PATHANKOT TERRORIST ATTACK - CLOSER TO THE MUSHROOM CLOUD

That Pakistan may first use nuclear weapons in a future war with India was announced  by Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry quite some time ago. This could be considered a reiteration of the Pak army’s well-known stance. But, significantly it came from the Foreign Office rather than GHQ or Strategic Plans Division. Coming from both ends of the power spectrum, this confirms that Pakistan has drastically shifted its nuclear posture.

The bonhomie towards the end of the year promised by the Modi-Nawaz Sharif hug has been replaced by consternation and frustration because the India-Pakistan relation has yet again come full circle after the terror strike in Pathankot. On the cusp of  the new year, there were hopes of dialogue and reconciliation; now there is just hostility and uncertainty, the two inevitable results of almost every peace initiative.

At a meeting convened soon after the 26/11 Mumbai strikes, five options were considered by the Indian government at a meeting with its top army and intelligence brass. Almost all of them had one objective in mind: Punishing the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and destroying its jihadi structure across the border.

In his memoirs, Neither a Hawk Nor a Dove, former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri says all these options--including a covert mission against LeT, air strikes on terror camps and a limited war-- were brought to his notice by the US administration, which was aware of the Indian discussions.

After discussing these options for almost a fortnight, the UPA government decided to abandon them because of two factors: One, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't escalate into a nuclear conflict. Two, many feared that it would unite all jihadi groups in Pakistan, including those fighting against the host country, against India.

The nuclear arsenals of both sides—and the red lines that would trigger their use—have made conventional war much more risky to conduct. The 1999 Kargil War is considered the closest the world has come to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. If India were to use its superiority in ground forces to seize a sizable amount of Pakistani territory, Pakistan could respond with nuclear weapons.

The exact size of the Indian arsenal is unknown but estimated to be between 90 and 110 nuclear devices, which is again just an estimate, by today it could be much much more. Statements by officials have lead outsiders to believe the maximum yield of Indian weapons to be around 200 kilotons, or approximately ten times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. These again could be much more, given by the size and advances of the Indian Nuclear Program. Further the delivery systems are far superior to those of Pakistan.

The actual size of Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is hard for experts to gauge owing to the extreme secrecy which surrounds the program in Pakistan. However, in 2007, retired Pakistan Army's Brigadier-General Feroz Khan, previously second in command at the Strategic Arms Division of Pakistans' Military told a Pakistani newspaper that Pakistan had about 80 to 120 genuine warheads.

Pakistan tested plutonium capability in the sixth nuclear test, codename Chagai-II, on 30 May 1998 at Kharan Desert.  The critical mass of a bare mass sphere of 90% enriched uranium-235 is 52 kg. Correspondingly, the critical mass of a bare mass sphere of plutonium-239 is 8–10 kg. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima used 60 kg of U-235 while the Nagasaki Pu bomb used only 6 kg of Pu-239. Since all Pakistani bomb designs are implosion-type weapons, they will typically use between 15–25 kg of U-235 for their cores. Reducing the amount of U-235 in cores from 60 kg in gun-type devices to 25 kg in implosion devices is only possible by using good neutron reflector/tamper material such as beryllium metal, which increases the weight of the bomb. This must have lead to the successful design of the TNW's.

A nuclear war between these countries with use of above low grade nuclear weapons could result in > 12 million deaths.

Pakistan is the most dangerous country for the world today. 

The Indian subcontinent—home to both India and Pakistan—remains among the most dangerous corners of the world, and continues to pose a deep threat to global stability and the current world order. Their 1,800-mile border is the only place in the world where two hostile, nuclear-armed states face off every day. And the risk of nuclear conflict has only continued to rise in the past few years, to the point that it is now a very real possibility. --- Officials of the FBI and the CIA.

Since 2004, India has been developing a new military doctrine called Cold Start. Floated by Gen Deepak Kapoor in 2010, Cold Start calls for cutting Pakistan into “salami slices” as punishment for hosting Mumbai-style terrorist attack inside India.

 A limited war option designed largely to deter Islamabad from sponsoring irregular attacks against India. It involves rapid conventional retaliation after any such attack, launching a number of quick armored assaults into Pakistan and rapidly securing limited objectives that hypothetically remain below Pakistan’s nuclear threshold. In accordance with this doctrine, the Indian military is meant to mobilize half a million troops in less than 72 hours.

The problem is, unlike its neighbors India and China, Pakistan has not renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. Instead, Pakistani leaders have stated that they may have to use nuclear weapons first in order to defend against a conventional attack from India. Therefore, both to counter Cold Start and help to offset India’s growing conventional superiority, Pakistan has accelerated its nuclear weapons program — and begun to field short-range, low yield tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). 

Nasr “shoot and scoot” short-ranged missile was announced by ISPR, the Pakistan military’s official voice. Ensconced inside a multiple-barreled mobile launcher the four 60-kilometer-range missiles are said to be tipped with nuclear warheads each roughly one-tenth the size of a Hiroshima-sized weapon. Pakistan says these tactical weapons will not destabilize the current balance or pose significant command and control problems, a claim that many believe as incorrect.

Wars are fought to be won, not to be lost. So how will Pakistan’s new TNW weapons help them win a war? This fundamental question is never even touched. But let us assume their use in a post Mumbai-II scenario. For every (small TNW) mushroom cloud on Pakistani territory (used against an Indian Armor assault of the Cold start doctrine), roughly a dozen or more Indian main battle tanks and armored vehicles would be destroyed. After many mushrooms, the invasion would stop dead in its tracks and a few thousand Indian troops would be killed.

Then what? With the nuclear threshold crossed for the first time since 1945, India would face one of two options: to fight on or flee. Which it will choose is impossible to predict because much will depend upon the extant political and military circumstances, as well as the personalities of the military and political leaders then in office.

Official Indian policy calls for massive retaliation. In 2013, reacting officially to Pakistan, Shyam Saran, the head of the National Security Advisory Board (the apex body concerned with security matters) declared that, “India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary. The label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from the Indian perspective”.

Simply stated: whether struck by a micro-nuke or mini-nuke or city-buster, and whether on its own soil or outside its borders, India says it will consider itself under nuclear attack and react accordingly.

It may be that if push comes to shove, India will not actually launch its large nuclear weapons. The sensible instinct of self-preservation might somehow prevail, and the subcontinent live to see another morning.

More likely is that in the heat of the moment, reckless passions will rage and caution will take a backseat. A tit-for-tat exchange could continue until every single weapon, small and large, is used up on either side. It is difficult to imagine how any war termination mechanism could work even if, by some miracle, the nuclear command and control centers remain intact. At the end both India and Pakistan would would have taught the other a terrible lesson. 

But in all probability Pakistan would have been wiped of the face of a map and may be more than 50 % of the Indian subcontinent would be rendered inhabitable.

Some observers now judge Pakistan's nuclear program to be the fastest growing in the world. Pakistan will reportedly have enough fissile material by 2020 to build more than 200 nuclear warheads — more than the United Kingdom plans to have by that time.

There was and is strong evidence that the attackers of Mumbai and Pathankot, were Pakistani and belonged to a Pakistan-supported militant group. Indian public outrage and humiliation were overwhelming. Only through the combination of diplomatic pressure from the United States and immense restraint exerted by then-Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was an Indian retaliatory strike averted after Mumbai.

The chances of such Indian government restraint in a similarly deadly future scenario like the Mumbai and Pathankot Pakistan sponsored attacks are unlikely. Experts such as Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution and former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill agree that if there were another Mumbai, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would not step back from using military force in response, unlike his predecessors. Indian public opinion would demand retaliation, especially after the unpopular degree of restraint exercised by the Singh government after the Mumbai attacks. But there still remains no meaningful senior-level dialogue between the two states, though some kind of a start is in the offing.

A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would dramatically alter the world as we know it. The damage from fallout and blast, the deaths of potentially millions, and the environmental devastation of even a few weapons detonations would suddenly dwarf any other global problem.

 Even if it was the provocateur, Pakistan could come to fear for its own survival in this type of scenario. Having aided a group like Lashkar-e-Taiba, with its extremist anti-Indian views, Pakistan would have given India ample grounds for retaliation. Even a limited Indian conventional counterattack, perhaps influenced by its so-called Cold Start military thinking, could quickly put Islamabad, Lahore and other Pakistani cities at risk.

In such a situation, Pakistan might well see military logic in the use of several nuclear weapons against Indian troops, facilities, or other tactical targets. It is not even out of the question that Pakistan could conduct some TNW (Tactical Nuclear Weapons) attacks over its own territory.

“India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary. The label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from the Indian perspective”. Going by this Indian stated policy use by India of its high yield nuclear arsenal is a distinct possibility.

If the weapons were detonated a kilometer or so up in the air, the effects of the explosions could be catastrophic to people and military equipment below, without creating much fallout due to dirt and rock upheaval which would otherwise likely  later descend on populated areas downwind.

Beyond their immediate military effects, such attacks would signal Islamabad’s willingness to escalate. Despite the huge risks, there would be few better ways of making a threat to attack India credible than to cross the nuclear threshold in tactical attacks.

Pakistanis would have to assume the possibility of Indian attacks against Pakistani armed forces. But that might be a risk the country’s leadership would be willing to accept, if the alternative seemed to be defeat and forced surrender after a conventional battle.

It’s not likely that we Indians would interpret such a finely graduated nuclear attack as a demonstration of restraint, to us Indians the word restraint itself might be laughable, particularly if any of the Pakistani attacks went off course and caused more damage than intended. Further once nuclear weapons are used the stated Indian policy of retaliation would come into play. Thus, the danger of inadvertent escalation in this kind of scenario could be quite real. It might not even take nuclear attacks by Pakistan to cause nuclear dangers.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has conducted its own analysis of the consequences of nuclear war in South Asia. Prior to this most recent crisis they calculated two nuclear scenarios. The first assumes 10 Hiroshima-sized explosions with no fallout; the second assumes 24 nuclear explosions with significant radioactive fallout. Both these estimates are conservative with respect to the number and type of nuclear bombs that would actually be used by both countries.

Table from "The Risks and Consequences of Nuclear War in South Asia," by NRDC physicist Matthew McKinzie and Princeton scientists Zia Mian, A. H. Nayyar and M. V. Ramana, a chapter in Smitu Kothari and Zia Mian (editors), "Out of the Nuclear Shadow" (Delhi: Lokayan and Rainbow Publishers). I again bring out these estimates are very conservative.

Estimated nuclear casualties for attacks (air bursts) on 10 large Indian and Pakistani cities
City Name	Total Population Within 5 Kilometers of Ground Zero	Number of Persons Killed	Number of Persons Severely Injured	Number of Persons Slightly Injured
India
Bangalore	3,077,937	314,978	175,136	411,336
Bombay	3,143,284	477,713	228,648	476,633
Calcutta	3,520,344	357,202	198,218	466,336
Madras	3,252,628	364,291	196,226	448,948
New Delhi	1,638,744	176,518	94,231	217,853
Total India	14,632,937	1,690,702	892,459	2,021,106
Pakistan
Faisalabad	2,376,478	336,239	174,351	373,967
Islamabad	798,583	154,067	66,744	129,935
Karachi	1,962,458	239,643	126,810	283,290
Lahore	2,682,092	258,139	149,649	354,095
Rawalpindi	1,589,828	183,791	96,846	220,585
Total Pakistan	9,409,439	1,171,879	614,400	1,361,872
India and Pakistan
Total	24,042,376	2,862,581	1,506,859	3,382,978

 It is easier to fuse a nuclear weapon to detonate on impact than it is to detonate it in the air -- and that means fallout. If the nuclear explosion takes place at or near the surface of the earth, the nuclear fireball would gouge out material and mix it with the radioactive bomb debris, producing heavier radioactive particles. These heavier particles would begin to drift back to earth within minutes or hours after the explosion, producing potentially lethal levels of nuclear fallout out to tens or hundreds of kilometers from the ground zero. The precise levels depend on the explosive yield of the weapon and the prevailing winds.

NRDC's (Natural Resources Defense Council)  second scenario would produce far more horrific results than the first scenario because there would be more weapons, higher yields, and extensive fallout. In some large cities, it was assumed more than one bomb would be used.

15 Indian and Pakistani cities attacked with 24 nuclear warheads
Country	City	City Population	Number of Attacking Bombs
Pakistan	Islamabad (national capital)	100-250 thousand	1
Pakistan	Karachi (provincial capital)	> 5 million	3
Pakistan	Lahore (provincial capital)	1-5 million	2
Pakistan	Peshawar (provincial capital)	0.5-1 million	1
Pakistan	Quetta (provincial capital)	250-500 thousand	1
Pakistan	Faisalabad	1-5 million	2
Pakistan	Hyderabad	0.5-1 million	1
Pakistan	Rawalpindi	0.5-1 million	1
India	New Dehli (national capital)	250-500 thousand	1
India	Bombay (provincial capital)	> 5 million	3
India	Delhi (provincial capital)	> 5 million	3
India	Jaipur (provincial capital)	1-5 million	2
India	Bhopal (provincial capital)	1-5 million	1
India	Ahmadabad	1-5 million	1
India	Pune	1-5 million	1

NRDC calculated that 22.1 million people in India and Pakistan would be exposed to lethal (causing death) radiation doses of 600 rem or more in the first two days after the attack. Another 8 million people would receive a radiation dose of 100 to 600 rem, causing severe radiation sickness and potentially death, especially for the very young, old or infirm. NRDC calculates that as many as 30 million people would be threatened by the fallout from the attack, roughly divided between the two countries. As I said these are figures from low yield Hiroshima Nagasaki  type weapons.

Besides fallout, blast and fire would cause substantial destruction within roughly a mile-and-a-half of the bomb craters. NRDC estimates that 8.1 million people live within this radius of destruction.

Yet these estimates are of low yield nuclear weapons. The casualties would multiply 5 fold if Thermo Nuclear or Hydrogen Nuclear devices were used.

It is also possible that Pakistan may be wiped of the face of the Earth and 50% of the Indian subcontinent would be unfit for habitation if further escalation is resorted to. Further, Radiation will affect all countries globally by radioactive contamination of water and food resources.

Not exactly a pleasing scenario. I hope some good sense prevails on both sides.