I must confess that i am not a scholar of nuclear doctrine and my assessment of the situation is based on
(a) Interaction with research community
(b) Attending seminars
(c) watching seminars on youtube.
it is indeed nice to know that you know this subject "inside out" as you have claimed above,but dont you think Adm shankar's lecture also bear some weightage,given the fact that he served as chief of SFC once?
Ah that you are not a scholar of nuclear doctrine is quite evident and I am thankful for that, what with so many 'scholars' ruling the Indian media nowadays
Anyways, I am sure your interaction and exposure would be much more scientific, informed and academic and I truly confess am bereft of the same, but my education has been, as it is said, more hands on and practical oriented over two decades. So I may just have the audacity and arrogance to know the subject inside out . Oh, by the ways, the officer I was referring to, he is also a person who chucked IIT Kharagpur as a kid and joined the NDA. A coincidence?
As I said earlier, there is a deliberate ambiguity in Indian nuclear doctrine. When I gave you the reference of specific Para 2 (Objectives) Sub-Para 3a which says '
(a) any threat of use of nuclear weapons against India shall invoke measures to counter the threat: ' you did a Congress on me, you quoted a different paragraph while neatly avoiding what has been quoted to you. I have not said India has a First Use policy, I have said India has ambiguity of its NFU policy. The line I have quoted above has to be read in conjunction with that statement.
Coming to the practical side of issue. The structure of SFC is such that even the GOC-in-C Strategic Forces will never be aware of what exactly is the state at a given time. The funny thing is, that the missile groups staff officers are also not completely aware of their own formation. This is a deliberate set up for security, it is the actual system of compartmentalization which is at every level. Now coming to statement of the admiral, as a person who is giving a lecture to the world forum on this topic, would you go about highlighting this flexible ambiguity after the government of the day under PM Vajpayee had declared a NFU post Shakti tests? It is fashionably 'responsible' to declare no first use, but how long does it hold when your enemy has evidently made moves to deploy WMDs against you?
The moves to counter a potential deployment of WMD against Indian forces/targets include a counterforce strike on the threat being assembled. Period. There is no ambiguity in the minds of Indian Forces or that of the Government of India. The counterforce application of the force will be on the formation preparing a strike or in process of deploying a strike on India/Indian forces. The decision, of course, has to be taken by the PM under advisement of NAC. Now there is a caveat to the whole issue. The deployment of sub-KT weapons with low yield. What the matter of contention is, what will be the level of escalation that has to be achieved. For a deployment of a nominal bomb against a division sized force of ours (about 15000 troops) will have a casualty rate of 500 approximately in open and lesser if in protective mode, which is acceptable rate in one case and unacceptable in another. The nominal bomb is a 20KT warhead and here I am assuming a deployment with minimal radioactive fallout as the criteria of strike so an air burst of say about 190 meters AGL will be optimal with height of around 450m or so AGL being optimal for widespread destruction of life forms. Now, assuming the strike being of minimal fallout the radius of effects will max out at 2.5 km. The frontage of an infantry battalion is more than that. Now extrapolate it for sub-kiloton yield weapons, how much effect will there be? In wide open spaces, you can shrug off and move on .... The targeting policies and principles in vogue can be discussed as a separate subject altogether. But unlike many of members talking of Mumbai or Lahore or Islamabad or Delhi as targets the targets will be more like Bahadurgarh, Sialkot, Sargodha, Pune etc etc. Or maybe even more isolated and less densely populated areas. Because any strike of CBRN nature is a strategic and not a tactical strike as it has to be policy decision with manifold political and diplomatic ramifications in addition to military ones.
You see, Indian and Pakistani forces practice and prepare to fight in a nuclear environment. If there indeed was a solid NFU on Indian side and no ambiguity (something clearly spelled out by the quoted reference by me) then the level of violence in Kashmir Valley would have been exponentially escalated. Pakistan has a declared first use policy, it knows the use will attract an Indian retaliation, and India has shown repeated inability to take a political decision to go to war against Pakistan on provocations, a perceived weakness of Indian Political Class remains unexploited by the PA? Is it even possible? It is this ambiguity which creates a doubt even in Pakistani planners minds about the threat of risking an open war with Indian over their policies in Kashmir. They are unsure about how much the MAD concept will hold in case India decides to act.
I repeat .... officially ... any deployment or actual moves to deploy a CBRN weapon on India/Indian formations constitutes a CBRN threat and India reserves the right to neutralize it by all means including a counterforce strike.
As for the indian nuclear doctrine is concerned it has been laid out very clearly,first in '99(in the form of a draft prepared by CSS) and then in '04(if i am not mistaken,perhaps you can better tell) in the form of official indian doctrine
The policy was indeed drafted up in 1998 and brought before the CCS rather specifically to Vajpayee, Rahul Mahajan, Brajesh Mishra and George Fernandes in 1999.
