Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
context often leads to criticisms, both within India and abroad, about the quality
of the country's command and control.
97
Irrespective of how such criticisms are finally evaluated, any analysis of the
Indian nuclear command system must recognize that India
does
possess an
excellent, entirely formal, national command system which regulates all the
activities of the military across research, procurement, training, deployment, and
operations. A different, but parallel, system exists—formally— where controls
over the atomic energy establishment are concerned. What the country may
currently lack is a formal nuclear command system, that is, an isomorphically
structured system which regulates research, procurement, training, deployment,
and operations in the nuclear realm through an extremely detailed specification of
functional and administrative tasks.
98
Yet, precisely because India does possess a formal national command system
which regulates both the military and the atomic energy domains separately, it is
possible for its elected leadership to graft informal, or perhaps even secretly
formal, arrangements pertaining to nuclear operations on to what are otherwise
two distinct but orderly organizational structures.
India's senior security managers are quite attracted to the idea of
institutionalizing a more sophisticated version of the framework illustrated in
Figures
5
and
6
as the template for the command and control of Indian nuclear
operations in the future. This template, of course, would be modified to
accommodate the new delivery systems and the larger number of nuclear
weapons that India will acquire over time. It would also incorporate more
structured opportunities for the military's participation in affairs relating to the
overall deterrent, especially insofar as refining nuclear requirements, conducting
targeting analysis, completing contingency plans, and integrating the services'
infrastructure, ancillary technologies, and other assorted conventional
capabilities in support of nuclear operations, are concerned.
The prospect of such an organizational design forming the basis of India's
future command system has not been greeted favorably by the military who, if
the reported words of India's Air Chief Marshal (retd.) S.K.Mehra are any
indication, appear to be concerned that despite the Prime Minister's repeated
declaration 'that adequate C
3
I arrangements were in place, …the Services
seemed out of the decision-making loop'.
99
Such statements made by Indian
military officers are based on the presumption that New Delhi seeks to deploy a
robust and ready arsenal, intended for the conduct of prompt operations, rather
than a force-in-being oriented toward ensuring deterrence but also capable of
executing retaliatory strikes
in extremis
.
A secret policy paper,
Options for India—Formation of a Strategic
Nuclear
Command,
reportedly prepared by the Planning Directorate of the Indian military
and approved by the three service chiefs after the May 1998 tests, outlined the
military's suggested command system (See
Figure 7
).
100
