Nuclear sub option?

[keysersoze]

http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/c...-Pakistan-Navy

Interesting article.....worth a look.....talks of nuclear subs for the PN...

[Araz]

Originally Posted by keysersoze

http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/c...-Pakistan-Navy

Interesting article.....worth a look.....talks of nuclear subs for the PN...

Keys
The link is not working for me
Araz

[keysersoze]

Hmmm dunno the cause of that Araz. I will get Neo on it as it is working fine for me. Perhaps you don't have the program to view it?

[Neo]

You need to install adobe acrobat to open the link, mine isn't working properly either and I need to update it.

Can you copy-paste and post the article Keys?
Thanks!

[keysersoze]

S-2
Options for the Pakistan Navy
Commander Muhammad Azam Khan, Pakistan Navy (Retired)
We have unresolved issues, a history of conflict and now the Cold Start
doctrine. Help us resolve these issues. We want peaceful coexistence
with India. India has the capability and intentions can change
overnight.
GENERAL ASHFAQ P. KAYANI, THE CHIEF OF ARMY STAFF, PAKISTAN
Around noon on 26 July 2009,Gurushuran Kaur, the wife of the Indian prime
minister, broke a single coconut on the hull of a submarine in the fifteenmeter-
deepMatsya dry dock at Visakhapatnam (also known as Vizag).1 The occasion
marked the formal launch of India’s first indigenously built submarine, a
six-thousand-ton nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) known
as S-2—also as the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) and,more commonly, by
its future name, INS Arihant (destroyer of the enemy).2 The launch ended for India
a journey stretching over three decades since the inauguration of the ATV
program and including an eleven-year construction period.3
The submarine is intended to form a crucial pillar of India’s strategic deterrence.
Successful trials and integration of S-2’s systems will establish the final leg
of India’s nuclear weapons delivery triad, as articulated in the Indian Maritime
Doctrine and substantiated in the Indian Maritime
Military Strategy Doctrine.
The launch is an extraordinary development for
the littorals of the Indian Ocean region, including
Australia and South Africa, but especially for Pakistan.
It is germane to the military nuclearization of
the Indian Ocean and noticeably dents the strategic
balance; it has the potential to trigger a nuclear arms
race.4 S-2 will also enhance India’s outreach and allow
New Delhi a comprehensive domination of the Arabian
Sea, the Indian Ocean littoral, and even beyond.5
Commander Khan’s twenty-three years of commissioned
service included thirteen years at sea as a surface
warfare officer and several command and staff appointments.
He saw action in the first Gulf War, serving with
the United Arab Emirates navy. He is a graduate of the
Pakistan Naval Academy class of 1973 and of the Pakistan
Navy War College and National Defense College,
Islamabad. He holds a master’s in war studies (maritime).
Since his retirement in 1998 he has extensively
contributed to Pakistani as well as overseas periodicals
and media. He is currently a research fellow at the Pakistan
Navy War College.
Naval War College Review, Summer 2010, Vol. 63, No. 3

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Costing US$2.9 billion, the ATV project was a joint effort involving the Indian
Navy and several government agencies and private organizations.6 India’s nuclear
submarine is the world’s smallest of its type yet will pack amegaton punch.
The boat is driven by a single seven-bladed, highly skewed propeller. Special
anechoic rubber tiles (to reduce the risk of detection by sonar) coat the steel
hull.7 A similar technology was previously used in the Russian Kilo-class submarines.
8 (Russian help in designing the ATV has long been an open secret; there
are also reports of Israeli, French, and German imprints on the project.)9
Butmore than design or fabrication of hull, it was the downsizing andmating
of the ninety-megawatt (120,000 horsepower) low-enriched-uranium-fueled,
pressurized light-water reactor that kept the submarine in the dry dock formore
than a decade.10 The reactor and its containment vessel account for one-tenth
(nearly six hundred tons) of the boat’s total displacement. The hydrodynamics
of a vessel with a tenth of its weight concentrated in one place posed a formidable
naval engineering challenge indeed, one that plagued the program.
Before being commissioned as INS Arihant in late 2011 or early 2012,
S-2—serving as a technology demonstrator, a test for future boats of the
class—will have to obtain appropriate certification in three crucial areas: stealth
features, adequacy of the reactor design, andmissile range. The first key test will
involve meticulous calibration of S-2’s underwater noise signature, which will
determine the degree of its invulnerability to detection and therefore its suitability
as a ballistic-missile platform. This process may necessitate extensive trials,
adjustments, and design modifications—if not for S-2, certainly for its successors.
11 The second vital area requiring attestation will be to determine the reactor’s
fuel cycle—that is, the frequency of replacement of the fuel rods. Being of a
first- or second-generation technology, with a shorter fuel cycle, the S-2 reactor
fundamentally affects the boat’s performance as an instrument of deterrence.12
The replacement of fuel rods is an intricate operation requiring a submarine to
be taken out of its operational cycle for an extended period.The net result will be
that either the submarine’s patrol areas will remain restricted (fairly close to
base) or its endurance (deployment period) will be curtailed.
The third assessment of S-2 will entail test-firing and validation of missile parameters.
The platform is currently configured to carry a Pakistan-specific,
two-stage submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the Sagarika (Oceanic),
expected to become operational after 2010.13 This nuclear-capablemissile,
powered by solid propellants, is a light, miniaturized system, about 6.5 meters
long and weighing seven tons.14 S-2 will have to accommodate missiles not only
of greater (intercontinental) range but in greater numbers if it is to have a deterrent
value against China. That would require further underwater launches and
flight trials for the follow-on units of the class.15
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NUCLEAR DOCTRINE AND THE INDIAN NAVY
The Indian Navy began strongly advocating nuclear-related programs at sea in
the wake of the 1998 nuclear tests, and for a valid and legitimate reason—the
need for an invulnerable nuclear capability to undergird a posture of “no first
use.”At a press conference in 2002, the Indian Navy chief held that “any country
that espouses a no first use policy (as India does) must have an assured second
strike capability.All such countries have a triad of weapons, one of themat sea. It
is significant that the Standing Committee on Defence of the twelfth Lok Sabha
[lower house of the Indian Parliament] had advised the government ‘to review
and accelerate its nuclear policy for fabricating or for acquiring nuclear submarines
to add to the (nation’s) deterrent potential.’”16
When in January 2003 the major elements of India’s official nuclear doctrine
were brought into the public domain, the Indian government stressed the building
and maintenance of a “credibleminimum deterrent,” along with a posture of
“no first use.”17 Nuclear retaliation to a first strike was to be “massive and designed
to inflict unacceptable damage.” Significantly, however, the 2003 statement
did not reiterate the 1999 draft nuclear doctrine’s aim of building a nuclear
triad, although all three armed services were keen to deploy nuclear-capable
weapon systems.18
If the Indian Navy was disappointed at the lack of official sanction for its
submarine-based nuclear deterrent, it tried hard not to show it. Still, the ATV
project was under way, with funding and guaranteed political support from the
government. It could therefore be concluded that this notable doctrinal silence
might have been an attempt not to alarm the international community about India’s
multidimensional nuclear program.19
India’s Monroe Doctrine
More than ever, India today demonstrates a striving for regional and global eminence.
In elucidating India’sMaritimeMilitary Strategy, the former IndianNavy
chief Arun Prakash pleadedwith Indians to keep it “‘etched in [their]minds that
should a clash of interests arise between India and any other power, regional or
extra-regional . . . the use of coercive power and even conflict remains a distinct
possibility.’ Such ‘Kautilyan’ statements lend credence to [the] notion of a forward-
leaning India that increasingly inclines to hard power solutions to regional
challenges.”20
In their nation’s novel bid for sea power, Indians look for inspiration to the
Monroe Doctrine, the nineteenth-century U.S. policy declaration that the New
World was off-limits to new European territorial acquisitions or any reintroduction
of the European political system.21 An identical philosophy for India was
first proclaimed by Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru in a speech in 1961
MUHAMMAD AZAM KHAN 87

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justifying the use of force to evict Portugal from Goa: “Any attempt by a foreign
power to interfere in any way with India is a thing that India cannot tolerate, and
that, subject to her strength, she will oppose. That is the broad doctrine I lay
down.”22 Nehru’s statement was in fact a veiled warning to all external powers
against any action anywhere in the region that New Delhi might perceive as imperiling
the Indian political system. His injunction against outside interference
laid the intellectual groundwork for a policy of regional primacy, without meddling
by or influence of external powers. Though at the time it was impossible
for India to confront the imperial powersmilitarily, each succeeding generation
in India has interpreted and applied this foundational principle, according to its
own appraisal of the country’s surroundings, interests, and power.
While the success or otherwise of India’sMonroe Doctrine can be debated, it
has remained an “article of faith for many in the Indian strategic community”
and now seems to have entered the Indian foreign-policy lexicon.23 TheMonroe
Doctrine itself being an intensely maritime concept (the influential nineteenthcentury
sea-power theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan was an outspoken disciple),
India has made huge strides in expanding its sea power in recent times. In the
process, New Delhi has largely shed its continental way of thinking and reoriented
itself to look beyond the nation’s shores.24 Thus today, in the words of
PresidentA. P. J. AbdulKalam, “The economic growth of this region depends on
the heavy transportation in the Indian Ocean particularly the Malacca strait.
Navy has an increasing role to provide necessary support for carrying out these
operations.”25
Advancing the Monroe Doctrine
Regional prominence requires India to develop a robust and self-sustaining domestic
military industrial and technological complex, one that removes dependence
on overseas sources. Such an infrastructure must be fully able to
sustain the fleet twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year.
In that direction, India’s strategic partnership with Washington, including the
civilian nuclear deal, is likely to be of great assistance over time. In the short
term, however, and taking advantage of the presence of the U.S. Navy, which effectively
reduces its own burden, the Indian Navy projects a fleet comprising
three carrier battle groups.26 As AdmiralMadhvendra Singh, chief of staff of the
Indian Navy, declared on 14 October 2003, “Fulfilling India’s dream to have a
full-fledged blue-water Navy would need at least three aircraft carriers, 20 more
frigates, 20 more destroyers with helicopters, and large numbers of missile corvettes
and antisubmarine warfare corvettes.”27 These battle groups could be organized
into a single fleet, depending on New Delhi’s tolerance for risk and the
IndianNavy’s ability to keep the fleet in a high operational state.28 Six new and
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Like NATO, Pakistan continues to keep its options open on “no first use,” but
has declared willingness to use nuclear weapons as a weapon of last resort. “No
first use” declarations have never been the basis of determining the true posture
of any nuclear-weapon state. If they were, New Delhi would have accepted the
position of China on this issue as well as the latter’s assurances of nonuse of nuclear
weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states.37
In late 2001, Pakistan declared four broad conditions under which Islamabad
might resort to use of nuclear weapons, as described by Lieutenant General
Kidwai of the Strategic Plan Division (the secretariat of the National Command
Authority):38 a “space threshold,” shouldNewDelhi attack Pakistan and conquer
a large part of its territory; a “military threshold,” if India destroyed a large part
of Pakistan’s land or air forces; an “economic threshold,” were India to pursue
the economic strangulation of Pakistan; and finally, should India push Pakistan
into “political destabilization or [create] a large scale internal subversion.”39
The Pakistan Navy and Pakistan’s Nuclear Program
The May 1998 tit-for-tat nuclear tests by Pakistan in the Ras-Koh mountain
range in the Chagai district of Balochistan restored the strategic balance in
South Asia.40 The period that followed saw the quarrelsome neighbors expand
their respective arsenals, improve their command and control infrastructures,
and strive for better CEP (circular error probability), greatermobility and faster
reaction time for missiles, and higher yield as well as better yield-to-weight ratios
for the warheads.41
Significantly, no efforts to develop a sea-based nuclear capability and thus expand
the survivability of nuclear forces have ever surfaced in Pakistan’s policy
making. The principal reason for this is perhaps historical “baggage”—a fixation
on Afghanistan, in search of strategic depth as against a geographically
larger India. But 9/11 was a rude awakening that such a policy was not only unsound
but no longer tenable. By then precious time (1998–2001) that could have
gone toward developing undersea deterrence had been lost.
The “military threshold” postulation in Pakistan’s declared nuclear philosophy
surmises the destruction of a large portion of Pakistan’s “land and air components”
as an inducement to go nuclear. The destruction of a major
component of naval forces, however, remains unstipulated. Three deductions
could be reached: that the navy continues in its usual low priority in the overall
national security calculus, that the possibility of international reaction has precluded
a clear articulation of the naval component, and that the naval case is included
in the threshold of “economic strangulation.”
But the term “economic strangulation” is broad and can be interpreted in
various ways. Pakistan being an agrarian economy, a prolonged disruption or
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drastic reduction in the flow of cross-border rivers by India could impinge on
crop yield, triggering widespread unrest, destabilization, and a possible confrontation.
42 But a far more perilous scenario, one that could cause economic
strangulation more quickly, resides at sea.
The Pakistan Navy: A Sentinel of Energy and Economic Security?
Pakistan’s commerce, like India’s, is intrinsically seaborne.More than 95 percent
of Pakistan’s trade by volume, 88 percent by value, is transported by sea.43 Three
sea lines of communication support Pakistan’s maritime trade, viz., fromthe Far
East, theRed Sea, and thePersianGulf. These arteries carry both imports and exports.
The imports include edible oil, tea, sugar, wheat, and other value-added
foodstuffs. During the last fiscal year (FY), $3,662,000,000 was spent on food
imports alone.44 Much of Pakistan’s oil also comes over the sea. The Gulf,
through which the country’s annual oil imports are shipped, constitutes the nation’s
energy lifeline.With a 5 percent annual growth rate, Pakistan’s oil imports
are likely to reach 22.2 million tons during FY 2010–11.45
During FY 2008–2009, the ports of Karachi and Qasim collectively handled imports
of 24.4 million tons of dry cargo and 20.9 million tons of liquid-bulk cargo,
totaling some 45.3 million tons. The sumof exports at these ports during the same
period was 18.3 million tons. In addition, the ports handled 1.9 million TEUs’
worth of containerized cargo.46 All in all, Pakistan’s critical overall dependence on
sea-based imports is a good deal greater than India’s. India’s superiority over Pakistan
being most pronounced in the maritime field, a blockade of Karachi could seriously
imperil the country’s economy and the war-fighting potential in two or
three weeks.47 Given all this and the role the Pakistan Navy is expected to play, it is
not difficult to deduce where onemust expect Pakistan’s economic and energy security
sensitivities—nay, economic threshold—to dwell.48
THE THRESHOLD AND CREDIBILITY ISSUES
According to Indian analysts, of the four threats that Pakistan has identified as capable
of invoking nuclear response, only two—territorial loss and military
destruction—have credibility. To them, it is difficult to make nuclear escalation
credible against the other two (economic strangulation and national
destabilization). Consequently, they maintain, India might now focus on the
latter two and opt for controlled military pressure across the Kashmir Line of
Control.49 The thinking of Indian leadership also reflects a presumption that
should there be an escalation in tension between India and Pakistan, New
Delhi would have the unconstrained support of the international community.
These postulations are deeply flawed. Tension related to water resources is already
heating up; Pakistan has complained that India is holding back the waters
MUHAMMAD AZAM KHAN 91