Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
those faced by the United States during the Cold War.
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Because India is likely
to distribute only discrete components of its nuclear 'arsenal' across different
locations, the military will likely be tasked primarily with storing, maintaining
and manning the delivery systems in the first instance.
This separation by components—which lies at the heart of the Indian version
of the distributed solution—will probably be further complemented by a
partitioning by organization: the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), both civilian
agencies, will retain custody of the fissile core and the weapons assembly (either
jointly or separately), while the nuclear-capable delivery system, be it aircraft or
missile, will continue to remain in the custody of the military since there is in
effect no viable alternate arrangement as far as the dual-capable delivery systems
are concerned. Thus, neither the DAE nor the DRDO nor the military would be
able to launch a nuclear weapon independently since none of these organizations
—acting autonomously—would have all the necessary components to assemble a
completed weapon and deliver it to target without explicit authorization from the
national leadership.
Without such authorization, it would in fact be impossible for the various
custodial teams even to assemble together since there is high degree of
organizational separation between the civilian nuclear scientists, the civilian
defense technologists, and the uniformed military. Unauthorized assembly of
nuclear weapons would require all three groups to collude effectively if
deployment postures involving a very high degree of separation among
components are chosen by the national leadership.
This is an almost impossible prospect in the case of India because the
custodians of these components, being few in number and knowing each other
very intimately, share an extraordinarily high commitment to the Indian state and,
as such, would be unlikely to undertake any course of action that would imperil
the national interest. The lengthy process of socialization that occurs in the
civilian bureaucracies, the nuclear weapons research program, the defense
scientific establishment, and the uniformed services, in effect, serves as a
de
facto
personnel reliability program.
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The multiple levels of distribution—first by component and then by
organization—which will most likely be institutionalized by the Indian system of
managing its nuclear assets, thus, effectively serves as a 'super PAL',
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an
elaborate set of physical and organizational constraints on the unauthorized
creation of a nuclear weapon when such is not required by the demands of
national policy.
While the character of distribution—by component and by organization—will
remain a key difference between the American and Indian solutions to the
problems of survivability and unauthorized use, the pattern of ultimate control
with respect to the question of who can legitimately order nuclear use will also
