Pakistan Clarifies Conditions for Tactical Nuclear Weapon Use Against India

[Abdul S Hashmi]

Pakistan has had been constantly under threat from India since independence and got dismembered into two parts in 1971. Whatever Pakistan is now doing in relation to defense is not to invade or destroy India but just for its survival. Regarding Kashmir, Pakistan has a clear stance since day one that it is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan and must be resolved through exercising the right of self determination by its people as promised in UN Security Council resolutions. Kind regards to all concerned.

 

[Shariq786]

Another 26/11 might initiate. I am just speculating. Or it can be a Kargil like influx which the govt wants to punish.
However the onus is on GoP to rein its non state actors operating out of its soil, and no misadventures like Kargil.

Until then both armies will stock weapons and country in general will live in peace.



WW3? Who will come and fight on ur behalf? China. Definitely they wont. Pakistan will lose its moral authority the moment it launches a tactical Nuke.

The time is long gone when Japan was bombed. The world will simply wont permit another Nuk attack. If India uses it, we will have to face repercussions. However we have NFU. So nothing to worry about as an Indian.



Hahaha.

Next Joke pls. I shall try to laugh.

1 - First thing don't quote me without knowing what i m saying

2 - he said the whole world would nuke PAK and against it i said it would cause a world war 2 keeping in sense the nuclear fallout and reactions of CHINA and IRAN

3 - Your right but Pak won't use nukes on other but on the invading forces on its own soil so no morale break down but if you retaliate you will be on the bad side off the world however we both won't be there to witness that either

So before going all nuts and quoting me try to read and analyze the situation first

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

1 - First thing don't quote me without knowing what i m saying

2 - he said the whole world would nuke PAK and against it i said it would cause a world war 2 keeping in sense the nuclear fallout and reactions of CHINA and IRAN

3 - Your right but Pak won't use nukes on other but on the invading forces on its own soil so no morale break down but if you retaliate you will be on the bad side off the world however we both won't be there to witness that either

So before going all nuts and quoting me try to read and analyze the situation first

Why the hell China and Iran will come to your aid when Pakistan will lose the moral backing after using the Nuk weapon first Try to think and comprehend.
Attack on invading forces.? Yeah. Make your own country a Nuclear waste. What an idea Sirji. India and the world will make sure to destroy the rest of the N weapons if it ever uses one.

 

[Jat Boy]

Pakistan and must be resolved through exercising the right of self determination by its people as promised in UN Security Council resolutions. Kind regards to all concerned.

That land and that soil belongs to india.
The people living there today or in the future are indian citizens

Saichen & Kargil are under indian flags

Nothing will change this scenario now

And it has nothing to do with pakistan who have enough internal issues of their own to deal with.

let me remind you there are 300 million moslems in india

 

[Pindi Boy]

Again with 12 year old girl meme, al britani pakistani

For final time,

Pakistan is only, read again, ONLY threatening to use """""" TACTICAL""""" nuke weapons. i.e. low yield, and even so to ONLY detonate it within Pakistan. Whether mobile or not does not matter. They are not assembling their higher yield weapons for this attack. Once that lower yield weapon is seen as launched, India will retaliate with higher yield weapons immediately and Pakistan will not have time to retaliate. Don't worry, you will be safe to mingle with tweens in UK

@waz Please check this troller

 

[Basel]

Quite honestly. Lets say Pakistan uses a Nuke weapon on IA invading ur nation. And India for some reason hesitates to respond back in next 2-3 days. Do you honestly believe USA or Russia or UK will be sitting merrying around? The moral authority of Pakistan will vanish as soon as you guys use it. And if they start using Nukes on you, whom will you respond? (Mind you, India-Russia Friendship pact is still On, and Russia can still attack on India's behalf). Any usage of Nukes, and Pakistan is history. Oh. Not destroyed. But invaded, and divided into nations.
And above more than that, India can still respond.

Kindly go through my posts on PDF and you will find one in which I have posted western source link which tell what will happen to world if Pakistan use TNW on invading Indian army, forgot about full scale MAD.

hehe.. will you get a place in any of those 54 countries ? Do you know how the Arabs treat you ?

Ohh the reasons I visit PDF for..


Buddy, it's not India that lost half the country. Cold or hot, you will get to know, when it becomes imminent. Right now, we have other things to worry about

Still living in past, there is no civil war in Pakistan now which you can use to your benefit.

I have seen many times this goon comes up with hilarious post. Sometimes he claims he knows that Pakistan establishment on secret missiles and its top secret and now its pakistan second strike capability.
Yes, I know that you will start claiming now that you have 3rd strike capability.......

Just few post and showing your real face here. First learn to behave before opening your mouth, or good ethics are not taught in your area?

@waz @Horus @Oscar please check these type of people on PDF there are many who are misbehaving with senior members and few older members (specially Indian) are supporting them.

How?

When did Pakistan deploy SSBNs or SSGNs?

To know you have to test your cold start in real. But Indians only talk big don't have guts to implement it.

 

[locker]

Just few post and showing your real face here. First learn to behave before opening your mouth, or good ethics are not taught in your area?

Oh my lord. I am shivering now.
Nope, not because you made my complaint but because I am fearing your hilarious posts which has the tendency to make me die of laughter.
Wait wait wait. Please don't bring that 2nd or 3rd strike capability again. I am fearing now.

 

[nForce]

Still living in past, there is no civil war in Pakistan now which you can use to your benefit.

Clearly you have a different understanding of the word 'benefit'.

 

[waz]

No. Pakistan can only wound India, but India would annihilate Pakistan. India would be willing to take the wound if it is assured that we will get rid of Pakistan once and for all. India is too big a country for Pakistan to threaten with MAD.

Most of the population is rural and 67% of the nation is mountainous i.e.natural barriers against radiation. You're not annihilating no one. As for wounding, hence why Pakistan is building its arsenal to such large proportions, that's not for wounding at all.
I pray such weapons are never used, and war to never break out.

 

[Nilgiri]

@Nilgiri , are you familiar with the concept and working of Hydrodynamic testing of a nuclear warhead?

Finally a good point! I was waiting for someone to bring this up....too bad most of the thread has now denigrated to trolling, name calling and chest thumping.

Yes I am familiar with all sorts of cold testing methodologies. The US continues to do them for example (mostly to gauge effects of worst case warhead aging).

However they carry significant limitations for say moving from gen 1 to gen 2 pit geometries among other issues.

They can test basic conceptual effects of changes to proven designs and give suggested starting points for some further iteration, but they are not a substitute for real tests unless you have a massive test history and access to various critical coefficients and curves that I would assume only US and Russia would have (that can then be used to computer simulate to some higher degree of reliability).

You can read up for example on the Swan and Robin primary testing and how they formed the bedrock for data collection that can be used in advanced cold testing methods, simluation and scaling.

The US for example produces documents such at this one:

http://fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/SSMP-FY2012.pdf

But for Pakistan we have to rely on hearsay and rumor at best....coupled with a Nuclear science and RnD manpower+budget several magnitudes lower than other nuclear powers.

So unless there is some concession from the die-hard "Pakistan tactical nukes are as advanced (or even more advanced) as P5 countries" that there has been significant help from the Chinese on key critical aspects of miniaturisation, reliability assurance (without testing) and quite possibly direct transfer of critical equipment.....I am not buying all this hot air about the Nasr tactical warhead.

If you have some useful information to shed some light on advanced Pakistan cold testing (outside of Kirana which was quite basic), by all means share it.

 

[The Deterrent]

Finally a good point! I was waiting for someone to bring this up....too bad most of the thread has now denigrated to trolling, name calling and chest thumping.

Yes I am familiar with all sorts of cold testing methodologies. The US continues to do them for example (mostly to gauge effects of worst case warhead aging).

However they carry significant limitations for say moving from gen 1 to gen 2 pit geometries among other issues.

They can test basic conceptual effects of changes to proven designs and give suggested starting points for some further iteration, but they are not a substitute for real tests unless you have a massive test history and access to various critical coefficients and curves that I would assume only US and Russia would have (that can then be used to computer simulate to some higher degree of reliability).

You can read up for example on the Swan and Robin primary testing and how they formed the bedrock for data collection that can be used in advanced cold testing methods, simluation and scaling.

The US for example produces documents such at this one:

http://fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/SSMP-FY2012.pdf

But for Pakistan we have to rely on hearsay and rumor at best....coupled with a Nuclear science and RnD manpower+budget several magnitudes lower than other nuclear powers.

So unless there is some concession from the die-hard "Pakistan tactical nukes are as advanced (or even more advanced) as P5 countries" that there has been significant help from the Chinese on key critical aspects of miniaturisation, reliability assurance (without testing) and quite possibly direct transfer of critical equipment.....I am not buying all this hot air about the Nasr tactical warhead.

If you have some useful information to shed some light on advanced Pakistan cold testing (outside of Kirana which was quite basic), by all means share it.

While the Chinese assistance has been there throughout, it is thoroughly unfair to assume that Pakistani weapon designing techniques need external assistance. Implosion devices designing began in the 1980s, and from uranium based cores we have moved on to U/Pu hybrid (reference: statement by Dr. Pervaiz Hoodbhoy) and only Pu design.
While the older devices have been based on CHIC-4, significant changes have been made to them to accommodate them in smaller warheads of SRBMs.

In my knowledge, hydrodynamic (cold) testing proves a weapon design by using U-238 core and emission of a significant amount of neutrons generated by a very small amount of fission. Kirana was a thing of 90s. Pakistan has moved way beyond, and in an interview of Dr. MubarakMand, he stated that in 2002, a training launch of an operational Shaheen-I was conducted with a cold device, sparking interest/concern of the Americans in the context of the ongoing IndoPak standoff, so you can well imagine how far we might have come 15 years later.

Coming to "buying" the idea of Nasr's tactical warhead, I'm not sure why you have a problem accepting the fact that a system like that has been built and might be in service with the Pakistani SFC soon. A 30 years of experience in warhead designing is more than enough to design a miniaturized Pu implosion device. Nobody here can back that up by any official documentation, but I think it is enough that Pakistan has claimed this capability officially, and the international community (except certain BRFites) didn't have a problem believing it. Otherwise the claim would have been discarded just like in case of NK/Iran.

 

[Point_4590]

What is there in pak to invade as far as conducting a military action or surgical strike against a terrorist attack is useless particularly in the case of pak where unlike myanmar indian specific jehadi tanjeems can be found in Urban centres and entire rural Punjab apart from kashmir, FATA,NWP.

No surgical strike or military action can end this otherwise pakistan army would have ended terrorism in pakistan years ago.

 

[Nilgiri]

While the older devices have been based on CHIC-4, significant changes have been made to them to accommodate them in smaller warheads of SRBMs.

This is the crux of the matter.

"Significant changes", which would have to encompass pit geometry changes cannot be modelled (to verification /assured reliability standards) using hydrodynamic modelling only. This was an inherent problem faced by Western and Russian designs leading to several fizzles when they were optimizing primaries for their next generation H-bombs. You need gen 2 (oblong linear implosion deriavtives) for tactical miniaturisation. It has since been established the leap from Gen 1 (Smiling Buddha/Chagai) to Gen 2 (Pokhran II) geometries requires test verification... period.....unless you borrow someone elses copybook or design.The specific issues pertain to the interference patterns during implosion...thats precisely why the US established the DARHT facility in the first place....and thats just for modelling on existing proven designs. Does such a similar one exist in Pakistan? A complete quantum leap based purely on modelling through hydrodynamics or any form of cold testing will produce a non-verified and ultimately unreliable design. Thats why I'm saying China must have provided a verified geometry.....or Pakistan is playing a big gamble on its tactical warheads which I don't think they are. There is no way Pakistan achieved a reliable Gen II geometry with cold testing alone.....be it complete mockup or subcritical material.

In my knowledge, hydrodynamic (cold) testing proves a weapon design by using U-238 core and emission of a significant amount of neutrons generated by a very small amount of fission.

Limited significance since neutron transport effects and their related effects on the imploding pit only materialise above a certain threshold....at which point its really not a subcritical easily hidden test anymore. A massive X-ray scope with associated supercomputer with tabulated data from and curves from a history of tests might be able to give you a certain confidence limit of reliability for a subcritical or cold modelling....but I doubt it would approach anywhere near a decent guaranteed level (say 97%+) plus all this sort of technology going into Pakistan would have been known by their providers and probably stopped (unless its China who I don't have much info regarding the level of their technology in this area).....so I doubt it.

Dr. MubarakMand, he stated that in 2002, a training launch of an operational Shaheen-I was conducted with a cold device, sparking interest/concern of the Americans in the context of the ongoing IndoPak standoff, so you can well imagine how far we might have come 15 years later.

A dummy load on a missile test is different from modelling a supersonic pit implosion of a new untested geometry and then basing a whole tactical design on it.

A 30 years of experience in warhead designing is more than enough to design a miniaturized Pu implosion device.

Most of that time was taken to produce/scale the Chagai design...and if it is a CHIC 4 design, its a basic spherical one. Changing to linear implosion geometry would need a more up to date proven Chinese design....that is most likely the route Pakistan has gone if it wants a guaranteed working tactical design that will work when scaled.

Nobody here can back that up by any official documentation, but I think it is enough that Pakistan has claimed this capability officially, and the international community (except certain BRFites) didn't have a problem believing it. Otherwise the claim would have been discarded just like in case of NK/Iran.

So what is your opinion on what they are? Are they neutron bombs like shaheenmissile was saying or are they conventional Pu implosion + tamper? Let us agree to disagree about how Pakistan developed them. You say it was purely indigenous, I say China must have provided a Gen 2 linear pit geometry...and Pakistan could have scaled/refined that with cold testing or just computer simulation depending on how much associated data China gave you in the blueprint.

If Pakistan has stuck with circular proven geometry (from chagai) then there is no way the yield is above 1kt from the Nasr....its probably way below that and would be a massive waste of fissile material if the Nasr is produced in numbers.

But I never denied Pakistan could have them (they could also not have them...who knows for sure)....after all China has provided you the original starting point....its not like they are in any rush to stop there....if they feel there is a valid point with ensuring additional deterrence through the tactical and later MIRV realm (for which linear geometries are essential).

 

[The Deterrent]

This is the crux of the matter.

"Significant changes", which would have to encompass pit geometry changes cannot be modelled (to verification /assured reliability standards) using hydrodynamic modelling only. This was an inherent problem faced by Western and Russian designs leading to several fizzles when they were optimizing primaries for their next generation H-bombs. You need gen 2 (oblong linear implosion deriavtives) for tactical miniaturisation. It has since been established the leap from Gen 1 (Smiling Buddha/Chagai) to Gen 2 (Pokhran II) geometries requires test verification... period.....unless you borrow someone elses copybook or design.The specific issues pertain to the interference patterns during implosion...thats precisely why the US established the DARHT facility in the first place....and thats just for modelling on existing proven designs. Does such a similar one exist in Pakistan? A complete quantum leap based purely on modelling through hydrodynamics or any form of cold testing will produce a non-verified and ultimately unreliable design. Thats why I'm saying China must have provided a verified geometry.....or Pakistan is playing a big gamble on its tactical warheads which I don't think they are. There is no way Pakistan achieved a reliable Gen II geometry with cold testing alone.....be it complete mockup or subcritical material.

I don't have the technical authority to comment how Nasr's device was made or how it works, but the usual path taken to design and deploy a new device is via hydrodynamic testing.

Limited significance since neutron transport effects and their related effects on the imploding pit only materialise above a certain threshold....at which point its really not a subcritical easily hidden test anymore. A massive X-ray scope with associated supercomputer with tabulated data from and curves from a history of tests might be able to give you a certain confidence limit of reliability for a subcritical or cold modelling....but I doubt it would approach anywhere near a decent guaranteed level (say 97%+) plus all this sort of technology going into Pakistan would have been known by their providers and probably stopped (unless its China who I don't have much info regarding the level of their technology in this area).....so I doubt it.

There isn't much focus on hiding the cold tests, and the testing equipment is obviously in place. The chinese again must have assisted.

A dummy load on a missile test is different from modelling a supersonic pit implosion of a new untested geometry and then basing a whole tactical design on it.

I agree, what I meant to signify was that each design is verified via operational testing. I firmly believe that the hydrodynamic testing procedure gives enough confidence of the design.

Most of that time was taken to produce/scale the Chagai design...and if it is a CHIC 4 design, its a basic spherical one. Changing to linear implosion geometry would need a more up to date proven Chinese design....that is most likely the route Pakistan has gone if it wants a guaranteed working tactical design that will work when scaled.

I agree, but why do you think that linear implosion design is the only way for tactical warheads? Why can't a spherical Pu device work effectively?

So what is your opinion on what they are? Are they neutron bombs like shaheenmissile was saying or are they conventional Pu implosion + tamper? Let us agree to disagree about how Pakistan developed them. You say it was purely indigenous, I say China must have provided a Gen 2 linear pit geometry...and Pakistan could have scaled/refined that with cold testing or just computer simulation depending on how much associated data China gave you in the blueprint.

If Pakistan has stuck with circular proven geometry (from chagai) then there is no way the yield is above 1kt from the Nasr....its probably way below that and would be a massive waste of fissile material if the Nasr is produced in numbers.

But I never denied Pakistan could have them (they could also not have them...who knows for sure)....after all China has provided you the original starting point....its not like they are in any rush to stop there....if they feel there is a valid point with ensuring additional deterrence through the tactical and later MIRV realm (for which linear geometries are essential).

Pfft, neutron bombs. Ignore that guy.
My opinion is that they are conventional Pu implosion devices, to be used against settled military formations holding Pakistani territory. Good, lets move on.
The yield of 1 kt is enough for the purpose. How do you think it is a waste of fissile resources? How much Pu do you estimate a 1 kt spherical implosion device would consume?

Well the amount of secrecy sure raises ambiguities, but it is there. Do elaborate on why linear design is needed for MIRVs.

 

[Nilgiri]

I agree, but why do you think that linear implosion design is the only way for tactical warheads? Why can't a spherical Pu device work effectively?

The volume constraints of a cruise missile or artillery round lend themselves to linear implosion much better compared to a spherical geometry (which is only good for gravity bombs or 1st generation singular BM warheads) from a max yield per volume context.

The Davy Crockett IIRC is about the best you can get for a near spherical design (using just a touch above the bare critical mass of Pu)...and it gave a max of 1 kt....and it was an elliptical "egg" of 27 x 40 cm give or take. So for 5kt claimed by Nasr warhead, you would need an even more "eggy" two point hollow pit geometry. From what I've heard the US did do a test of the absolute bare minimum sized spherical design of something like 25.4 cm, and the yields were well into the sub kiloton range.

Basically the easiest way to conceptualize this is thinking about the effective package volume of a sphere compared to an ellipse ....the cruise missile diameter can become the minor axis of the ellipsoid....whereas with a sphere, the diameters are simply the same. I would suggest reading up on the Swan design primary when you have some spare time. Spherical is of course the most efficient in pure yield/kg material used (given the sphere is the minimum surface area per volume in nature)....its just it makes rather poor use of the cylindrical volume of a missile warhead.

I was talking about the efficiency being "higher" for a linear implosion earlier, but that is from a yield/volume context.

The yield of 1 kt is enough for the purpose. How do you think it is a waste of fissile resources? How much Pu do you estimate a 1 kt spherical implosion device would consume?

The inherent nature of scaling an implosion design leads to the inefficiency. It's because you effectively have less and less room for plastic explosive and reflector/lens arrangement +initiator/generators.

The discussion at: How many types of Ballistic missiles India has deployed? | Page 2

may also be of interest to you, though I am looking back at it now and there are certain content of mine that I would revise slightly if I am given better data on the Nasr dimensions. But a rough rule of thumb is that in this size, 0.5 kt is about the most you can expect from a spherical design based around minimum critical mass of Pu or U-235. 1 kt you can get when you simply elongate the geometry so its more elliptical. The US suitcase bombs, SADM and MADM programs are good places to investigate for some basic data on yield/size in this area.

Hence I am prepared to concede 1 kt is quite feasible by Pakistan...it fits well with the tactical nukes developed by other countries in the same size range and it would not require the level of advanced cold testing and simulations I was talking about earlier.

My issue lay with the other guy constantly saying 5kt in this package, that is strictly not impossible in this kind of volume but it would basically require Pakistan to go into advanced miniaturized geometries without any sort of structured testing/validation to back it up....for little added benefit....since you already get the tactical capability with a 1kt (or near 1kt) device.

I have always said 1kt is about the most Pakistan can be at with the Nasr with decent confidence interval.

Do elaborate on why linear design is needed for MIRVs.

Again its the nature of "squashing" in the most per volume. MIRVs are basically many smaller warheads instead of one big one, so geometrically you need to "squash" them into more oblong/cylindrical arrangements like I mentioned earlier with the tactical designs. Although the same level of tactical minitaurisation is not required....especially for the secondary if its say a staged thermonuke (which will define the warhead base size most probably).

You can of course also big bigger and more rockets if you want to keep absolutely everything spherical (fatter heavier RV's)...but generally the rocket efficiency/production (and thus also RV design) is more important than conserving fissile material to that level.

Its an optimization game in the end. Like is explained here: W88 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It also touches upon symmetric (spherical) compared to more difficult linear nonsymmetric implosion that I was mentioning earlier.