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        Daniel Gouré 1 : "WMD and Ballistic Missiles in South Asia"

Both India and Pakistan have sophisticated and, now, relatively
well-advanced WMD and ballistic missile programs. For both states the
acquisition, first, of WMD and, second, of longer-range delivery systems
was a core national security and foreign policy interest. At this point in
time, both countries are capable of delivery nuclear warheads using
ballistic missiles, at least to battlefield ranges. It is likely that
within a short period of time, both countries will have the capability to
deliver such warheads to MRBM/IRBM ranges.

India

The Indian commitment to the development of a world-class nuclear energy
and science infrastructure dates back almost to the day of independence.
The ability to control nuclear energy was seen as both one of the most
obvious symbols of first world status and as a means of addressing India's
energy needs. India built its first nuclear research reactor in 1956 and
its first power reactor in 1960. Currently India generates nearly 2,000 MW
of power from nuclear energy. It has an extremely large and sophisticated
nuclear infrastructure involving some 17 nuclear power plants, either
operational or under construction, a number of government-backed nuclear
research centers, and fuel and reprocessing facilities. India had announced
a plan to build a 500 MW fast breeder reactor, apparently as part of an
Indian program to develop a nuclear energy program based on thorium, which
unlike uranium ore, India possesses in abundance. 2

The Indian pursuit of nuclear weapons was triggered by its losing 1962 war
with India and that country's subsequent detonation of a nuclear device in
1964. At that time, India had access to spent fuel from the
Canadian-supplied CIRUS research reactor and a newly built reprocessing
plant. These capabilities allowed it to develop a nuclear "device" by 1974.
Subsequent to that, India has constructed additional weapons-grade material
producing reactors and reprocessing facilities. These allow the production
of hundreds of kilograms of plutonium per year. 3

India is believed to have produced as many as 60 nuclear weapons. There
have been no known nuclear tests beyond the first conducted in 1974.
However, there are a few sources which suggest that India may have
conducted tests of nuclear weapons using inert nuclear materials, U-238, as
a substitute for plutonium. 4 Such an approach would allow India to conduct
virtually all the testing necessary to validate the design and components
of its weapons.

Geography dictates India's requirement for long-range ballistic missiles.
The longer-range versions of the Prithvi (250 and 300 km) have the capacity
to hold at risk most strategic targets in Pakistan. However, they are
relatively useless with respect to China. That country, on the other hand,
can hold Indian targets at risk not only with its longer-range systems
based in central and Eastern China, but with shorter-range systems deployed
in Tibet. For India to be capable of striking critical Chinese targets, it
requires a missile of some 2,500 km, reportedly the range of the Agni.

India has pursued both a military missile and civil space launch
capability. The military missile program, which began in the 1980s, and
which centers on the short-range Prithvi and longer-range Agni missiles, is
now part of an Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP), begun
in the early 1990s. The purpose behind the IGMDP is to make India
self-sufficient in the design and production of a full range of missiles,
from anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles, through, at least, IRBMs. It
should be noted that the director of the IGMDP, Dr. Kalam was originally
with DRDO, then moved to ISRO to work on the SLV program, and returned to
DRDO to lead the IGMDP. In organizing the IGMDP, India assumed that its
efforts to develop a long-range ballistic missile capability and its
opposition to the Missile Technology Control regime (MTCR), would result in
denial of access to critical components. As a result, under, the IGMDP,
India has pursued indigenous development of critical technologies such as
phase shifters, advanced fiber optic and laser gyroscopes, carbon
composites, VLSI microchips, and supercomputers and associated
computational capabilities. 5

The Indian space launch program has developed at least two vehicles, the
PSLV and GSLV, intended to support the launch of satellites, both of which
can place large payloads into low-earth orbits. Critical technologies
associated with the space launch systems are readily transferable to the
Indian missile program. It should be noted that the first stage of the Agni
is a version of the now obsolete Indian space launch vehicle (SLV), the
precursor to the PSLV and GSLV. The SLV was, in turn, a design based on the
venerable U.S. Scout rocket. More recently, India has received assistance
from Russia in the development of cryogenic upper stage technology for the
PSLV and GSLV.

The Indian WMD and missile programs has been shaped in small part by that
country's drive for self-sufficiency, a goal which they have been
relatively successful at achieving with respect to critical design and
production capabilities. At present, both India and Pakistan remain
dependent, albeit to different degrees and in different technology areas,
on foreign assistance, notably Russian and Chinese. Nevertheless, it may be
a mistake to project India's future development path on the basis of what
has come before. A combination of unpredictable factors, most notably the
current policy of economic liberalization and the partial reversal of the
"brain drain" of scientific talent out of India, could add both capability
and energy to the Indian WMD and missile programs.

Until about a decade ago, most research and development in fields related
to WMD and ballistic missiles was the province of government institutions
and laboratories. Relatively little advanced work in relevant fields was
done in Indian universities. In addition, India industry was almost
uninvolved in the R&D process. Production contracts for defense and space
goods generally went to specialized, government-owned industries based on
blueprints produced by the R&D sector. While the R&D sector had foreign
contacts and benefited from collaborative research and even work abroad in
foreign institutions and industries, the same was not true of Indian
industry. Heavily subsidized or operating in protected markets, Indian
industries had little incentive to innovative or diversify. The absence of
competition, domestic or foreign, even in such sectors as white goods,
transportation, and consumer electronics, resulted in a lack of attention
to quality control. This resulted in chronic production problems and
schedule slippage in Indian defense programs.

Economic liberalization, begun almost a decade ago, is transforming the
Indian economy and the face of Indian R&D. The opening of large sectors of
the Indian market to foreign goods and overseas investment has forced
domestic producers to radically change their business practices. Many
companies have formed joint ventures with major overseas producers, the
former gaining production and process technology and skills and the latter
access to markets and indigenous sales networks.

Liberalization has also brought with it an explosion of investment in India
by foreign high technology firms. 6 Companies such as IBM, Phillips, Sun,
Intel, NEC, Siemens, Motorola, Oracle, Mitsubishi, DASA, Alcatel, and
others have set up laboratories and research centers in India, often in
association with India's premier university-level educational institutions.
Microsoft has opened its first research center outside the U.S. in
Hyderabad. In most cases, creation of these R&D centers involves the
transfer of equipment and know-how, including in a number of instances
production equipment and source codes, to India. Many of these same
companies provide scholarships for students at academic institutions
associated with their R&D facilities.

Liberalization has also radically changed the economic incentive structure
and, hence, the behavior of Indian universities. For most of its modern
history, Indian universities were state sponsored. 7 Research money was
provided by state institutions, such as the Indian department of Science
and technology or from foreign grant-making institutions such as the U.S.
National Science Foundation. Under liberalization, Indian universities are
given a fixed amount to cover basic operating expenses and encouraged to
seek additional funds from work for the private sector. As a result, for
the first time, the relatively untapped technical talent and research base
of India's universities was made available to the private and public
sectors. Each of the major Indian technical institutes has created a center
for consultancy which serves as a clearing house for requests for support
and assist the various university departments in developing proposals and
organizing teams.

One result of this change in behavior is a major increase in the level of
support provided by Indian educational institutions to Indian government
defense activities. Sponsored research from the Indian Defense Research
Organization (DRDO), the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the
Department of Atomic Energy of India (DAE) account for as much as eighty
per cent of outside funding for some of the better departments at Indian
universities. 8 Indian universities are now under contract to the above
organizations for: the development of, top cite just a few example: air
defense radars, the design of the Agni rocket engines, the design and
construction of fiber optic and ring laser gyros, the development of
cryptological systems, the creation of advanced heat resistant materials,
the design and fabrication of laser targeting devices, computational fluid
dynamics, the management of remote sensing data, the construction of
electronic devices, small motors, VLSI chips and associated instruction
sets, and automated target recognition and tracking systems.

These institutions are also benefiting from a partial reversal of the
"brain drain" of the past forty years. During most of its experience since
Independence, India experienced a serious outflow of critical technical and
scientific talent. Even today, more than 95% of the graduates of the
premier Indian technical programs go abroad for advanced education,
post-docs, etc. The latest estimates from both Indian and Western sources
indicate between 25 and 30-000 Indian students attending Western graduate
science and technology programs. 9 In that past, the vast majority of these
students stayed in the West, often permanently. Depending on the year,
there are between 50 and 80,000 Indian nationals working at various high
technology companies and institutions in Western countries. Most of these
are recruited directly from graduate schools. Still additional thousands of
Indian scientists are annually invited to conduct research at a wide range
of Western institutions. In the U.S. these have included Kirtland AFB, the
Aeronautics Center at Wright Patterson, AFB, Rome Air Development Center,
and various NASA centers and laboratories.

This "brain drain" is beginning to reverse itself. One factor leading to a
change in the pattern is the effort of Western technology corporations to
open R&D centers in India, thereby providing the opportunity for Indian
expatriates to return home. Indian universities and technical institutes
are also seeing the return of younger professionals. In many instances
these are individuals who have spent several years in the private sector
abroad or teaching at Western - principally U.S. - universities, before
returning. At more than three quarters of the twenty-five or so departments
canvassed in a recent CSIS study, newly-hired professors were predominantly
or exclusively returning Indians from major Western educational
institutions and corporations. 10 The availability of consultancies and
government-sponsored research provide additional sources of incomes is an
important cause in their decision to return

In addition to the changes discussed above, there is also the growth of
opportunities for private companies, heretofore excluded from or unwilling
to do work for the Indian government, to compete with existing
government-funded companies. These companies bring with them the advantages
of cost consciousness, a concern for efficiency, and greater access to
Western dual-use technologies. In an effort to accelerate progress, the
head of the Indian missile program, Dr. Kalam, is reported to have
organized in the mid-1990s a first-ever consortium of institutions,
including academic institutions and more than thirty non-defense
industries. 11

The role of private companies in India's defense business is likely to
progress slowly due to the resistance to change from both the government
sector and the military. Nevertheless, over time, the increasing role of
the private sector in supporting defense could add significantly to India's
ability to develop and deploy advanced military equipment, particularly if
those systems depend on technologies such as electronics, advanced
materials, and computers/ software.

Indian educational and research organizations suffer from a number of
important deficits that could reduce the advantages gained from a fresh
supply of talented individuals and access to Western know-how. These
institutions tend to be hardware poor, lacking the kinds of sophisticated
equipment common in Western laboratories and universities. Test and
evaluation equipment also is in short supply. Both at universities and in
industry as a whole. This is one reason why Western companies building R&D
centers in India or contracting for research typically provide hardware and
supporting test equipment to ensure the quality of the results meet Western
standards.

Overall, the changes identified above could support a revolution in Indian
technological/industrial support for their defense and space programs.
Access to an expanding pool of Western-trained, Western-experienced
scientists, researchers and technicians could impart new energy to these
programs. In addition, economic liberalization will require improvements in
the sophistication and performance of Indian industry. These industries are
likely to make an effort to compete with the traditional state-owned
defense industries in an effort to gain defense funds.

Pakistan

For Pakistan, the motivation for developing WMD is clearly less one of
economics or prestige, and almost exclusively an issue of national
security. As Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Mohammed Sharif, stated in
1991: "we will eat one loaf of bread a day rather than forego our peaceful
nuclear program." The experience of three Indo-Pakistan wars, the
Russia-Indian defense relationship, and the U.S. arms embargo has served to
focus Pakistan's attention on the importance of acquiring a WMD capability.
It appears that the trigger for Pakistan's aggressive pursuit of a nuclear
weapons capability, which began in 1972, was Pakistan's defeat in the war
over Bangladesh independence and evidence that India was on the threshold
of constructing a `device."

Unlike India, Pakistan has found it extremely difficult to develop an
indigenous high technology/nuclear infrastructure and has had to rely on
foreign sources. There are reports that the initial funding for the
Pakistan nuclear program came from Libya Pakistan's program has had to rely
on clandestine acquisition of materials and equipment and on assistance
from China. Pakistan is said to have conducted the most successful nuclear
smuggling campaign in history. In the development of a capability to
produce nuclear weapons grade material, Pakistan illegally acquired the
blueprints for a uranium separation facility from a Dutch firm as well as
enrichment technology and know-how from a combination of German, British
and Dutch companies. 12

Chinese assistance has been equally critical. It is known that China has
provided critical technologies such a ring magnets to Pakistan's enrichment
program. There are reports that China also provided Pakistan with the
design of a nuclear weapon and may even have conducted a weapons test for
Pakistan in China. 13

Pakistan's need for longer range systems is driven by its need to reach
targets in central and southern India. While its HATF short-range missiles
(80 km/300 km) could provide battlefield capability. Longer -range systems
are required if Pakistan is to hold-at-risk strategic targets in India -
for example the Indian missile and nuclear production complex in and around
Mumbai (Bombay) or Hyderabad. In the early 1990s, China transferred a
number of M-11 missiles (300 km) to Pakistan. The M-11 has a separating
warhead and additional payload capacity making it desirable as a
nuclear-weapons delivery system. China may also have provided Pakistan with
an M-11 production facility.

There are reports that Pakistan has acquired longer-range missiles from
North Korea. The M-11 could not target India's major strategic centers. A
missile such as the No Dong, with a 1,300-km range, would constitute a
major improvement in Pakistan's capability. Better still would be the
Taepo-Dong I missile with a range reported to be 2,400 km. These would
allow Pakistan to hold all of India at risk.

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1. Dr. Daniel Gouré is the Deputy Director for Political Military Studies
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; responsible for
analyses of U.S. national security policy, U.S. domestic management, the
future conflict of warfare, the information revolution, and counter
proliferation. Directs analyses of emerging social issues, with a special
emphasis on advanced technologies.

2. Brahma Chellany, "The Challenge of Nuclear Arms Control in South Asia,"
Survival, Vol. 35, No. 3, Autumn, 1993, pp. 124-125

3. Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation,
Adelphi Paper 313, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London,
1997

4. Pravin Sawhney, Standing Alone: India's Nuclear Imperative,"
International Defense Review, Vol. 29, No. 11, November, 1996, p. 25

5. Sidhu, op. cit., pp. 26-27

6. For information on foreign R&D facilities in India see, Dr. Daphne
Kamely and Dr. Daniel Goure, India Trip Reports, I&II, CSIS, for the
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, December, 1997/March, 1998

7. There are more than one hundred major universities and educational
institutions with strong technical and science programs in India. The most
important of these are the six Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)
located in New Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Cawnpore, Calcutta, and Gwalor, and
the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) located in Bangalore.

8. Interviews with university administrators and faculty members at Indian
universities and technical isntitutes.

9. Estimates based on NSF and Indian embassy data

10. Kamely and Goure, op. cit.

11. Sidhu, op. cit., pp.25-26

12. Chellany, op. cit., p. 123

13. Sawhiny, op. cit., p. 27

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