Pakistan’s answer to Cold Start?

Pakistan’s answer to Cold Start?

Rodney W Jones
Tactical nuclear weapons are too risky a response to India's inoperative doctrine. Islamabad should consider other options first


Pakistan's conventional defences alone are fully capable of repelling or flaying the quick but shallow penetrations Cold Start envisages. Besides, the Indian Army's ability to generate Cold Start IBG formations is incomplete and moving forward at a glacial pace. The concept is not operational yet


Command and control and certain safety requirements for battlefield nuclear weapons are far more demanding. It will have
a distinct signature and would be a high priority for detection and preemptive conventional air attack. NASR systems that actually are nuclear-equipped will pose the classical "use them or lose them" dilemma. They may be sucked into warfighting and start the nuclear escalation spiral


aking out Osama bin Laden in the high-drama Operation Geronimo eclipsed the media coverage of Pakistan's nuclear NASR missile test on April 19. The test signals a change in military policy and should be debated thoroughly in Pakistan, although the domestic circle of technically informed nuclear critics is regrettably miniscule. A test is not a deployment decision, though this one evidently leans that way.

The NASR missile test was advertised as Pakistan's latest response to India's Cold Start doctrine, which is itself provocative. Cold Start envisions limited conventional warfare by India beneath Pakistan's strategic nuclear threshold in punitive retaliation for subconventional (terrorist) attacks on India originating in Pakistan. Since India and Pakistan went nuclear in close succession in May 1998, two such major attacks deep in India have been inflicted by Lashkar-e-Taiba. The first one on India's parliament on December 13, 2001, and then the more spectacular and lethal LeT assault on India's commercial capital Mumbai in November 2008.

For India's defence community, the Indian army's Cold Start concept represents a possible way to deter covert aggression. Since India's threat of nuclear retaliation neither deters non-state actors nor covert warfare, the Indian army believes its readiness to conduct limited ground and air war operations that punish Pakistan but stop well short of threatening its survival could achieve that deterrence. Cold Start envisions quick Indian military thrusts into Pakistan before the international community can get involved. Under the nuclear overhang, this construct is exceedingly dangerous. It is also logically flawed, since the initiator of conventional war across borders cannot unilaterally control escalation. With little geographic depth but still locally formidable ground and air defences, Pakistan will not be passive in defence but will rather react with escalatory, punitive manoeuvres of its own.

Pakistani military planners evidently believe the NASR missile system will close a nuclear deterrence gap that has been opened up by the Indian doctrine. Pakistan formerly relied on the credibility of its strategic nuclear assets and its nuclear posture option of "first use" to checkmate any major conventional war designs by its larger and better endowed neighbour. Indeed, that posture still effectively deters India contemplating any all-out war against Pakistan. But India's Cold Start options - recently restyled as "proactive defence" strategies - tend to challenge the credibility of Pakistan's nuclear deterrence posture as it relates to limited conventional war. Ostensibly, Pakistan's answer to the gap is to fill it with a tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) system that would operate in the rear of its front lines on the battlefield. Bear in mind that both India and Pakistan formerly claimed to eschew TNWs.

What should be made of Pakistan's unveiling of NASR? What is it? Is it really nuclear? How will it operate? Will it really close the apparent deterrence gap? If deployed, what new dangers may it harbour in its own right? What are the downsides? Does Pakistan not have meaningful alternatives?

The press release on the NASR missile (also designated Hatf-9) test said: "[The NASR Weapon System] has been developed to add deterrence value to Pakistan's Strategic Weapons Development programme at shorter ranges. NASR, with a range of 60km, carries nuclear warheads [emphasis added] of appropriate yield with high accuracy, [and] shoot and scoot attributes. This quick response system addresses the need to deter evolving threats."

This system is probably a four-tube adaptation of a Chinese-design multiple rocket launcher (MRL), possibly the A-100 type, on an eight-wheeler truck, capable of carrying four, ready-to-fire 20-foot ballistic missiles of about 300mm (11.8 inch) diameter. A ballistic missile differs from a rocket by having its own guidance system (probably inertial) and spring-out fins that adjust course during flight for targeting accuracy. MRLs typically have 10- to 20-tube launch racks of smaller bore. The truck-launcher otherwise may be a Chinese knock-off of the Russian 300mm Smerch MRL system sold to India.

Taken at face value, the press release implies that Pakistan has either developed or acquired nuclear warheads small enough to fit inside a missile whose diameter probably is just under 12 inches, and possibly of relatively low yield. Technical experts will have their own questions about whether Pakistan has been able to do this by itself. Pakistan probably produced significant quantities of weapons-grade plutonium only after the May 1998 tests, is not believed to have test-detonated any nuclear weapons since, and any professional military is averse to using untested weapons. Plutonium allows for lighter weapons than uranium, but an implosion assembly with a diameter under 12 inches would be a real feat. That said, Lt Gen (r) Khalid Kidwai's presence at the test and association with the press release would give the nuclear assertion more than ordinary credence. Kidwai has been in charge of organising Pakistan's nuclear command and control system and overseeing nuclear weapons development since 1999.

If this system is actually nuclear and if it is actually deployed in crises near the Indian border, it is bound to have its own deterrent effect on unilateral Indian employment of limited conventional war actions across the border, especially offensive operations with ground forces. This would include a deterrent effect on employment of the fast-moving integrated battle groups (IBGs) from a "standing (cold) start" - if and when they are actually built. Some enhanced deterrence in this specific sense cannot be denied, although how stable that deterrence would be is another issue. The parallels are not exact, but this initiative resembles NATO's reliance on TNW systems in the European Cold War corridor. Those systems were intended to provide a combination of trip-wire and nuclear warfighting capability. Their real function was to virtually guarantee escalation to the strategic nuclear level, and thereby provide a broad-spectrum nuclear deterrence at conventional as well as strategic levels. The NATO nuclear states, one must add, were happy to shed the ground based TNW systems and their naval counterparts entirely, leaving a handful of air-delivered systems, soon after the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact collapsed.

But a number of basic questions cry out for examination: Is this added level of nuclear deterrence necessary? Is implementing it worth the downside risks? Can Cold Start threats be checked by other means? Or better yet, can India's threats be reduced by another approach - by threat reduction policies that lie within Pakistani hands?

First, is another layer of nuclear deterrence necessary to meet Cold Start? Conclusions drawn from Azm-e-Nau III exercises (held in 2009-10) suggest that Pakistan's conventional defences alone are fully capable of repelling or flaying the quick but shallow penetrations Cold Start envisages, especially with tactical advances based on six years of study of Cold Start theory. Besides, the Indian Army's ability to generate Cold Start IBG formations - equipment acquisition, forward facilities, restructuring of the Holding Corps, training, etc - is incomplete and moving forward at a glacial pace. The concept is not operational yet. The Indian army, air force and navy have not bought on to it doctrinally, and the civilian government has not endorsed it as policy. It would be unfair to say it is merely a hollow threat, but Pakistan's conventional modernisation has kept pace and will continue to.

Is implementing a battlefield TNW capability worth the downside risks? The tradeoffs of trying to enhance nuclear deterrence at the battlefield level are huge. Command and control and certain safety requirements for battlefield nuclear weapons are far more demanding, given that this system would have to be pre-deployed and combat-ready to deter fast-takeoff Cold Start operations. The NASR system will also have a distinct signature (even if camouflaged), with each launcher truck accompanied by a radar/C3 and a trans-loader vehicle, and would be a high priority for detection and preemptive conventional air attack. NASR systems that actually are nuclear-equipped will pose the classical "use them or lose them" dilemma. They may be sucked into warfighting and start the nuclear escalation spiral. India's response need not be TNWs, but could be tactical use of strategic weapons. Moreover, India's NFU declaratory policy can be reversed with a single Pakistani nuclear detonation, whether low-yield or not, and regardless over whose territory it occurs.

Can Cold Start threats be reduced or reversed by other means - or by an approach that lies in Pakistani hands? This one is a tough sell in Pakistan after decades of building itself up as a national security state, but now may be the last best time to face it squarely. Cold Start and limited war ideas get their appeal as a response to Pakistani subconventional warfare operations which originally were focused in Kashmir but since 2001 have gone deep into India's heartland. It may be true that many in India have no love lost for Pakistan and India has in the more distant past been guilty of subconventional warfare against Pakistan too, and not only in the rebellion that led to Bangladesh. But it is not India's disposition today to subvert or break up Pakistan, apart from the few hawks today who call for reviving India's covert warfare capabilities as a strategic instrument. Rather, India has an interest in regional as well as domestic stability and space to maximise its economic growth.

Cold Start posturing would fold up fast if the provocation of subconventional warfare were stopped. Obviously this does not mean peace would break out all over, and Pakistan surely would continue to maintain its conventional defences and strategic deterrent for the foreseeable future. But the risks of conventional war and nuclear escalation would obviously be reduced and stability probably would take hold and widen.

There are a multitude of other reasons for Pakistan arresting extremism on and emanating from its own territory - these are seamlessly connected forces now - and Pakistan could count on a lot of support if that became a dedicated and not just a rhetorical objective. The internal threats have taken Pakistan's security so far south, it will undoubtedly take a prodigious and sustained effort to reverse them and restore domestic order to an acceptable level. It would be best if Pakistan did not lock itself into yet another form of enhanced risk and security fatigue with TNWs.

The writer is President, Policy Architects International, Reston, VA, USA
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