Indian Defence Review

During 2007, Russia tested the world’s most powerful vacuum bomb, the biggest non-nuclear explosion in the world which unleashed a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast. Russians have dubbed this weapon as the ‘father of all bombs’ (interestingly, there is no official name available for this weapon). Such weapons are essentially conceived as psychological weapons, just like nuclear weapons. Exactly six years after 9/11, the Russian military had announced on September 11, 2007 that they had tested what it called as the ‘Father of All Bombs’. This bomb was four times more powerful than the MOAB which was tested by the Americans four years back. A strategic bomber was used for delivering this bomb over the test site. This bomb had a yield equivalent to 44 tons of TNT. It was reported to have a blast radius of 300 meters, double that of the MOAB. As per the Russian sources this bomb is half the size of the MOAB but much more deadly with its performance. Emerging technologies like nanotechnology have been used towards building this device and the temperature at the epicenter of the blast of this test was reported to be twice as high as that of the MOAB.

Apart from this, there are microwave bombs like E-bombs that emit powerful pulses of energy capable of destroying enemy electronics, disable communications, and block vehicle ignitions. Weapons like E-bombs, which could even be categorized as non-lethal weapons posses a great potential to act as a deterrent. This category of weapons which are technically not meant for killing any human beings have the potential for creating havoc in the enemy country leading to an unprecedented chaos. States would find it almost impossible to provide any form of protection to its population from likely happenings when such weapons are put in use. The damage could come from various unexpected quarters from stopping of railway and airline networks to mismanagement of various public utility structures. Usages of E-bombs could lead to disturbing oil rig operations, opening of dam gates (which in turn could lead to flooding) to total disturbance in the functioning of various social utility services from sanitary to medical services.

The basic idea of an E-bomb which is also called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon is to overwhelm electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic field. An E-bomb is a weapon designed to take advantage of human dependency on electricity. Any form of sabotage to electric systems would not only lead to disturbing lives of average civilians but would also make armies immobile and dysfunctional. An E-bomb would actually destroy most of the machines that use electricity. Generators would become useless and public and private transportation systems would fail and so would communication systems. Within few seconds this weapon, if designed and delivered intelligently, could convert a city into an archeological site!

One more category of weapons where work is under progress for many years is Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). Military scientists are working towards designing and developing various types of DEWs, like high energy lasers, particle beam and high power microwave weapons, which, if designed successfully, could give nuclear weapons a run for their money. It is expected that this technology would mature to an usable status in the coming few years. States like India need to invest in these technologies well in time in order to have an advantage over their adversary.

There are indications that states like China are investing in alternate models of deterrence. China conducted an anti-satellite test (ASAT) during January 2007 and projected their capabilities to cause damage to space assets of the adversary. This act of China could open the floodgates towards the weaponization of space and may encourage few states towards investing into space weapons to deter their enemies. The existing space disarmament regime has many shortfalls and putting weapons into space may not lead to breach of any international treaty mechanisms. In short, possession of space weapons has a great deterrence value.

Apart from these weapons there are few other military experiments which are being carried out and  need to be tested for their deterrence potential. For almost two decades the US Air Force is reportedly sponsoring an experiment titled HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Programme). This is supposed to be an ionosphere modification project. Scientists expect that it may be possible to modify the ionosphere and near space (a region 60 km above earth’s surface and extending up to 200 km) by conducting certain experiments and erecting an array of particular type of antennas on the ground. Any human made changes in the ionosphere characteristics from earth may help to blow spacecrafts of other countries while flying or disrupt communications over large portions of interest.

It is likely that any major success in this project would give the US the ability to create a ‘full global shield’ that would destroy ballistic missiles by overheating their electronic guiding systems as they fly in that region. It is also expected that control over the ionosphere could allow a control not only over communication capabilities, but it could also be possible to manipulate local weather.

The above discussion demonstrates that there is a life beyond nuclear weapons as far as devising deterrence mechanism is concerned. Today, India needs to develop and test such type of new weapons. More importantly, an effort should be made to advertise such weapons in the security lexicon as weapons of deterrence. The scientific and strategic community has a major role to play in this regard. It needs to be understood that the deterrence lies more in the mind than anywhere else. The biggest challenge is to change the existing nuclear mindset. The age-old perception that states are rational need not be necessarily true in the modern-day context. There is a need to start a rigorous debate on non-nuclear means of deterrence. The present global nuclear dictate indirectly forces Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) like India (NWS outside the NPT) to remain subservient to global nuclear policies. The nuclear bigwigs would always make it difficult for India to resume testing. For all these years these powers have fooled the entire world by keeping the nuclear keys in their own hands. Time has come to change the entire discourse of deterrence beyond nuclear weapons and India needs to take a lead in it.

In the aftermath of Kargil, terror attacks on the Indian Parliament and 26/11 it is important to explore the efficacy of the existing nuclear deterrence mechanism for non-conventional threats. It is almost certain that existing nuclear weapons have failed to provide any deterrence for the 21st century asymmetric threats. At the same time (nuclear) deterrence is a must to fight conventional threats. It is also important to understand that if fructification of the Indo–US nuclear deal is taken as a starting point then in coming years India would have very little option to induct fully developed and tested hydrogen bombs in their arsenal. This essentially leads to a situation where India would have to depend on the rudimentary (may be the relic of the World War II) nuclear weapon technology. Unfortunately, India’s adversaries are well aware of this reality. Hence, there is a need to look for alternative deterrence mechanism to fit into the more volatile security environment of the 21st century. In view of this there is a need to invest in non-nuclear weapons and more importantly change the existing discourse of ‘deterrence’ which has been held hostage by nuclear weapons for all these years.