| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Perilous Pursuit |
| 2008-02-23 |
| With missile defense, India turns the thumbscrews on unsettled Pakistan Scientific American Magazine - March, 2008 The assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the defiance of militants and public unease with President Pervez MusharrafÂ’s government have raised questions about the stability of Pakistan and the security of its nuclear armament. Exacerbating these concerns is a nervous neighbor. In January, weeks after an Indian missile successfully crashed into another missile over the Bay of Bengal, an official announced that India could deploy a defense shield against ballistic missiles by 2011. By seeking to fend off its tenacious rival, India may have inadvertently increased the risk of a regional nuclear exchange. Furthermore, “missile defense will make it likely that greater damage will be inflicted on India” if such a war breaks out, argues Theodore Postol, a defense analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Experts have long considered the Indian subcontinent to be the likeliest flash point for the worldÂ’s first nuclear exchange [see “India, Pakistan and the Bomb,” by M. V. Ramana and A. H. Nayyar; Scientific American, December 2001]. Ever since India began the nuclear arms race in 1974, Pakistan has responded tit-for-tat to every development. The effort seems to have paid off for Pakistan: in 1999, when it sent paramilitary forces across the border, India repelled the attackers but did not pursue them home, reportedly because of threats of atomic retaliation. IndiaÂ’s planners have now decided that a missile defense shield is the answer to their self-inflicted predicament. They have an ally in the Bush administration, which last year forged a deal that will allow India to purchase uranium from international sources for its civilian reactors. If the agreement goes through, India will be able to process all its domestic uranium for the military, adding 60 to 100 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually to its current stock (estimated at 600 kilograms). Earlier, in 2005, the U.S. had offered to share military technology, including that of missile defense, with India. Officials and military contractors from around the world have since been thronging to New Delhi in the hope of selling components of a defense system. Many scientists have pointed out the inherent shortcomings of ballistic-missile defense [see “Holes in the Missile Shield,” by Richard L. Garwin; Scientific American, November 2004]. Defense systems of this kind cannot, for instance, distinguish decoys from real threats. In South Asia, short distances magnify the problems. “ItÂ’s pretty unlikely that you can expect to reliably intercept anything,” opines physicist Zia Mian of Princeton University, who studies nuclear proliferation and global security. IndiaÂ’s Defense Research and Development Organization claims that its planned defense shield will destroy an enemy missile three minutes after the missileÂ’s detection by radar. Early-warning radar, such as one that India has imported from Israel, could detect the missile and determine its course within 110 seconds after its launch. But a ballistic missile launched on a low trajectory from, say, a Pakistani air base could reach New Delhi in as little as five minutes, according to Mian and physicists M. V. Ramana of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore and R. Rajaraman of JawaharÂlal Nehru University in Delhi. That could leave technicians with too little time to figure out if the warning is real. U.S. scientists once spent eight minutes determining that a warning of a Soviet launch was false. Indeed, false alarms are frequent when it comes to early-warning systems. A flight of geese or an incidence of atmospheric turbulence can fool radar, and anomalous reflections of the sun can trick satellite-based infrared detectors. Between 1977 and 1988—the only period for which data have been released—the U.S. recorded an annual average of 2,600 false alarms of ballistic-missile launches from the Soviet Union. Even if India responds to a false alarm just by launching an interceptor missile, that action could be interpreted by Pakistan as an attack. Moreover, soon after India acquired early-warning radar Pakistan tested a cruise missile, which Postol believes was reverse-engineered from an American Tomahawk missile that fell in Pakistan during a 1999 attack on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Powered throughout its flight, such a missile can hug the ground to evade radar. And in an apparent response to the India-U.S. nuclear deal, Pakistan has begun building a reactor for producing plutonium, which may yield a warhead small enough to fit onto a cruise missile. Pakistan also possesses ballistic missiles fitted with small fins on their forward, payload sections. These structures can add maneuverability, making the warheads exceedingly difficult to catch. Still, “the attacker is always concerned that missile defense might work better than he thinks,” Postol points out, and will launch more projectiles than necessary to ensure that at least a few get through. He suggests an alternative way of avoiding a nuclear holocaust. Both nations should disperse and hide their missiles and authorize a designated general in a remote outpost to launch retaliatory strikes should the political leadership be taken out in a first strike—and let the other side know. That way the rulers of both countries can be sure that a nuclear misadventure will lead to their homeland becoming history. Unlike missile defense, mutually assured destruction is at least a time-tested way to keep nuclear weapons in their holsters. |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #3 I used to subscribe to SA before it became Discover magazine with better graphics. Pity. In their defense, a March article was probable written at least 3 months ago - long before the recent shootdown. mutually assured destruction is at least a time-tested way to keep nuclear weapons in their holsters. MAD worked for the United States and the fUSSR because they are about 30 minutes apart as the missile flies. This means no one can get in a first strike sucker punch without retaliation. Pakistan and India, however, are only a few minutes apart which means there is great incentive for a massive first strike. MAD also assumes both opponents are 'rational' which is another way of saying they share the same evaluation function for valuing the outcome of the game. If your oponent is happy with a lose-lose scenario, prepare for incoming! |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-02-23 20:47 |
| #2 A flight of geese or an incidence of atmospheric turbulence can fool radar, Never saw Geese with afterburners? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-02-23 13:10 |
| #1 a loooong time ago in a galaxy far far away, Sxientific American was a serious magazine. Since then it's become a Glowball Warmening/Leftist/Eco rag. India should not try to protect itself from nutcase Islamist Pakistan? Oh, right, because it would cause insecurity among the nutcase Islamists....What a load of crap |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-02-23 09:24 |