MIRV tech entry in nuclear arsenal must not lead India away from ‘No First Use’ policy

Agni-V missile featuring MIRV technology takes off from coast of Odisha | Pic credit:X/@SpokespersonMoD

India has achieved two major milestones in modernising its nuclear weapons arsenal. First, the entry of MIRV technology in March, followed by the successful user trial of Agni-Prime ballistic missile on 3 April with a range of 1,000-2,000 km. The MIRV, or Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle technology, tests have raised concerns about a potential nuclear arms race between India, China, and Pakistan and whether it would amplify similar concerns at the global level involving other nuclear weapon powers.

A report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) stated, “While the Indian government may rejoice in its technical achievement, the proliferation of MIRV capability is a sign of a larger worrisome trend in worldwide nuclear arsenals that is already showing signs of an emerging nuclear arms race with more destabilising MIRVed missiles”. This view found resonance when India’s former Naval Chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, called for arming India’s submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with MIRV technology.

MIRVs were initially developed in the 1960s and facilitated a missile to independently strike a diverse set of targets more than a thousand kilometres apart. The United States was the first to deploy MIRVs on SLBMs and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and the Soviet Union soon joined the fray. During the Cold war, MIRVs fuelled the arms race and drove the numbers of nuclear warheads in possession of the US and Soviet Union to extremely high levels, reaching nearly 70,000  in the 1980s. Currently, the US, France, and the UK have MIRVs deployed only on SLBMs. Media reports indicate that the US is probably going to deploy MIRVs on ICBMs. China has deployed MIRVs on ICBMs. In 2017, Pakistan had announced testing MIRVs on the Ababeel missile.

During the Cold War, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed between the US and Soviet Union in 1972, was the cornerstone of the arms control regime that sought to limit the deployment of ballistic missile defences, reducing the pressures on both the powers to deploy more nuclear weapons. But triggered by the US pulling out of the treaty in 2001, nuclear powers have invested in building ballistic missile defence systems. Understandably, this in turn has resulted in the development of systems that would hopefully penetrate the BMD systems.

MIRVs became the natural choice, followed by Russia among others developing delivery systems like the intercontinental hypersonic glider, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, and torpedoes. With the deepening global geopolitical rivalry and unravelling of several arms control treaties like the Russian suspension of the New Start Treaty, which restricted the number of warheads, the nuclear arms race is now unbridled and reflects the paradox of arms control – when you have it, you don’t need it; and when you need it, you don’t have it.

Human agency and nuclear weapons

The threat of nuclear weapons emanates not from the weapons themselves per se but from the belief systems that are mostly shaped by the strategic cognoscenti of the states concerned. Take, for example, the issue of stability that is often desired to ensure success of nuclear deterrence. The cornerstone of stability is sought through mutual vulnerability, meaning when a nuclear weapon is used against a nuclear power, the response would naturally cause humongous damage. Considering the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, it was difficult to imagine that the stakes at issue would invite a risk that could tolerate the risks involved.

As more nuclear powers increased utilisation of MIRVs, the belief systems underpinning the pursuit are probably rooted in strengthening mutual vulnerability. But for the adversaries, it could be interpreted as a capability where a first strike would render ineffective most of the retaliatory capability. An action-reaction cycle ensues that endangers stability by having to keep a greater number of weapons on high alert to ensure surviving a surprise first strike. Of course, a surprise first strike unconnected from the ensuing crisis or tensions is a prime example of human imagination that is situated in the abstract and is running riot on self-generated fears.

A nuclear exchange could, at the upper end, start with the first strike aimed at neutralising the adversary’s nuclear arsenal. But given the numbers of weapons in the arsenals of nuclear powers, the amount of nuclear explosions required for the first strike would invite a nuclear winter, which, in the case of countries like India, China, and Pakistan, would impact not only the entire subcontinent but the perpetrator as well. This would amount to committing suicide for the fear of death.

At the lower end, the nuclear exchange could start with low-yield weapons. But that would leave the reaction capability of the affected party intact and it would be impossible to guess what that reaction could be. While a tit for tat nuclear exchange is theoretically possible, nobody really knows what happens after the first nuclear weapon is fired. Nuclear strategy has forever continued to struggle with these unknowns and rests precariously on the hope that these unknowns will ensure that the nuclear threshold is not crossed and threats of retaliation will deter the perpetrator.

Besides these, a nuclear exchange could emerge from the vicissitudes of human agency such as miscommunication, mis-judgement, and misperception during a crisis, when nuclear weapons are put on higher alert levels.

Impact of No First Use policy

Both India and China continue to remain the only two powers that have a No First Use (NFU) policy. Even with the rapid increase in warhead numbers through induction of MIRVs on their delivery systems, neither country needs to fear a surprise first strike. China could fear a disarming first strike from the US because of disparity in numbers, but the US need not. With the US attempting to bolster its BMD capability, China would be tempted to increase its BMD penetration capability by MIRVs as also by advanced delivery systems like Hyper Glide Vehicles (HGVs). Similarly, India would do the same with respect to China and Pakistan. But with India and China being NFU powers, relatively speaking, credibility in terms of survivability and retaliation is strengthened and stability is not weakened as the FAS report predicts.

For an NFU power like India, MIRVs on the SLBMs would provide the best means of strengthening nuclear deterrence. India’s future SSBNs must therefore be equipped with MIRVed missiles. However, this directional thrust must not result in unnecessarily boosting India’s warhead numbers. There should not be a shift from the doctrinal conception that nuclear weapons are political weapons and therefore the normative military logic of bean counting is inapplicable. Instead, even the possibility of a couple of nuclear weapons impacting the major cities of its potential adversaries is believed to be sufficient for deterrence to prevail.

To the military mind, the idea of planning to get hit first and then react is anathema to its enculturation about use of force. If such ‘Military Think’ captures the mind of India’s political decision makers, India would only be pursuing an illusion that is unlikely to pay any dividends.

Thus far, India’s belief systems on nuclear weapons, as expressed in its nuclear doctrine, have managed to keep ‘military think’ at a distance, unlike in the West. It should remain so even as the political leadership of others succumb to ‘military think’, as is being witnessed in the case of most nuclear powers.

Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon (retd) is Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution; former military adviser, National Security Council Secretariat. He tweets @prakashmenon51. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)