Agni-V: The fire that India needs

Last week India successfully testfired the 5000 kmrange ballistic missile AgniV off the Orissa coast The nuclearcapable missile will become fully operational by 2015 after lsquofour to five repeatable testsrsquo and user trials Few people remember that Indiarsquos strategic weapons programme started in the early 1970s with Project Devil SRBM and Project Valiant ICBM Project Valiant was an attempt to build a 8000 km range missile with three liquid fuel stages The 30tonnes thrust liquid engine was first test fired on 10 May 1974 but the project was soon cancelled because of insufficient progress weak programme management and poor organisation structure The current missile development programme the IGMDP comprising five missiles and their variants was launched by the DRDO in 1983 While the Prithvi and the Agni series of ballistic missiles are meant to be strategic delivery systems the Trishul shortrange and Akash mediumrange are air defence SurfacetoAir missiles and the Nag is an antitank guided missile Of these the Prithvi and Agni series of missiles have been markedly successful Aiming high The 5000 kmrange ballistic missile AgniV is the second credible leg of Indiarsquos strategic Triad and is the first Indian strategic missile capable of canister launch Although it can also deliver a nuclear warhead the Prithvi a singlestage missile with a range of 150250 kilometres is essentially a tactical weapon for conventional use It has been operational for many years now Agni missiles in contrast are strategic carriers for delivering nuclear weapons mdash the first four versions have ranges varying from 700 to 3000 kilometers The successful AgniV test has been rightly described by the Indian establishment as lsquoa quantum leap in Indiarsquos strategic capabilityrsquo Nuclear weapons are strategic in the sense that they can not be used like other conventional military weapons in war They are geostrategic chess pieces They prevent war by creating the deterrence that the adversary cannot ignore More importantly while conventional military capabilities are essentially configured on identifiable adversaries strategic strengths are not countryspecific In fact they are the new currency of power in the modern era To many who argue that the theory of deterrence is discredited here is K Subrahmanyamrsquos simple explanation ldquoWhat is relevant in international politics and international security relations is not whether deterrence is rational or has been discredited but whether other nations which pose a potential threat to us believe in it or not Pakistan and China believe in it That is what matters for the Indian security calculusrdquo That deterrence works is also proved by the experience of the US and the USSR after 40 years of nuclear and missile confrontation the two superpowers sat across a table concluded a peace agreement and ended the Cold War Given our No First Use nuclear doctrine there is a certain minimum credible deterrent that India needs to hold Minimum credible deterrent which underpins Indiarsquos nuclear doctrine was incidentally the title of the study carried out under Rajiv Gandhirsquos direction in November 1985 by General Sundarji with APJ Abdul Kalam and Dr Chidambaram as its members Indiarsquos minimum credible deterrent has to come from a nuclear Triad which provides a potent second strike capability AgniV is the second credible leg of Indiarsquos strategic Triad aircraftbased delivery being the first It is the first Indian strategic missile capable of canister launch allowing it to be launched from any part of the country It is also configured to hold several Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle MIRV warheads An MIRV comprises 310 nuclear warheads where each warhead can be assigned to a different target separated by hundreds of kilometres Although it will take another 45 years to deploy the MIRV once deployed MIRV will enable a single missile to overwhelm the adversaryrsquos missile defenceThe final leg of the Triad in the form of a nuclear powered submarine launching a ballistic missile with MIRV warheads from below the water is thus now closer to reality The fears of a Chinese backlash to AgniV are overblown If India were to borrow a lesson from what China did visagravevis the US it is possible to develop the strategic missile as well as improve relations with Beijing The nuclear weapons are indeed the new Himalayas mdash to use my colleague Nitin Pairsquos evocative phrase mdash and the successful testing of AgniV has just increased the height of that strategic barrier u00a0 Sushant K Singh is Fellow for National Security at the Takshashila Institution and editor of PragatiThe Indian National Interest Review