program, you know, I thought it was interesting the Indian defense minister's Public statement on Twitter, which was the first thing I saw about this. She sort of talks about, hey, we completed our first deterrence patrol, and this puts us in this club of countries that can do this thing.

So it's very much like a prestige-driven piece of data right there. And also, I think there are a lot of kind of bureaucratic factors. The Indian Navy has been pulling for this for a long time. And those, I think, also have played kind of a role in keeping this program sticky and making sure that It does move on, even though, you know, we kind of see developments in anti-submarine warfare kind of making breakneck progress, too, which I think leaves the Arihant in a much worse place now than it maybe was in 1999 when they, you know, really started to double down on this.

Aaron 11:35

How many SSBNs do they envision eventually having? I mean—

Vipin 11:39

So I think for, Ankit is right that there was an official discussion of four in the planning process, but today somebody, Yogesh Joshi is a scholar who's followed the Indian submarine program for a long time and is a historian, noted five to six in the planning process and an SLBM with a range, an intercontinental range of about 6,000 kilometers eventually.

But with India, there's a lot of discussion about long-term future planning. I think Four have been, I don't know how many kills have been laid, but I think the envisioned four is probably more likely. But then it gets to this question of your size, your SSBN force based on your envisioned deployment pattern. If you need a continuous deterrent patrol, four will probably do it, but you don't have a lot of wiggle room there.

Five to six might get you confidence that you can put one on continuous deterrent patrol. But the alternative then is if you have three or four SSBNs, You just run a bastion model instead the way the Soviets did and keep them in port during peacetime and then flush them out in a crisis. But, you know, that makes peacetime command and control easier, but it makes crisis command and control very, very, very dicey.

Aaron 12:51

Yeah, I mean, that's a good point because you always have to assume that at least one or two will be in dry dock or at least in the pens for maintenance and so that you only have in the four one or two that's out.

Vipin 13:02

Available, right.

Aaron 13:03

Available, right, that's out patrolling. And then, again, you have to – You'll factor in future projections on missile range to see who it is that they actually are targeting. That's actually interesting, too, about how the long-range missile, they can only fit four, if I'm understanding correctly, rather than 12.

Vipin 13:22

On this saddle. I think on the Arhunt, that's right. I think reports are the Arhunt can handle, the saddle can handle or load eight K-4s.

Aaron 13:32

What's the range on the K-4?

Vipin 13:34

So that's for the successor. The successor... SSBN, I think, is capable of eight K-4s, and they don't envision it with the K-15. I believe that that's right because you need different tubes and saddles depending on what you're loading. So my guess is the Arihant will only carry the K-15, and then future submarines will try to carry the K-4, which is the sea-based version of the Agni 3.

Ankit 13:55

Yeah, and the range on that is roughly intermediate range, a little bit over 3,000 kilometers. Yeah, 3,500. Yeah.

Aaron 14:01

So what targets could that hold in China at risk? I'm curious. This isn't exactly my area.

Vipin 14:06

If you deploy it in the Bay of Bengal, you can hit Beijing. The problem then, and I think that's probably what they had in mind, because you wouldn't want your SSBN venturing too far from coastal waters if you have to turn patrol blocks in the Bay of Bengal. You have some sanctuary in the Bay of Bengal and maybe in the Indian Ocean, but I think you'd have to deploy it in the Bay of Bengal to reach Beijing.

So in order to hit Beijing from Waters further west, you may need a longer range missile. Ankit, any thoughts on how that figures into their calculation on the range and

Ankit 14:44

Well, they're developing a longer range missile. So I think that's kind of where they're going to go with that. Yeah. Although, I mean, that, you know, that concept just still again, I think the land based solution makes so much more sense with regard to China. Yeah. You just get around so many more problems. And I mean, honestly, as a Pakistan specific solution, the SSBN program does have A lot more appeal.

Pakistan's going to be a lot more limited in the kinds of anti-submarine warfare operations that it can pull off in places like the Bay of Bengal and off the southern tip of India. Arabian Sea is another issue. But yeah, I mean, I think with the China angle, you really have a very strong case for focusing your development efforts on land-based forces, like the Agni 5, which we'll see deployed soon.

Vipin 15:24

I agree. Yeah, I agree with that.

Aaron 15:27

Yeah. So, I mean, well, this may be the good time to segue into, you know, There have been concurrent moves from Pakistan, maybe not on the ballistic missile trajectory, but on the cruise missile trajectory, that suggests that they want an at-sea deterrent patrol, at-sea deterrent as well.

Ankit 15:43

Yeah, that's right. So the Pakistanis in January 2017 tested a variant of their Bobber cruise missile, which was developed as a ground launch cruise missile with a range of around 450 kilometers. This was the Bobber three. It was their first submarine launched cruise missile with an explicit nuclear mission that they described as sort of. Giving them explicitly a second strike capability and augmenting their overall deterrence.

And they tested this missile again this year in April. So when you hear about the Pakistanis going to sea, you immediately start to wonder about things like command and control. So Pakistan's been one of the problem cases where we've worried a lot about command and control. And As Vipin sort of alluded to with India, the difficulties of command and control at sea really shouldn't be understated, especially with a country like Pakistan that doesn't have much experience with this in a naval context.

And the other thing that really concerns me in the Pakistani context, and this is something that Chris Clary and I talked about at some length in a paper for the Washington Quarterly published last year. Maybe we can link to that in the show notes, but You know, one of the issues is that the Pakistani Navy specifically has been targeted repeatedly by non-state groups.

So we had the PNS Zulfiqar attack where armed gunmen, al-Qaeda gunmen, tried to effectively commandeer a Pakistani Navy frigate. And the subsequent investigation showed that they were assisted by insiders. And Steve Cole, actually, in his most recent book, You know, he reports that there was apparently some kind of commingled nuclear assets, which I'm not too sure about, given what we know about Pakistani forces.

But again, I mean, you know, we know that there are non-state groups in Pakistan looking to get their hands on this stuff. So that makes this their sea launch cruise missile program of particular concerns. So I'll just outline the force structure. Maybe we can talk about it a bit more. So they have three French Augusta 90B diesel-electric submarines, around 2,000 tons, so about a sixth of the tonnage of the Arihant.

So not that much smaller. The Arihant is a small SSBN, and these are small diesel-electric subs that will be fielding short-range nuclear weapons. So these are the three submarines. And the Pakistanis, it appears, will probably end up using... A Bastion model. The interesting variable though is Pakistan's planned receipt of around eight Chinese Type 39A S-20 diesel electric submarines.

So they will probably get those in the late 2020s or early 2030s. And those could also support their new Sliccums. So that will put a lot of Indian targets along the West Coast very easily in range. But yeah, command and control I think is really the big thing to worry about in the Pakistani context.

Aaron 18:30

Before you guys jump in and go in the back and forth here, just explain to the listeners, because you guys have both used it now, what the bastion model is.

Ankit 18:37

Sure. Vipin, you want to take that one?

Vipin 18:39

Yeah. So, you know, basically there are two ideal type deployment strategies for SSBNs. One is a continuous deterrent patrol, which is what the United States adopts, where we basically have, you know, we have 12 SSBNs there, or however many, you know, but we have four or so On continuous deterrent patrol. And we have one always at sea.

So the idea is even if you lost your entire land mass, you would have a survivable second strike at sea on the assumption that it is mostly survivable against ASW, which is a reasonable assumption, I think, for the Ohio class and eventually the U.S. Columbia class submarine. But there are challenges with a continuous deterrent patrol. One, you need to have enough submarines to be able to do it because it's a three-to-one ratio basically for every three SSBNs, you probably have one out on patrol.

The command and control has to be extremely robust. We've all seen Crimson Tide as fictionalized as it is. There's a lot of truth to the command and control arrangements for how we manage SSBNs because you have to decide whether you want your system to fail safe or fail lethal, but the credibility of your secure second strike at sea kind of depends on it failing lethal If you have a decapitation strike and your entire C2 falls apart.

But that means you have the ability to release nuclear weapons vested with people on the boat. And that can create command and control challenges. And the alternative is the Bastion model, which you may want to select because you want to ease your peacetime and normal command and control pressures. So if you're worried about ceding the physical ability to release nuclear weapons To people on the boat, you worry about personal reliability, you worry about political inclinations like the Soviet Union did, you may choose to keep your primary SSBNs either in port or closer to your territorial waters rather than in the deep blue sea in these deterrent patrol boxes in order to ease the command and control pressures.

And you can do it with fewer submarines, so you don't need three SSBNs for every one you want on continuous deterrent patrol. The disadvantage is, As a crisis mounts, well, one other advantage, by the way, of the Bastion model is you don't give your adversary a lot of opportunity to get acoustic signatures on the SSBM because you're not patrolling.

So the problem, though, is in a crisis, you have to flush these things out. And they can be very vulnerable if your adversary knows where they are in the Bastion model. So in the Pakistani case, they basically have two ports. And the Indians have been running – practicing – Indian Navy has been practicing ASW and how to run blockades against Karachi and Gwadar for basically its entire existence.

So if a crisis erupts and the Augustas are kept in port and they flush them out, the Indian Navy can just be sitting there waiting for them, and they become very, very vulnerable. So there are tradeoffs with both models, and it's more likely, I would imagine, for a state that wants to assert maximum control over its arsenal like India does – To prefer a bastion model, at least for the foreseeable future.

Although they talk about continuous deterrent patrol, they don't have the submarines to do it. The Pakistanis, I would think, are more concerned about Indian ASW and will probably take their chances in a crisis. And for them, the slickums at sea give them an advantage if they're worried about survivability of their land-based force and Indian missile defenses against ballistic missiles.

A sea-based cruise missile actually might have some strategic rationale, provided you think it's survivable in a crisis, and you can park it off the coast of Mumbai, for example, and hold at risk major Indian targets in ways that your land-based force can't.

Ankit 22:41

Yeah, I think that's exactly the rationale driving the Pakistanis. The other issue in Pakistan's case is, as far as their command and control goes, before we knew about the Babur III, we knew that they had commissioned a VLF array at Karachi, and Khalid Kidwai, the former director of Strategic Forces Command, had commissioned Made public remarks about the fact that Pakistan basically had real sea-based ambitions and would not only pursue the platform itself, the submarine with the delivery vehicle on board, but also would pursue the development of command and control infrastructure.

So then we see this VLF array start growing up, going up. And after that, really, I mean, what we know right now is, you know, three diesel electric subs and a VLF array. So in a crisis, I mean, the incentives for the Indians to really strike at that VLF array. To hit the VLF array, exactly. Yeah, it's incredibly obvious for the Indians to take that move, which means that the Pakistanis will have to devolve some kind of use authority to the personnel stationed on these submarines if they're to be useful in a crisis.

And that's really where things like personal reliability, which is kind of a nightmare in the Pakistani Navy case specifically, start to come into play.

Vipin 23:46

Yeah, and I think the Pakistanis have manipulated this incentive to fail deadly strategy. And fail lethal to their advantage. I think even with the Nasser batteries at land, you know, that's like, you know, I think the line from the Pakistanis, I mean, we have centralized control, centralized control until we don't. And once we flush these things out, you know, all bets are off.

And I can imagine them either, you know, they have an incentive to make the same kind of argument for the for the Augustas and the sea base leg. But the incentives are actually kind of aligned in this case, right? They may want to maintain centralized control up until they flush them out. But once they flush them out, they can't be confident that the command and control would survive the crisis.

And so they would have to basically devolve use authority as soon as that thing is flushed out. And that creates major risks.

Ankit 24:33

Yeah, exactly. They could do something like what the Royal Navy does and listen for the Pakistani National Radio Broadcaster or something.

Aaron 24:39

PTV. Yep. What do you guys think about the escalation dynamics between these two countries with, you know, cruise versus ballistic? You know, I find it interesting, like the two ways the navies are differing and how they're approaching the sea leg of their triad, perhaps maybe the bureaucratic pushes, if there are any, and maybe what you guys make of that, you know, the Pakistani with a Slicum and then the Indians with a SLBM.

Vipin 25:06

I have a quick answer to that, and then I'll get, you know – I can fill in all the detail. Missile defense. I just think the Pakistanis are terrified of the future missile defense capabilities that India has or may have. And so cruise missiles may provide advantages to defeating missile defenses in ways that ballistic missiles don't. And Pakistan doesn't have yet the kinds of missile defenses that India is interested in acquiring.

The other piece of that, I think, is the Indians Just think that ballistic missiles are more prestigious, too. And for DRDO, these ballistic missiles are kind of their identity, even though they've developed none of them. They're all grafted off of the space program's designs. These two features, I think, drive them. It's overdetermined in some ways. The Pakistanis go to Sliccums, which may be cheaper, easier, and they don't have the prestige concerns that India does.

And they're worried about missile defenses, whereas India Has all these prestigious organizational incentives, and isn't as worried about the missile defenses.

Ankit 26:05

I think in Pakistan's case, it probably is a combination of bureaucracy and working with what they have. They're much better at miniaturization generally, so that makes using torpedo tube-based systems much more appealing for them. They know that they have these three French submarines to work with. And I think, you know, they actually received some pretty generous licensing and CMS details from the French when they bought these things in the early 90s.

And actually, Aaron, here's a Turkey angle to all this. The Turks are actually modifying these right now, which is a really interesting time to be doing this right after the Pakistanis start testing their submarine-launched cruise missile. I don't know exactly what's going on with that, but it's something I'm going to hopefully dig into a little bit more.

But yeah, I think the second of the three Augusta 90Bs is in Turkey right now undergoing some kind of refurbishment. Kind of tying things back to C2, I mean, one of the things that Chris and I got into in our paper that's probably going to only find an audience on this podcast, Arms Control Wonk, is really this—

Aaron 27:05

It's not a bad podcast. No, it's a great podcast.

Ankit 27:07

This is actually something I want to talk about. This is something I want to talk about all the time, but nobody really seems to be interested, which is that there is, in theory, a way the Pakistanis could make things a little bit better and kind of ease people's nerves and demate their warheads at sea with the Babur III.

So the second test of the Babur III in April this year— The footage the Pakistanis released basically confirmed that this was a horizontally launched system via the torpedo tube as we thought, but they gave us kind of video evidence of that from an underwater pontoon. They still haven't launched this thing from the actual submarine. But that opens up an interesting possibility where you could actually keep these warheads partially dissembled and demated on board the submarine and require...

Somebody with technical expertise there to agree to made it and to launch it in a crisis. So that helps, you know, implement things like a three man rule in a crisis and prevents the, you know, prevents the kind of nightmare scenario of these things just being ready to launch and out there at sea during a crisis. But that's something that I think is a really kind of technical point.

And the only other thing I'd say about this is that nobody has done this as far as we know.

Vipin 28:13

So I want to, I want to, this is a really It's interesting that you look at this with Pakistan because I looked at this with India when I was writing my book many years ago. How would you manage command and control if you profess to have a demated peacetime stewardship procedure? And there are all these things about how – like, oh, maybe India – if the warheads are small enough, you could do it at sea.

But I talked to former SSBN officers in the U.S. and even Indian Navy officers. Officers and the notion that you would, you know, try to put a 500 kilogram or a thousand kilogram warhead, you know, and may, you know, made it, maybe you would be unarmed, but it would, it wouldn't be, it would be physically mated, but to physically made a warhead on an SSBN of that size is like a non-starter.

Ankit 29:04

Yeah.

Vipin 29:04

So it was almost, you know, like any, any notion that you could maintain a demated state for an SLBM back sea force is out of the question, but I think this point about the Pakistani is interesting because the warhead is smaller. It's a horizontal tube. You may be able to figure out ways to do it, although I would lean against them trying to do that at sea.

Because doing it in a confined space, all of the safety and security issues associated with it, it would be easier just to flush them out fully mated. But it is a possibility available to them with the SLCM that isn't available, I think, to the Indians with an SLBM.

Ankit 29:46

Ankit, did you want to jump in there? Oh, no. That's actually exactly right. I think we actually talked about your book in the process of kind of writing this out. It was sort of an interesting thing with the Pakistanis having these warheads and these missiles being small enough to pull this off. But yeah, I mean, it is an incredibly – I mean, it's risky for them.

You could always have things go wrong. And it's not something that the Pakistanis would really be eager to publicize. Again, as you say, they have these incentives to make the Indians believe that they're always ready to fail deadly. So it's probably something we're never going to get to learn about. It's only something that kind of comes to mind with these smaller.

Vipin 30:19

It's more. Yeah, exactly. It's theoretically possible. And I feel like Chris, Chris Clary, who is my former student now co-author is a is a ghost fourth member of this podcast because. He and I are just finishing an article which will be forthcoming in International Security on India's potential interest in counterforce against Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. And the sea-based component of this turns on ASW.

But one thing that we noted about the SSBN program and the Arihant and the K-15 in particular is how much emphasis India put on the accuracy of the K-15. You know, if you think it's your, you know, survivable second strike accuracy and you're targeting, you know, counter value targets like cities, accuracy doesn't really matter. And one question is whether if India is interested in potential counter force targeting, which is a big if.

But I do think that people have been thinking about it at the very least. We, you know, we argue that the K-15 may provide some targeting advantages and redundancy that the land based force doesn't. And in particular, I think I was just – I noted and maybe was a little amused by how much they care about accuracy of an SLBM, which is something you normally don't associate with kind of the backbone of your strategic deterrent, which is normally for countervalue targeting.

So I thought that was – that's been interesting over the years as they've developed this.

Aaron 31:45

So if we wanted to zoom out here and sort of pivot to the end, I mean, what would you guys say the big picture is here? I mean, clearly there's some sort of escalation dynamics, horizontal proliferation in terms of numbers, and clearly a step forward on the Indian side. And also the Pakistani side, though, even though that they have not launched this from a submarine yet, they slick them from a submarine yet, just from test pontoons.

Where is this going? Because I was really interested, too, in the missile defense aspect of this conversation, because this is a priority of the Indians, no matter where it is in the stage of development, either internally or with external suppliers. You know, there clearly seems to be the dynamics in place here for a more robust arms race that continues, you know, largely outside of any controls for I guess, you know, top line numbers on how many systems these two countries can deploy.

Vipin 32:44

Ankit, do you want to take your first shot?

Ankit 32:48

Well, so, I mean, I think the bottom line big picture here is that Indian Ocean nuclear dynamics are starting to really, you know, they're growing much quicker than I think a lot of people have acknowledged, both in the, you know, off the Indian Peninsula on the Bay of Bengal side and the Arabian Sea side, you basically have Indian SLBMs, Indian SSBNs now conducting deterrence patrols, as we just saw with the Arihant announcement, and the Pakistanis pretty soon, I think by the mid-2020s, will probably give us evidence that the Babur III is now ready for the prime time, probably once they get these refurbished boats back from the Turks.

The other variable now is to watch out for potential future Chinese deployments into the Indian Ocean, which the Indians have been worried about for quite some time now. So basically the Indian Ocean is turning into a pretty big nuclear hot zone to watch. As far as the arms race dynamics go, I think, and I don't know what you think, Vipin, but I think I see a lot more of those arms race dynamics really playing out on land between the Indians and the Pakistanis still.

But I think certainly Pakistan's development of this sea launch leg wasn't something that was really taken for granted maybe in the mid-2000s, but really now seems to be something that they've really started to invest a lot of effort into.

Vipin 34:07

Yeah, I agree with all that. I think what we're seeing is the maturation of an arms race that has existed in some form or another since the 1980s. And now we're entering basically the next cycle, which is things are clicking on the land-based force for both Pakistan in the early field of the Nasser system, which is a tactical nuclear weapon capability, plus Both are developing their strategic nuclear forces on land.

And so moving to sea was kind of the natural culmination, I think, from their, again, overdetermined for organizational, bureaucratic, and prestige reasons in the Indian case.

Ankit 34:48

And I think there's a survivability logic in the Pakistani case.

Vipin 34:53

And so the question will be how these dynamics continue. And the arms race has really been driven, I think, largely by Pakistanis, By Pakistan so far, it believed it needed battlefield nuclear weapons to deter an Indian conventional attack. Then it was worried about survivability of a strategic force if India retaliated with nuclear weapons. So that kind of drove Pakistan to build up its forces and drove them to see.

And the question will be how India decides to respond. And I think a lot of this turns on whether India is interested in threatening the survivability of Pakistan's Strategic nuclear forces, because if they are, then I think you know, we're entering a new phase where India will have to maintain and sustain numbers of systems and, and warheads to maintain somewhat a counterforce advantage and Pakistan will keep building up and moving them around and make targeting much more difficult.

And so, you know, we could be entering if Pakistan, and it's enough that Pakistan might fear that that's the case And until and unless there's an explicit Indian clarification about accepting the vulnerability of Pakistan's secure second strike, Pakistan is always going to fear Indian threats to the survivability of its nuclear force. And so a lot of this turns on what India's interest is in terms of nuclear strategy and what kind of targeting portfolio it wants.

Because so long as Pakistan believes that India is interested in counter-force, then you're going to have a vertical arms race, unless India decides to basically explicitly opt out of it and say we have no interest in threatening your strategic nuclear assets. So I think that's kind of where we are now, and there are a lot of reasons why India might be interested in this, but it does create very destabilizing dynamics on the arms race.

Peace times arms race dynamics, and then obviously any time there are elements of counter-force Targeting in any state's strategy or believed to be, then you start getting first strike instability problems, the need to go preemptively and go first in order to avoid losing any of your nuclear assets. And so there are both peacetime implications and crisis implications.

But I mean, I think we're squarely there. You hear Pakistanis well before the Indians started even obliquely talking about counterforce, being afraid of Indian counterforce targeting, because all the systems India has been acquiring You don't need to talk about accuracy so much if you're only interested in counter-value retaliation. And then add these things like the Brahmos, which is a very, very accurate, very fast joint venture with the Russians.

Add S-400 and the layered missile defenses. And it looks like a sustained interest in damage limitation and potentially counter-force. And so the Pakistanis pick and choose the capabilities that seem to support that architecture over the last, I'd say 10 years. I think it was really picked up in the last 10 years. And the move to sea is kind of the natural culmination of that maturation, but it's just one piece of the larger arms race dynamic that I think is happening kind of under our nose in the Western media.

I mean, we've been talking about, Ankit and I have been talking about South Asia for years, but it got nowhere near the attention that North Korea got, for obvious reasons, I think, because North Korea and the U.S. have an adversarial relationship, whereas It's easy to forget about South Asia, but I think we do so at our peril because I think that right now is probably the most active arms race in the global nuclear landscape.

Aaron 38:33

There's a positive to arms races is that we get to have lots of Arms Control Wong podcasts about this. That's the spirit.

Vipin 38:42

Growth industry.

Aaron 38:45

It's a growth industry, you know, and we always try and end podcasts on a happy note. And usually my happy because there's usually not very much to be happy about at the end of an arms control on a podcast, because usually it means that there's more. That means there's more nuclear weapons or more missiles, but that means we get to have more podcasts.

So with that, I think that's a happy note. Anything else you guys want to add before we wrap up and I go to plugging our Patreon page? No, this is a lot of fun.

Ankit 39:13

Aaron, if you figure out what the Turks are doing with those Augusta 90Bs, definitely hit me up.

Aaron 39:18

I will. I'm actually going to look into that. My guess is that they're doing a lot of hull and sort of just hull maintenance and then they're doing a lot of the electronics.

Vipin 39:30

Oh, let's not be coy. They want a peek at those slickums so that they can

Aaron 39:34

I'm not actually going to look at the twos, but you'll have Turks wandering around those things. I mean, that is interesting. I'm going to have to look into that. The Turkish-Pakistani relationship is fascinating. They actually have very close relations, close ties, and it slides under the radar a lot, but they're closely allied in a long history going back there.

So now you've whet my appetite. Now I need to go actually and figure out what the hell these two sides are doing. But with that, thanks, guys, for joining me. And Jeffrey is traveling on the East Coast, but he'll be on the next podcast. If you want more Arms Control Wong podcasts, head on over to patreon.com slash ACW podcasts.

And for as little as $3 a month if you're a student or $5 a month if you are not, you can get access to our Slack channel. And as part of that, you get access to a second, shorter pod called Brilliant Pebbles, where we, on a once-a-week basis, more or less, it's been a little busy recently, we talk about a story in the Arms Control Wonk universe that we're all talking about privately, but may or may not reach to the point of a full 30- to 40-minute podcast.

Check that out. And definitely go check out patreon.com slash acwpodcast. And with that... Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, guys.

Ankit 40:58

A lot of fun.

Aaron 40:59

Yeah, that was fun. Thanks, guys.