November 7, 2025 • 55 mins
Donald Trump says China, Russia and Pakistan are "testing nuclear weapons". And that is why he's told the Pentagon to immediately prepare to test the US's nuclear weapons. In this episode, host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan unpack what counts as a nuclear test in 2025, who's actually doing what at their test sites, and what a US return to explosive testing would mean for India, the CTBT, and global stability.
The two cover:
- Why does Trump want to carry out nuclear testing? Are Russia, China, and Pakistan really carrying out secret nuclear tests?
- Cold tests vs hot tests: Why the world doesn't really need 'explosive' nuclear tests anymore?
- Why India feels satisfied with its comparatively lower number of nuclear tests vis a vis the rest of the world?
- Should India take a re-look at its nuclear doctrine that vows no first use?
- What global treaties on nuclear testing really achieved?
- And finally, what happens if the US actually carries out a nuclear test?
Tune in!
Produced by Taniya Dutta
Sound mixed by Suraj Singh
The two cover:
- Why does Trump want to carry out nuclear testing? Are Russia, China, and Pakistan really carrying out secret nuclear tests?
- Cold tests vs hot tests: Why the world doesn't really need 'explosive' nuclear tests anymore?
- Why India feels satisfied with its comparatively lower number of nuclear tests vis a vis the rest of the world?
- Should India take a re-look at its nuclear doctrine that vows no first use?
- What global treaties on nuclear testing really achieved?
- And finally, what happens if the US actually carries out a nuclear test?
Tune in!
Produced by Taniya Dutta
Sound mixed by Suraj Singh
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Nuclear bombs seem to be all the talk this week.
Whether it's the leader of the opposition in India, Rahul Gandhi,
or whether it's the US President Donald Trump. Guess which
one we'll talk about on this episode. Yeah, of course
Donald Trump. So earlier this week, US President Trump dropped
a bomb, so to speak, when he said that he
was going to instruct his Department of Defense actually Department
(00:58):
of War now to immediately start preparing for testing of
nuclear weapons. He did not really specify whether he meant
actual nuclear bombs or the delivery systems like rockets that
would take a nuclear warhead to its destination.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
One of his age later.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
On said that US was not planning any massive explosions
right now, but testing would happen of some systems. What
was I talking about? Why does he want to test
US's nuclear apparatus? And why does he believe that China
and Russia and Pakistan seem to be testing nuclear weapons
as we speak right now? For this, I have hey, sdy,
(01:38):
how are you good? They good to be backing topic?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Absolutely? Who you know who isn't excited with the prospect
of nuclear weapons and testing and all that this is?
I thought we left this a long time back, left
this behind a long time ago, and here we are clearly.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I mean I was light to in my school education,
like I've said this previously as well, when I was
told that nuclear weapons had why they won't be used there,
just like you know, they'll be in underground bunkers and
stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
That's right. You know. Many years back I was in
I did an internship with Jane's Defense Weekly in London,
and the editor of that time, I was an American,
and he was telling me that you guys have no
idea what it meant to live through the Cold War.
We had so frequent drills. They had these sirens and
everybody had to go under the bench, you know, in
the schools. So that's the kind of world that they
(02:26):
lived in through the Cold War. And I said, yeah,
that was a long time ago, and that was Cold
War thing. We're never going to look at that time
ever again. And here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Here, we are actually the international Institute, the zip Syprene,
the Stockholm interestal Peaces Institute, in its annual report this year,
its editor has actually said what you were just talking
about right now, where he says that the signs that
a new arms race of Cold War types arms race
is gearing up that carries much more risk and uncertainty
(02:56):
than the last one. That's very much there and that's
very much happening. In fact, Japre and his report also
says that up until now, for several years, what you've
seen is you don't have new weapons being added to
the total kitty of the world because the rate at
which the older weapons are being disbanded taken out from
(03:18):
circulation that was usually much faster than new weapons being added. However,
they are predicting that very soon, in a couple of years,
that will reverse.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You will have more.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Weapons coming into the system than the ones that are
going out, so you'll actually have the world's Kitty going up. Yeah,
this is something that will discuss obviously on this on
this episode. But first let's let's start with the elephant
in the room, a US President Trump.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
What is he talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Your first impressions of when you saw and like all
things he does, he put this out on truth.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Social Yeah, absolutely, well, you know, and a statement he added,
he's been making several statements about testing. And you know
where this is coming from there is that this is
the first time in history but the United States is
being faced with three nuclear armed countries were not very
friendly to the United States, all of whom who have
nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. You have, of
(04:10):
course Russia, which inherited the Soviet arsenal post the Cold War, China,
which is one of the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenals,
and North Korea. Three nuclear armed countries with their weapons
pointed at the United States. This has never happened before.
The US was okay with one right. The entire Cold
War was all about one adversary, that's the Soviet Union,
(04:31):
who had pointed a lot of weapons at the United States.
They could handle that. Two adversaries, well, China started joining
in the race, and now you have North Korea, and
this is something that the United States is trying to
come to terms with. Joe Biden, in fact, the last
couple of years of his last few months of his presidency,
they brought out this thing in twenty twenty four about
(04:53):
dealing with the prospect of three nuclear armed countries targeting
the United States. So Trump's fear comes from this, this
whole thing of this US strategic community saying that, look,
these are unprecedented at times. You have the Chinese nuclear arsenal,
which was not a big threat in the past, which
is a couple of hundred warheads, which is related to test,
(05:14):
which is going to go to about one thousand plus
warheads by the end of this decade. It could you know,
go beyond fifteen hundred in another decade or so. So
you're looking at three very fast growing arsenals, all targeted
in the United States, and that is something that we
should also worry about because at least one of those arsenals,
(05:35):
you know, is aimed at India. So India also has
reason to worry. And that's why you actually see this
fear psychosis that's spread across the world about nuclear weapons.
You know, you're looking at a time they've went two
thousand and nine. I still remember when a whole lot
of US nssas so hawkish nessas like you know, Henry Kissinger,
(06:01):
two or three others of them, you know, they were
Caspabeine Burger as well. I believe four of them said
nuclear weapons are a thing of the past, exactly the
conversation that we opened with. You know, they said, look,
there is going to be an era and we are
not going to need nuclear weapons anymore. And fifteen years
look where the world is today. Every country is trying
(06:22):
to get them, even guys who have signed the NPT.
Kran of course is a famous example. Saudi Arabia is
reaching for nukes, the Pakistani yukes. South Korea and Japan
are very you know, worried about North Korean nukes. They
of course worried about the Chinese dukes, but North Korea
is in their face, it's growing. There are it's arsenal,
(06:43):
and its arsenal is pointed towards Soul and to Kyo.
So there is a lot of global anxiety about nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, yeah, very good point.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Actually, in fact, you also have to talk about Europe
because europulso is now worried that the US protection protective
arm that may not always extend even though they have
France and UK to with with nuclear awards and on
on on the soil. But it's quite possible that certain
countries in Europe are also thinking, perhaps we should also
(07:12):
have our own programs exactly. Uh So, you know what
I wanted to understand is what uh Trump was talking
about when he said that Russia, China, and Pakistan have
been testing clear weapons.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
He didn't specify exactly of what kind.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So for example, Russia recently demoed a torpedo that it
says can can carry nuclear warhead. China had that massive
parade where it's where you wrote about it, and you
you you talked about how it's displayed that nuclear triad
of the actual actual triad, not the not the not they,
but the incomplete one that India right now has. We'll
(07:49):
get that though, so you those two countries have mostly
done that. Pakistan there was not a lot of lot
of social media chatter earlier this year that because of
some earthquakes that happened in the Afganistan Pakistan region that
perhaps Pakistan was testing nuclear weapons. But also, like you
wrote about it, very just yesterday for US that it's
highly unlikely that they've done that. So where is he
(08:11):
getting this belief from or is it just Trump being
Trump and making outline?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
You know, I have a sense that Trump has been
sitting through a lot of briefings where the establishment is
telling him things and he's picking it up and he's
you know, releasing it in drips and traps. A couple
of months back, you remember Trump saying why does he
want Bagram Air Base? And he made that statement that
it's close to where China tests its nukes, where China
(08:38):
makes its nukes, keeps its news, those kind of things.
And if you draw a line from Bagram north and
you're looking at the Chinese ICBM fields, right, that's where
they've started to somewhere in the Gobi Desert, around the
Gobi Desert side, that is where China's traditionally kept its
nuclear test grounds, where it's tested its long range ballistic missiles,
(08:59):
and also where now you're seeing a whole lot of
ICBM fields, which are basically ground based silos to target
the United States and Europe. Possibly he's looking at Bagram
as being a staging point for US bombers to fly
over and decapitate those sites something like that. So there
are a lot of briefings that the US President is
(09:19):
being given with respect to these three countries and their
nuclear weapons capabilities. Now, Russia, as you mentioned, has been
fielding a whole new range of nuclear weapons. Put In
announced that about a decade ago, saying that you're going
to test something like six or eight new types of
nuclear weapon strategic weapons. Three of them one was, of course,
(09:40):
the coveroffs class submarine. The other is the Status six
also called the Poseidon, and the third is the Burewesnik,
the ultra long range cruise missile which carries a nuclear weapons.
So these are new capabilities that the Russians are feeling.
The Chinese are They've brought their indus still capacity, their
(10:01):
industrial capability to build nuclear weapons. Right, there is an
assembly line of nuclear weapons and this is all chi Jinping. Right,
there is a nuclear weapons Arsenal of China presgen Ping.
That is a nuclear weapons arsenal of China post Region Ping.
The post gen Ping Nuclear Arsenal is it has gone
up three four times and it is expanding at an
(10:22):
enormous strate. We saw that during the parade. This is
not what past Chinese leaders have done with what Chi
gimping is done. And there is also reason to believe
that Pakistan, believe it or not, is testing an ICBM.
They have the capability to build an ICBM, an intercontinental
(10:44):
ballistic missile that could reach the United States. Now the
thumb rule is you build a weapon that can target
the United States, you become an enemy of the United States,
and you've heard that with India Strategic Community. I don't
have to tell you about the project that we had
which then now no one talks about. There was a
(11:04):
project in the nineties called Suria, which was an intercontinental
ballistic missile program, which has now vanished. It's nowhere to
be seen, heard, nothing. It's in the basement now. No
one talks about it because in the nineties when we
launched the program, after Ragne, you had another program called
the Suria. Now the Suria is an intercontinental ballistic missile
(11:27):
that has a capability to go more than twelve thousand
kilometers and the United States said, if that missile comes out,
that will mean India as an enemy, and we had
to shelve that program. So we don't have that program yet.
Pakistan starting an ICBM program would be very bad news
for whatever reasons that they've chosen to develop it. There
(11:49):
is a lot of chatter in the US strategic community
about Pakistan's ICBM thing, and very reputed names have been
discussing it possibly has to do with China, with Pakistan
trying to deter the unit It States from decapitating their
nuclear arsenal or you know, literally grabbing their weapons for
fear of it falling into the wrong hands or something.
(12:10):
We've spoken about it exactly, So that's one possible reason
that Trump feels that he needs to test a hot test. Now,
you have to clarify that there are two types of
weapon tests. That cold tests, and there are a hot tests.
Everybody tests all the time, all the nuclear weapons pars
(12:32):
they test their weapons every single month or y I'm
not aware of the schedule, but they test very regularly.
The United States also tests, but these are laboratory tests.
They're cold fusion tests, right, They're none of the hot tests.
The fireball or the bomb in the shaft going off
(12:52):
and triggering off you know, se SMEC monitors and all that.
That kind of stuff hasn't happened in a while in
the United States. More than three decades. What Trump is
talking about is a hot test, and Trump, being the
content creator that is, he is he wants to test
a weapon and tell his constituents that, look, I'm big,
I'm strong, i am the United States the pre eminent
(13:15):
nuclear power. The fact is that as saner minds have
told him, you don't need to test. We are telling
you every year. Every year, the heads of all the
nuclear labs in the United States are about four or
five of them are mandated to go and tell the
US president that the US arsenal is safe. It is
you know, it is reliable, and we are testing, and
(13:36):
you don't need to test. Therefore, but Trump is saying,
you know, the in his first presidency he made that
statement just an offer remark where he said, oh, what's
the use of having all these weapons if you can't
you know, use them or test them or something like that.
So it's just Trump articulating his fears, possibly trying to
carve out a name for himself being the first American
(13:57):
president to you know, test a weapon three decades. The
fact is that the US doesn't need to test. It
is sitting on a mountain of data. It has the
most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world. It has the
best largest amount of data that they've already got, and
they have the ability now thanks to the supercomputers that
(14:18):
they have. They have like astounding supercomputers which can simulated
tests down to the atom right, right, the whole thing
that you see in movies, right, the special effect kind
of thing. They have the ability to do an entire
range of nuclear tests right down to the atomic level. Right.
(14:39):
They can predict they can literally tell you how each
atom is going to move. So for them, they don't
really need to do a hot test to prove a
nuclear a new set of weapons, or anything like that.
They already have the data. It's just a matter of
you know, tinkering with the bomb, like I mean. And
the US has got such a dynamic arsenal that some
of their capabilities you have two I mean, you have
(15:01):
to read to believe it. They have a weapon called
the B sixty one, which is a dialer a yield weapon. Right.
The B sixty one is their primary nuclear bomb. Okay,
you can dial a yield on it. You can program
it to go to point to one, or you can
program it to go to all the way up to
two hundred three hundred, you know, So it's that's exactly
(15:23):
the kind of capability the United States has. They have
the most versatile, diverse arsenal in the world. But like
I mentioned, they have a problem. They have three guys
pointing guns at them, nuclear armed guns at them. So
there is going to be a bit of a rethinking.
Possibly the numbers may not be tests, but they certainly
(15:44):
need to feel more weapons now, more platforms than they
had at any point in the past. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, they have three guys pointing under them. And if
you look at the map of the world, it's from
all sides. By the way, you have North Korea on
this side, Russia towards the top, and the Sign on
the right. So yeah, that's gonna be uh. But you know,
because you mentioned projects, and I'll be honest, I did
not know about it, because, like you said, it's just
(16:10):
been you know, down in the.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
They were discussed publicly, but this is publicly.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, but do you think that in the near future
that file could be dusted out from the basement because
of several things. One, like you said Pakistan trying to
develop its own ICBM. Second, the threat that you said
India should should be very off China. That has increasingly
become our focus when it comes to military standards in
(16:35):
the in the last few years, whether it's on the border,
along the l s or in the sea actual scene.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And the fact that India has today reached a point
in time in world history and geopolitics where India cannot
be a foe to be ignored people. So it is
not the older India where you could think of imposing
sanctions on a on a country. I mean someone like
a trumput shill do it. But my point being, the
Indian market is too important for the global economic economy
(17:04):
for for it to be sort of completely cut away
from it, right, So I would I would think, especially
with the kind of government that you have that is
increasingly charting out a sort of a strategic autonomous role
for itself, which we've discussed multiple times in the past,
that that space to approach a project like that would
be created.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Do you think that can happen?
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I you know, in the short term at least, I
don't see a project and ICBM project becoming a reality
because our threat perception is primarily two nuclear pars China
and Pakistan, and there is a there is enough data
out there which suggests that our current capabilities.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Are add equate to cover fair enough.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Pakistan of course, and China as well. We don't need to,
you know, start going beyond that. But if a situation
arises where in the future I'm talking with the future
ten twenty years down the line, where say you have
a regime that's very hostile towards India. I'm not naming countries,
but which is far away but threatens India, there is
(18:13):
nuclear blackmail or something involved, then we will have no
option but to start feeling the weapons that will reach
far distant, far beyond our current adversarial horizons. So that
is somewhere in the future, but it will certainly not
be called this the Suria is I think that's a
(18:34):
red rag to you know, people in the security establishments
who flagged it in the past. If you name the
project that they will see it as a revival of
what we were thinking in the see a lot of
our nuclear you know, fears of being decapitated by a
(18:54):
nuclear strike, and all came from China in the sixties
when China tested for instance in nineteen sixty and we've
discussed this on your show that was the first big
trigger for India to go nuclear and go overtly in
nuclear and of course that door shut on the first
of jan nineteen sixty seven. So there's a huge lobby
in India. We said that listen, you missed a golden opportunity.
(19:15):
We should have tested right then, soon after China. The
fact is that we didn't have the capabilities right then.
It took us a few more years and of course
we had to muster up some courage. In seventy four
we did test, but then it's been a slow incremental thing.
Then we you know, because of the global pressure in
seventy four that went into the basement, the bomb went
(19:35):
into the basement. By the time we discovered that, oh
my god, there's a new regime that's coming which will
make it impossible for us to test. We had to
test before post CTBT nineteen ninety six. So the Indian
nuclear arsenal has been a bit of a start stop
kind of project. Whereas there's one school of thought, like
I said, we should have tested right then in the sixties,
(19:55):
we would have been the sixth nuclear part. Today we
are not. We are out of the P five, but
we are not in the you know, in the rogue
nation status. Yet because of our because we signed the
INDO US Nuclear we have you know NSG waivers all
of that, we are like a threshold nuclear weapons state
(20:16):
which could possibly be under threat if we tested, right,
if we did a hot test for instance, right, But
what the scientific community tells me, I mean doctor Archie Dambram,
who's the father who is part of both tests in
seventy four and ninety eight. I mean I asked him
this question repeatedly, So do we need to test again?
(20:37):
He says, no, we don't need to test. We have
all the data we've We're very satisfied with the kind
of test that we did, the five tests in Pokeron
two and we don't need any more tests. That's what
he told me. This. And this was his last interview
which we recorded about you know, twenty twenty four, just
before he passed, a few months before his passing, and
(21:00):
he repeatedly said this, we don't need any more nuclear tests.
I asked him about, you know, this thing of one
of his team members, doctor Santhanam, saying that it was
a fizzle. This is Santanam is wrong. And we've told
the government this and several of us have gone with
the data and we've said, look, this is the thing
that we didn't test to the full extent because we
(21:23):
were worried about collateral damage around to the villages and stuff.
So that has been mistaken for you know, uh, speculation
that it was a fizzle and it fizzled out and
therefore we need to test again, and this is no.
We're fully capable of testing. And you know, the funny
thing is that they've the Indian nuclear arsenal is one
(21:44):
of the most closely guarded secrets, possibly anywhere in the world.
Even Indians don't know about it, right, I mean, that's
it's that well guarded. It's rarely discussed. You don't see
many statements out in the public. Those who don't know,
those who don't, well they don't. But the fact is
(22:05):
that the government is very sensitive about talking about the
nuclear weapons program. The very few statements made about it
there would be you could probably count them on the
fingers of one hand. The total number of statements made
about the nuclear weapons program, which is primarily related to
the debate around no first use your should we have
(22:26):
an if you have nuclear weapons pointed at you, and
you know your adversary is going to launch what they
call launch on warning. So are you going to wait
for him to launch and hit your cities and your
basis and all before you strike back at him. You know,
those kind of debates have been there, They've been articulated
by none other than the Defense Minister, mister Manohar Parker.
(22:49):
He said that in a room in a building which
is now an institution that's named after him, the m PIDSA.
He actually said that maybe we should debate this point.
And I see where he's coming from, because now even
now that that debate is there, that's very much in
the room. When you're looking at a very fast going
Pakistan Pakistani nuclear arsenal, a Chinese nuclear arsenal, which as
(23:13):
I mentioned, is growing in leaps and bounds, and you're
looking at India that's threatened by both these arsenals. Right,
you have a collusive threat between China and Pakistan, and
of course China which has actually given Pakistan all the blueprints,
it's given them enriched uranium designs. It's even supposed to
(23:33):
have tested the designs for Pakistan. You're looking at a
level of collusivity that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
Between two nuclear weapons state and we share boundaries disputed
boundaries with both of them, then we have a problem, right,
So then we will have to kind of take a
call on whether we increase the size of our arsenal.
The numbers suggest there are no public estimates of there's
(23:57):
no government estimates on numbers. We can just go by
what Zipri and the others say, which is one hundred
and seventeen nuclear warheads what India is supposed to have,
and that's also growing, but not as rapidly as say
the Chinese nuclear arsenal and all the Chinese weapons. It's
not necessarily that they should be pointed early in the
United States. They can very well be pointed at India
(24:19):
as well. And you have some very respected voices in
the strategic community like Barth Karnad who argue that you're
pointing a KTI weapon at him right, which is your
twenty kiloton or a forty kiloton weapon, and he's going
to point a mega ton weapon at you like a
thermonuclear weapon. You don't guess who's going to you know,
(24:40):
win this battle of you know, chicken. That's what Barth
Ghannard is framed it as. So these are calls that
we might have to take in the next couple of
years because I see that window for us to say,
you know, no debate on and if you the arsenal
is good, we have adequate numbers for everything. Those numbers
(25:02):
could change as well. So in that sense, we are
not immune to this wave of fear that's going on
across the world because of you know, old traditional alliance
is fracturing, new players coming up with nuclear weapons, all
of that. We are also part of the soul matrix.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, I mean I think our nuclear policy has been
largely pacifist. I mean that's something that you know, I
can see. Uh, it's very ironic that I use the
word pacifists with nuclear weapons. But if you look at
SIPRI numbers, the estimate has betther gone up. You said
one seventy, but they have moved up to one eighty
for this year when you have five. This report just
came out of mind. We we add what ten ten
(25:40):
a year, ten, but that's what they probably take. So
the SIPRI numbers show that India does.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Not deploy its warheads.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
The SIPRI estimates show basically SIPRE claims to have information
or its estimates say, is that all of India's warheads
are stored there in the uncle limated climated from the
from the exactly from the in the Marcket weill China
actually has twenty four deployed warheads, US, of course, has
one thousand, seven hundred war its right.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Will talk more about this spart after.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
A quick break.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
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(26:40):
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Speaker 3 (27:00):
Welcome back something.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Before the break, we were talking about testing and how
you said that Indian scientists convinced that India does not
need to test anymore.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
The test that it did were enough. We've done a
total of.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Three tests. We've done one in seventy four and two
tests in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Six six tests harbor.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
The sixty devices exactly six devices, less than ten. Let's say,
how is it like I won't understand this dis parody?
How is it that we are happy with nuclear weapons
based off six tests? While the US in its lifetime
had to conduct one thirty tests from forty five to
ninety two. Soviet truck as, Soviet Union and Russia they
(27:47):
have conducted seven hundred France has conducted two hundred tests,
China has connected forty five tests. UK has also connded
forty five tests. So tell me about this nuclear science
in very simple terms, what is it about India's tests
that we are more than happy with the six devices,
six tests that we have six seven tests that we've done,
while other countries have felt the need to do much, many,
(28:09):
many more tests.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
Well, one is, of course, the reliability of the test increases,
of their device increases when you test. And the other,
as our scientists have told me, is that we have
got enough data to keep testing, and they test quite often.
We don't know the lab tests, the lab test, the
cold tests, so gone other days. When you say in
(28:31):
the forties and the fifties and the sixties you had
to keep testing, you have to do those hot tests.
Today you have the data, you can crunch that data,
and you can do cold tests, which is what our
scientists have been doing since then. And also the other
thing is, of course that for the US and all that,
there is of course the legacy issue of testing back
in the sixties and seventies, when you had to literally
(28:52):
do these hot tests you had to see the mushroom
clouds and you know, to test your various designs. Numbers
were much smaller when you're looking at fielding an arsenal
that was basically primarily it was aimed at China and Pakistan.
That continues to be the case. The number of designs
(29:14):
that we looked at were very few. They were just
about I think the overall thing is about three or
four designs is what we have. There were two sub
kate tests. There was one boosted fission and then there's
your one, which is your fifteen to twenty ko ton weapon.
So the number of designs are fewer. The idea is
(29:35):
to have an arsenal of not more than one hundred
and fifty two hundred. Numbers were pretty conservative in ours,
so that is possibly one reason why we didn't test
as intensively as the other countries. And the other reason,
of course, is that you're looking at a country that
is a developing country, which needs investment, that needs science
(29:56):
and technology and all of that. If you start testing
the numbers that these other countries have tested, the P
five countries have tested, right, these are the recognized nuclear powers,
then be prepared to be a nuclear paraiya be like
North Korea. You will have all kinds of sanctions blow
(30:19):
on you and you won't get technology. We still don't
get technology. By the way, there are countries that don't
even respond to requests for information of certain you know,
access five, access milling machines, those kinds of things. They
won't even respond Japan, Germany, for instance, because they know
(30:40):
that this is going to be used for say the
strategic programs and stuff like that. So we are already
living through a bit of a technology denial regime. Space
capabilities were impacted, and so I think what the political
leadership felt is that we keep testing like that, our
economic progress is going to be derailed. Right, the investments
won't come in. So it was a call that they
(31:02):
took between fielding a massive nuclear arsenal where you're absolutely
flee confident about all your designs, but you don't have
an economy to support that. So I think the priority
was given for economic development post nineteen ninety one, but
at the same time to have a set of weapons
(31:24):
that you are fairly confident would go off, which they
have by the way, so you're not looking at and
precisely for the reasons that I mentioned that you're not
one of the P five countries, if you test on
those scales that the other countries had tested to be
one hundred percent, show that all your weapons will go
off when you press the button, a nuclear weapon will
(31:46):
take off, a nuclear missile will take off, and it
will detonate on target as plan. If you were to
do that kind of testing, your economy would take a hit,
precisely because you're not part of those P five countries.
And that is also one reason why the INDO US
Nuclear Deal two thousand and six was such a big deal,
(32:07):
because it kind of brought us to a level where
we could use we could buy uranium globally to run
our reactors. It actually began with the whole thing of
the reactors being so low on fuel that some of
them were practically not running so that's when the scientists
came and told the political leadership, Hey, listen, we need
some fuel. We need to buy fuel. So that's when
(32:28):
we approached the US And this was told to me
by the NSSA mister Narayanan in an interview where he said, look,
it began very small. We had no idea where we
would land up with this. It just so happened that
we started with a requirement for fuel and we ended
up with a nuclear deal, which is kind of brought
us into this kind of a shall we say, a trishanku,
(32:51):
you know, heaven where we're not in heaven yet, which
is the P five heaven, but we're in some kind
of a halfway house, right.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And also I think, you know, when it comes to
weapons in general, I think it's so easy to cause destruction.
I think it would require more technological progress to ensure
the dan thing does not go off, then, you know,
to ensure.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
And ultimately they, like you said, nuclear weapons are actually
political weapons. They're not weapons of war fighting. They become
a problem when you see tactical nukes are a big
problem because tactical nukes suggests, as the title suggests, that
it is meant for battlefield use. That they're given to,
you know, battlefield commanders, and they can use it if
(33:38):
the situation is so grim, they can immediately launch a
nuclear tip rocket or a mortar or a nuclear artillery
round or something like that. The US tried that, by
the way, during the Cold War, and it discovered how
unreliable it was, and which is why they quickly removed
all their tact nukes. So nuclear weapons remain now as
(33:59):
the political weapons, the instrument of last resort, and that
is something that you know, it is manned by the
apex level of the government, and all of them, all
the nine nuclear eight, in fact, eight out of the
nine nuclear weapons states have politicians in control of the weapons.
It's only in Pakistan. Pakistan is the only exception where
(34:20):
the military directly controls nuclear weapons and therefore has a
very big say in how they're deployed. And therefore you
have this thing of tactical nukes in Pakistan, which is
basically meant for battlefield use. These are rockets with nuclear weapons,
rockets tipped with nuclear warheads which can be used against say,
(34:44):
infantry formations, armor formations and all that advancing into Pakistan,
and those will be tested on the soil of Pakistan,
will be deployed on the soil of Pakistan. So extremely
unstable tactical nukes. Where Russia is talking about back to tacticals.
You know, twenty twenty two, they even threatened to use
(35:04):
nuclear weapons when they were faced with a certain amount
of battlefield reverses. So they have a policy that's, you know,
very funnily called escalate to de escalate, which means that
they will target a non nuclear weapons state also with
nuclear weapons, primarily to tell them that, look, if you
don't roll over, we're going to hit you with bigger
(35:25):
nuclear weapons. That's what Europe is going through. By the way, now,
right right, good.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
You've talked about tactical nukes, because I was going to
actually bring that up. So you've established that, you know,
India's not really looking.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
At it right now.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
As far as we know, but Pakistan could be. So
my question, then, a hypothetical one, is that in a
scenario where Pakistan considers using a tactical nuke on the battlefield,
would the response from India be to use its strategic
nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Well, good question, Dave, and this nobody really knows the
answer to that, because if you look at the Indian
nuclear doctrine, it says that massive retaliation, right, it calls
for massive retaliation if we're hit by nuclear weapons. I
(36:14):
was in the room with Goreff in two thousand and
one December. When was it December? Was a jan two
thousand and two when the Army chief General Pertabi Raman,
sorry General Padmanaban. He very clearly articulated what India would
do in case it was hit by nuclear weapons. And
(36:37):
I still remember his words. He said that, you know,
if anyone were to target our troops, our you know,
our bases, our ships at sea with nuclear weapons, that
person will be taught such a terrible lesson that his
existence in any form whatsoever will be in doubt. Where
he was actually talking about and you know, of very
(37:00):
high level of retaliation, massive retaliation. But Pakistan seems to
have looked at the threshold for using nuclear weapons below
the strategic level. That presents the conundrum to the Indian
strategic community. Look, we have launched a nuclear weapon, but
we've launched it on our soil, and we have done
(37:23):
it only to deter your armored thrusts or your strike course.
And therefore, will you use a massive bomb to target
Pakistani cities or nuclear bases or military installations. How will
your response be. This is a question that we really
(37:44):
don't have an answer for. The governan says, anytime the
government has been asked this, they said, look just look
at our refer to our nuclear doctrine. There's no ambiguity
over there. It's very clear. So if you were to
look at it by the nuclear doctrine, then we would
have to immediately escalate. We'd have to carry out a
series of nuclear strikes against Pakistani targets, which would you know,
(38:09):
cause a lot of unacceptable damage. But so that is
exactly the kind of dilemma that Pakistan is trying to
create with this deployment of the Nasar, which is a
rocket with a nuclear weapon in its step.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Sonipe also wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
The global treaties and what they have really done in
terms of or if they have done anything in terms
of either stopping countries that really want to have nuclear
weapons from getting them, or or like, do they serve
any purpose at all. The reason I asked that is
the NPT, the Non Proliferation Treaty that basically says that
(38:49):
countries that are nuclear weapons at a certain date.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
First of sixty seven, other countries can become nuclear No
one else can believe in state.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
But the countries that have, in their good heartedness, they
will give that tech for civilian use only of course,
so nuclear power for the greater world.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Yeah know where that's gone.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Then you have the CTBT, the Comprehensive Test Band Treaty. Uh.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Surprisingly, the US has not ratified that, signed but not ratified,
Signed but not ratified, amazing. Russia had ratified it, but
revoke creation. India and Pakistan have not have not signed it.
There was something known as the I n F I
think it was between intermediate nuclear forces between US and
Russia U seven Yeah, US claimed Russia is not following it.
(39:37):
The most recent one was a New Start. Was the
New Start, sorry, the New Start that began in twenty ten.
It's supposed to last until next year twenty six, which
basically imposes a cap on the on a certain kind
of warheads that can be deployed by both Russia and
the US. Russia has suspended its participation, but it doesn't
really matter because the treaty ends next year and there's
(40:00):
no talk and there's no chatter about Russia and US
negotiating for a new one, and especially a Trump I
don't think that will happened because this takes me back
to what the cypre editor wrote that Trump would want
China to be part of such a treaty in the
future because of what you began this episode with China
obviously will and that's a different ball game altogether.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
That might take several years for negotiations. So have these treaties.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Have these international deals really achieved anything at all?
Speaker 4 (40:31):
Then well they have to an extent, they've you know,
they have limited the nuclear Club to just ten. Initially
there were ten nuclear weapons states. There's only one country
in all of history that's actually given up its nuclear weapons,
and that is South Africa, right, So there would be
ten today but for the fact that South Africa surrendered
its weapons. Everything was given up, all their enriched thying,
(40:54):
their bombs, designs, everything, so they completely been nuclearized. But
for all of these treaties, you can argue that the
number of countries that would have nuclear weapons would be
far greater. So if you look at it, the P
five countries are basically the countries that won the Second
World War, the victors. Now, how this worked is if
(41:18):
you look at it, it's the United States extending its
nuclear umbrella to something like thirty four other countries which
are its allies in some form or the other, like
you know, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey. Even all of these
guys have been extended in American nuclear umbrella. So the
Americans say, listen, you don't bother getting your nuclear weapons.
(41:42):
We're there for you. We are providing you are nuclear umbrella,
so you're safe under that. So those are those treaty
allies right now. India's position is unique that we don't
want to sign any treaty. We don't want to be
with any block, neither with the Warsaw Pack nor with
the NATO during the Cold War. But today you're looking
(42:03):
at a time when, because of this proliferation that from
one adversary, you're looking at three adversaries. The United States
and now the U S. Strategic community is saying that
how are we going to extend our already stretched nuclear
umbrella to so many other countries? So, and Trump has
been threatening his allies as well, Japan and South Korea.
(42:25):
The North Koreans are telling the Americans not in as
many words, choose California and sold. You know, if you do,
which country? Yeah, which state? Which city do you want?
Do you want? Do you want Los Angeles or do
you want Soul? Right? The Americans, which of course we
want sold. So they say, okay, so let us roll
(42:46):
over South Korea. And the South Koreans realizes, oh my god,
they're not going to fight for us, right, so we
better get our nuclear weapons. Japan is going to, you know,
say that, Look, we've been bombed atop ME bombs, two
of them in nineteen forty eighty years back. We don't
want that to happen to our people a second time.
So we're going to have to have our options. So
this is going to happen, and that is why the
(43:07):
American nuclear umbrella is under a lot of pressure. And
all of these treaties that you mentioned, they've all been
put in place at a very different time when you
had a very North Korea was not a nuclear weapons state.
Iran certainty was not. It was a signatory to a
lot of these test band treaties and it had pledged
not to nuclearize. North Korea was in there. China had
(43:29):
a small arsenal. But today you're looking at this fracturing
of this global set of treaties alliances that people are
saying that, look, it looks like we are on our own.
Saudi Arabia's feels the same that they're looking at Israel,
which is why they reached out to Pakistan, South Korea.
(43:50):
I just mentioned Japan, the Philippines. Everyone's been threatened. They're
feeling threatened, and depending on their levels of threat perceptions,
they will go for nuclear weapons. They have no option
but to do that. That's one school of thought. And
like the US is saying, listen, we've been tardy in
our own nuclear weapons program. We got too complacent. So
(44:12):
you had the eighteen Ohio class SSBNs, which are now
down to fourteen, and you have the Columbia class, which
will not come for another few decades. You have the
Minutement three, which is your land based ICBMs, which are
to be replaced by the Sentinels ICBMs that's not going
to come for a few decades. So the US Arsenal itself,
(44:34):
in terms of numbers, is under threat. They're looking at
spending a few trillion dollars on that, more than a
trillion over a couple of decades. But that's under a
lot of pressure now because they're numbers. Now they have
to either withdraw from all of these treaties and expand
the numbers if, for instance, they will have to look
at cruise missiles like the Tomahawk. Withdrawing from the NF
(44:56):
means that you can now deploy Tomahawks. The US has
started doing that ground based launchers which will have nuclear
tips on that. So the whole aim is now that
you have to deter China, you have to deter Russia,
and you have to deter North Korea, and the level
of the numbers that you had the sixteen hundred plus
might not be enough for that. You will probably have
(45:17):
to deploy them across multiple platforms, probably even look at
a space based option, look at other solutions, like the
Russian Federation is done with the Poseidon torpedo, which is
my argument is that it's a fourth leg of the triad.
You know, I've asked a few people this. They believe, no,
(45:38):
it's actually an extension of the third, the sea leg.
But my argument is that look, if the Poseidon travels
through out its course underwater, it is an underwater it
travels through the medium of water all the other weapons,
all the other weapons launched from the three point leg,
so that they are all air launched, right, they don't
(46:00):
travel through the water. This one travels through the water.
So it's possibly a fourth if you're looking at space
based weapons, that is a weapon that's positioned in space
in orbit, and then like there's a system called the
fractional orbital bombardments and FORBS, that would possibly be a
fifth leg of the triad. You know, it wouldn't be
a triad, then it would be a what five legs?
(46:21):
What do you call a highlight thing? A pentagon? So
that's where it's going. We are in that stage in
the post post World War world where all treaties are
possibly going to be ripped up. States are going to
have to figure out their own things, Like if the
US is under so much of pressure, the US President
(46:42):
himself is saying that I may have to test weapons.
Will he look at after our interests or is he
going to look at, you know, protecting the East coast
and the West coast and continental United States? And you
know that's where that movie that's just come out on
where was it on? Was it on Netflix? The House
of Dynamite?
Speaker 3 (47:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
That's a it's been hotly debated. It's a movie on Netflix,
House of Dynamite, which talks about twenty four hours in
the United States which is under ICBM attack and the
US interceptors failed to intercept those incoming enemy missiles and
what happens, right, So it's a bit of it's left
(47:21):
open ended. You don't know what happens there. But movies
like this, don't you know, come in a vacuum. They
articulate fears that have already been around for a while,
which have now manifested into cinema. Like you know, back
in the days when I was in school during the
Cold War, we had that very scary movie which all
(47:42):
of us were made to watch called The Day After
came out, an eighty two or eighty three utterly scary
movie of the kind of devastation that is, you know,
set off when the US and the USSR fight there's
nuclear weapons exchange. I mean, nuclear weapons are absolutely it
is horrific to even imagine this. You know, the consequences
(48:06):
of weapons launch cities being incinerated, and you know those
those effects are there, and there's possibly two generations that
have not fully discussed the horrific side effects of nuclear
weapons and those.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Bombs one nothing compared to what we have now, by
the way.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
Yeah, well, the kind of destruction that would be inflicted
on cities for instance. You know you're talking of wiping
out entire population centers, where countries will cease to exist
in any form. That that is a scale of devastation
that you're talking about. So, I mean, nuclear weapons are
not cool, right, absolutely not fault And you're doing it
(48:44):
only because you're being threatened with nuclear annihilation because you
have two countries based across your borders which have that
pointing it at you. So that is the reason why
we have news. But you know, long answer to your
short questions, the treaties did manage to restrict you know,
(49:06):
one hundred and ninety three countries from owning and possessing
and wielding nuclear weapons. It's a bit like this. Think
of it as an RWA with one hundred and ninety
three bungalows, right, and only about nine of them have
weapons of mass destruction. And there's this one big guy
who says that, hey, listen, sixty five of you or
(49:27):
thirty five of you guys, I'm going to look after
you the rest of you are all on your own.
And okay, now I see those three bungalows over there,
they've got WMDs pointed at me. So that's how the
thing is. So that RWA Residential Welfare Association, for those
of you are watching it, r WA is a very
delely term. It's like a gated colony with one hundred
(49:49):
and ninety three homes where only nine of them have
weapons of mass destruction. And to a large extent, this
is what the big five houses in that r WA
ensured that it would not go beyond those five big
house owners over there and the original inhabitants of the
(50:11):
r WA, and ensured that the others didn't get But
in course of time, various other countries for their own reasons,
Israel existential threat surrounded by Arab countries, or tried to
and highlight it Pakistan because it felt it was you
know what happened in nineteen seventy one lost half its country.
China says, well, maybe I need to play Pakistan against India,
(50:33):
you know that game. North Korea again, the same thing.
It's got the South Korea and this it has the
United States at its doorstep. Who knows Ukraine could be
another one could be armed in the future against Russia.
So there's a you know, you're heading into uncharted waters
at this point twenty twenty five. And here I was
(50:55):
thinking back in school in twenty twenty five, we would
all be very silver spacesuits, going around in flying cars
and sipping food from through a straw, you know, like
the world that two thousand and one promised us. We're
back to familiar times, back to familiar times.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
But I'm still hopeful though, I'm still I'm still optimistic
that we still won't see a time where the threat
of a weapon being used is an actual reality because
I think a lot of what you've said is also
just about getting that enough protection so that you are
not attacked.
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Right, But just wait for that first guy to test.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
I am going to ask that, I was going to
ask that it is going to set off, this is
it going it.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
Just it is just going to take one person to test.
I mean, just imagine hypothetical scenario. President Trump says, Listen,
I'm spooked. I'm rattled. I don't believe these scientists. They're
telling me that they're testing in the laboratory. But I
demand a hot test in the Nevada Desert. Yes, I
want content, right, and he goes ahead and tests. Right,
(52:04):
there's a massive fireball and you can see Trump wearing
dark glasses. I use Grock to create that image. By
the way, Trump with dark glasses and there's two mushroom
clouds in them, and it's going to set off a
chain reaction exactly like a nuclear reaction across the world.
Russia is going to want to have a test that listen,
we are not going to be left behind. China is
(52:25):
certainly going to test. North Korea is testing all the time.
I mean, irrespective of what anyone does, they're testing all
the time. It's going to set off a nuclear chain
reaction across the world, and a lot of other countries
is going to feel really left out, right, like the
countries that I mentioned, for instance, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine
might stand up and say, hey, listen, we guys, we've
(52:46):
lost twenty percent of our territory. You know, we need
nuclear weapons. Everyone wants nuclear weapons, and so that's what's
going to happen. It's bad tiding. So while I'm extremely hopeful,
I'm a glasses half full guy, right, but in the
last couple of months. The kind of statements that have
been coming out. Literally there's one nuclear weapons statement every
(53:07):
week in twenty twenty five. Right, Let's not forget the
British are deploying nuclear weapons on aircraft after a very
long time. They're buying the dial a yield be sixty
one's for f thirty fives. They're going to be deploying
it on aircraft. The Saudis want it, the Parki is
pakistanis they are looking at possibly testing again because they
(53:31):
feel that, you know, India is not adequately deterred. Prime
Minister mode Is called out nuclear blackmail, so you might
want You might see the Pakistani leadership that's under a
lot of pressure say, oh, so you're not going to
be black mail with nuclear weapons. Here goes boom. You
know they might do that. You never know that. So
(53:52):
the thing is that it is it all depends on
what the United States does really. Now do they given
to this pressure to test, as Trump says, how do
they say, listen, we're okay, we're good, we've got all
the data, we've got all the designs, and we're very
confident about our thing. Then nothing happens. If the US test,
(54:13):
then everyone else will.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Follow everyone else follows through that is true. I think
we'll end the episode there. Thanks on the great Chat
as always. And I never thought that the topic of
nuclear weapons would come up so many.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Times on in our defense.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
At the most, I thought we'd talk about the history
of nuclear weapons and the whole secrecy around India's nuclear
weapons program, and you know how we got at a
bomb and stuff like that. You've done that, But the
question of whether or not there will be a nuclear
tests there would be put the potential use of a weapon.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
I don't think. I never thought that would come up,
but sadly it's coming up very a very often now
these days.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Sadly, let's pray for good times as always, great thanks man,
thanks a lot, Great Chat has always had lots of money,
and thanks as always to our listeners and viewers.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
That's it for this week's defense.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Does for more Tune in next week and then stay
safe and not lost any boundaries.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
Kas Kabi the mah Ha episode Arch the Radio, Apple Podcast,
(55:36):
Spotify audio platform, Sun
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Nuclear bombs seem to be all the talk this week.
Whether it's the leader of the opposition in India, Rahul Gandhi,
or whether it's the US President Donald Trump. Guess which
one we'll talk about on this episode. Yeah, of course
Donald Trump. So earlier this week, US President Trump dropped
a bomb, so to speak, when he said that he
was going to instruct his Department of Defense actually Department
(00:58):
of War now to immediately start preparing for testing of
nuclear weapons. He did not really specify whether he meant
actual nuclear bombs or the delivery systems like rockets that
would take a nuclear warhead to its destination.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
One of his age later.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
On said that US was not planning any massive explosions
right now, but testing would happen of some systems. What
was I talking about? Why does he want to test
US's nuclear apparatus? And why does he believe that China
and Russia and Pakistan seem to be testing nuclear weapons
as we speak right now? For this, I have hey, sdy,
(01:38):
how are you good? They good to be backing topic?
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Absolutely? Who you know who isn't excited with the prospect
of nuclear weapons and testing and all that this is?
I thought we left this a long time back, left
this behind a long time ago, and here we are clearly.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I mean I was light to in my school education,
like I've said this previously as well, when I was
told that nuclear weapons had why they won't be used there,
just like you know, they'll be in underground bunkers and
stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
That's right. You know. Many years back I was in
I did an internship with Jane's Defense Weekly in London,
and the editor of that time, I was an American,
and he was telling me that you guys have no
idea what it meant to live through the Cold War.
We had so frequent drills. They had these sirens and
everybody had to go under the bench, you know, in
the schools. So that's the kind of world that they
(02:26):
lived in through the Cold War. And I said, yeah,
that was a long time ago, and that was Cold
War thing. We're never going to look at that time
ever again. And here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Here, we are actually the international Institute, the zip Syprene,
the Stockholm interestal Peaces Institute, in its annual report this year,
its editor has actually said what you were just talking
about right now, where he says that the signs that
a new arms race of Cold War types arms race
is gearing up that carries much more risk and uncertainty
(02:56):
than the last one. That's very much there and that's
very much happening. In fact, Japre and his report also
says that up until now, for several years, what you've
seen is you don't have new weapons being added to
the total kitty of the world because the rate at
which the older weapons are being disbanded taken out from
(03:18):
circulation that was usually much faster than new weapons being added. However,
they are predicting that very soon, in a couple of years,
that will reverse.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You will have more.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Weapons coming into the system than the ones that are
going out, so you'll actually have the world's Kitty going up. Yeah,
this is something that will discuss obviously on this on
this episode. But first let's let's start with the elephant
in the room, a US President Trump.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
What is he talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Your first impressions of when you saw and like all
things he does, he put this out on truth.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Social Yeah, absolutely, well, you know, and a statement he added,
he's been making several statements about testing. And you know
where this is coming from there is that this is
the first time in history but the United States is
being faced with three nuclear armed countries were not very
friendly to the United States, all of whom who have
nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. You have, of
(04:10):
course Russia, which inherited the Soviet arsenal post the Cold War, China,
which is one of the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenals,
and North Korea. Three nuclear armed countries with their weapons
pointed at the United States. This has never happened before.
The US was okay with one right. The entire Cold
War was all about one adversary, that's the Soviet Union,
(04:31):
who had pointed a lot of weapons at the United States.
They could handle that. Two adversaries, well, China started joining
in the race, and now you have North Korea, and
this is something that the United States is trying to
come to terms with. Joe Biden, in fact, the last
couple of years of his last few months of his presidency,
they brought out this thing in twenty twenty four about
(04:53):
dealing with the prospect of three nuclear armed countries targeting
the United States. So Trump's fear comes from this, this
whole thing of this US strategic community saying that, look,
these are unprecedented at times. You have the Chinese nuclear arsenal,
which was not a big threat in the past, which
is a couple of hundred warheads, which is related to test,
(05:14):
which is going to go to about one thousand plus
warheads by the end of this decade. It could you know,
go beyond fifteen hundred in another decade or so. So
you're looking at three very fast growing arsenals, all targeted
in the United States, and that is something that we
should also worry about because at least one of those arsenals,
(05:35):
you know, is aimed at India. So India also has
reason to worry. And that's why you actually see this
fear psychosis that's spread across the world about nuclear weapons.
You know, you're looking at a time they've went two
thousand and nine. I still remember when a whole lot
of US nssas so hawkish nessas like you know, Henry Kissinger,
(06:01):
two or three others of them, you know, they were
Caspabeine Burger as well. I believe four of them said
nuclear weapons are a thing of the past, exactly the
conversation that we opened with. You know, they said, look,
there is going to be an era and we are
not going to need nuclear weapons anymore. And fifteen years
look where the world is today. Every country is trying
(06:22):
to get them, even guys who have signed the NPT.
Kran of course is a famous example. Saudi Arabia is
reaching for nukes, the Pakistani yukes. South Korea and Japan
are very you know, worried about North Korean nukes. They
of course worried about the Chinese dukes, but North Korea
is in their face, it's growing. There are it's arsenal,
(06:43):
and its arsenal is pointed towards Soul and to Kyo.
So there is a lot of global anxiety about nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, yeah, very good point.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Actually, in fact, you also have to talk about Europe
because europulso is now worried that the US protection protective
arm that may not always extend even though they have
France and UK to with with nuclear awards and on
on on the soil. But it's quite possible that certain
countries in Europe are also thinking, perhaps we should also
(07:12):
have our own programs exactly. Uh So, you know what
I wanted to understand is what uh Trump was talking
about when he said that Russia, China, and Pakistan have
been testing clear weapons.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
He didn't specify exactly of what kind.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So for example, Russia recently demoed a torpedo that it
says can can carry nuclear warhead. China had that massive
parade where it's where you wrote about it, and you
you you talked about how it's displayed that nuclear triad
of the actual actual triad, not the not the not they,
but the incomplete one that India right now has. We'll
(07:49):
get that though, so you those two countries have mostly
done that. Pakistan there was not a lot of lot
of social media chatter earlier this year that because of
some earthquakes that happened in the Afganistan Pakistan region that
perhaps Pakistan was testing nuclear weapons. But also, like you
wrote about it, very just yesterday for US that it's
highly unlikely that they've done that. So where is he
(08:11):
getting this belief from or is it just Trump being
Trump and making outline?
Speaker 4 (08:15):
You know, I have a sense that Trump has been
sitting through a lot of briefings where the establishment is
telling him things and he's picking it up and he's
you know, releasing it in drips and traps. A couple
of months back, you remember Trump saying why does he
want Bagram Air Base? And he made that statement that
it's close to where China tests its nukes, where China
(08:38):
makes its nukes, keeps its news, those kind of things.
And if you draw a line from Bagram north and
you're looking at the Chinese ICBM fields, right, that's where
they've started to somewhere in the Gobi Desert, around the
Gobi Desert side, that is where China's traditionally kept its
nuclear test grounds, where it's tested its long range ballistic missiles,
(08:59):
and also where now you're seeing a whole lot of
ICBM fields, which are basically ground based silos to target
the United States and Europe. Possibly he's looking at Bagram
as being a staging point for US bombers to fly
over and decapitate those sites something like that. So there
are a lot of briefings that the US President is
(09:19):
being given with respect to these three countries and their
nuclear weapons capabilities. Now, Russia, as you mentioned, has been
fielding a whole new range of nuclear weapons. Put In
announced that about a decade ago, saying that you're going
to test something like six or eight new types of
nuclear weapon strategic weapons. Three of them one was, of course,
(09:40):
the coveroffs class submarine. The other is the Status six
also called the Poseidon, and the third is the Burewesnik,
the ultra long range cruise missile which carries a nuclear weapons.
So these are new capabilities that the Russians are feeling.
The Chinese are They've brought their indus still capacity, their
(10:01):
industrial capability to build nuclear weapons. Right, there is an
assembly line of nuclear weapons and this is all chi Jinping. Right,
there is a nuclear weapons Arsenal of China presgen Ping.
That is a nuclear weapons arsenal of China post Region Ping.
The post gen Ping Nuclear Arsenal is it has gone
up three four times and it is expanding at an
(10:22):
enormous strate. We saw that during the parade. This is
not what past Chinese leaders have done with what Chi
gimping is done. And there is also reason to believe
that Pakistan, believe it or not, is testing an ICBM.
They have the capability to build an ICBM, an intercontinental
(10:44):
ballistic missile that could reach the United States. Now the
thumb rule is you build a weapon that can target
the United States, you become an enemy of the United States,
and you've heard that with India Strategic Community. I don't
have to tell you about the project that we had
which then now no one talks about. There was a
(11:04):
project in the nineties called Suria, which was an intercontinental
ballistic missile program, which has now vanished. It's nowhere to
be seen, heard, nothing. It's in the basement now. No
one talks about it because in the nineties when we
launched the program, after Ragne, you had another program called
the Suria. Now the Suria is an intercontinental ballistic missile
(11:27):
that has a capability to go more than twelve thousand
kilometers and the United States said, if that missile comes out,
that will mean India as an enemy, and we had
to shelve that program. So we don't have that program yet.
Pakistan starting an ICBM program would be very bad news
for whatever reasons that they've chosen to develop it. There
(11:49):
is a lot of chatter in the US strategic community
about Pakistan's ICBM thing, and very reputed names have been
discussing it possibly has to do with China, with Pakistan
trying to deter the unit It States from decapitating their
nuclear arsenal or you know, literally grabbing their weapons for
fear of it falling into the wrong hands or something.
(12:10):
We've spoken about it exactly, So that's one possible reason
that Trump feels that he needs to test a hot test. Now,
you have to clarify that there are two types of
weapon tests. That cold tests, and there are a hot tests.
Everybody tests all the time, all the nuclear weapons pars
(12:32):
they test their weapons every single month or y I'm
not aware of the schedule, but they test very regularly.
The United States also tests, but these are laboratory tests.
They're cold fusion tests, right, They're none of the hot tests.
The fireball or the bomb in the shaft going off
(12:52):
and triggering off you know, se SMEC monitors and all that.
That kind of stuff hasn't happened in a while in
the United States. More than three decades. What Trump is
talking about is a hot test, and Trump, being the
content creator that is, he is he wants to test
a weapon and tell his constituents that, look, I'm big,
I'm strong, i am the United States the pre eminent
(13:15):
nuclear power. The fact is that as saner minds have
told him, you don't need to test. We are telling
you every year. Every year, the heads of all the
nuclear labs in the United States are about four or
five of them are mandated to go and tell the
US president that the US arsenal is safe. It is
you know, it is reliable, and we are testing, and
(13:36):
you don't need to test. Therefore, but Trump is saying,
you know, the in his first presidency he made that
statement just an offer remark where he said, oh, what's
the use of having all these weapons if you can't
you know, use them or test them or something like that.
So it's just Trump articulating his fears, possibly trying to
carve out a name for himself being the first American
(13:57):
president to you know, test a weapon three decades. The
fact is that the US doesn't need to test. It
is sitting on a mountain of data. It has the
most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world. It has the
best largest amount of data that they've already got, and
they have the ability now thanks to the supercomputers that
(14:18):
they have. They have like astounding supercomputers which can simulated
tests down to the atom right, right, the whole thing
that you see in movies, right, the special effect kind
of thing. They have the ability to do an entire
range of nuclear tests right down to the atomic level. Right.
(14:39):
They can predict they can literally tell you how each
atom is going to move. So for them, they don't
really need to do a hot test to prove a
nuclear a new set of weapons, or anything like that.
They already have the data. It's just a matter of
you know, tinkering with the bomb, like I mean. And
the US has got such a dynamic arsenal that some
of their capabilities you have two I mean, you have
(15:01):
to read to believe it. They have a weapon called
the B sixty one, which is a dialer a yield weapon. Right.
The B sixty one is their primary nuclear bomb. Okay,
you can dial a yield on it. You can program
it to go to point to one, or you can
program it to go to all the way up to
two hundred three hundred, you know, So it's that's exactly
(15:23):
the kind of capability the United States has. They have
the most versatile, diverse arsenal in the world. But like
I mentioned, they have a problem. They have three guys
pointing guns at them, nuclear armed guns at them. So
there is going to be a bit of a rethinking.
Possibly the numbers may not be tests, but they certainly
(15:44):
need to feel more weapons now, more platforms than they
had at any point in the past. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, they have three guys pointing under them. And if
you look at the map of the world, it's from
all sides. By the way, you have North Korea on
this side, Russia towards the top, and the Sign on
the right. So yeah, that's gonna be uh. But you know,
because you mentioned projects, and I'll be honest, I did
not know about it, because, like you said, it's just
(16:10):
been you know, down in the.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
They were discussed publicly, but this is publicly.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, but do you think that in the near future
that file could be dusted out from the basement because
of several things. One, like you said Pakistan trying to
develop its own ICBM. Second, the threat that you said
India should should be very off China. That has increasingly
become our focus when it comes to military standards in
(16:35):
the in the last few years, whether it's on the border,
along the l s or in the sea actual scene.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And the fact that India has today reached a point
in time in world history and geopolitics where India cannot
be a foe to be ignored people. So it is
not the older India where you could think of imposing
sanctions on a on a country. I mean someone like
a trumput shill do it. But my point being, the
Indian market is too important for the global economic economy
(17:04):
for for it to be sort of completely cut away
from it, right, So I would I would think, especially
with the kind of government that you have that is
increasingly charting out a sort of a strategic autonomous role
for itself, which we've discussed multiple times in the past,
that that space to approach a project like that would
be created.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Do you think that can happen?
Speaker 4 (17:26):
I you know, in the short term at least, I
don't see a project and ICBM project becoming a reality
because our threat perception is primarily two nuclear pars China
and Pakistan, and there is a there is enough data
out there which suggests that our current capabilities.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Are add equate to cover fair enough.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Pakistan of course, and China as well. We don't need to,
you know, start going beyond that. But if a situation
arises where in the future I'm talking with the future
ten twenty years down the line, where say you have
a regime that's very hostile towards India. I'm not naming countries,
but which is far away but threatens India, there is
(18:13):
nuclear blackmail or something involved, then we will have no
option but to start feeling the weapons that will reach
far distant, far beyond our current adversarial horizons. So that
is somewhere in the future, but it will certainly not
be called this the Suria is I think that's a
(18:34):
red rag to you know, people in the security establishments
who flagged it in the past. If you name the
project that they will see it as a revival of
what we were thinking in the see a lot of
our nuclear you know, fears of being decapitated by a
(18:54):
nuclear strike, and all came from China in the sixties
when China tested for instance in nineteen sixty and we've
discussed this on your show that was the first big
trigger for India to go nuclear and go overtly in
nuclear and of course that door shut on the first
of jan nineteen sixty seven. So there's a huge lobby
in India. We said that listen, you missed a golden opportunity.
(19:15):
We should have tested right then, soon after China. The
fact is that we didn't have the capabilities right then.
It took us a few more years and of course
we had to muster up some courage. In seventy four
we did test, but then it's been a slow incremental thing.
Then we you know, because of the global pressure in
seventy four that went into the basement, the bomb went
(19:35):
into the basement. By the time we discovered that, oh
my god, there's a new regime that's coming which will
make it impossible for us to test. We had to
test before post CTBT nineteen ninety six. So the Indian
nuclear arsenal has been a bit of a start stop
kind of project. Whereas there's one school of thought, like
I said, we should have tested right then in the sixties,
(19:55):
we would have been the sixth nuclear part. Today we
are not. We are out of the P five, but
we are not in the you know, in the rogue
nation status. Yet because of our because we signed the
INDO US Nuclear we have you know NSG waivers all
of that, we are like a threshold nuclear weapons state
(20:16):
which could possibly be under threat if we tested, right,
if we did a hot test for instance, right, But
what the scientific community tells me, I mean doctor Archie Dambram,
who's the father who is part of both tests in
seventy four and ninety eight. I mean I asked him
this question repeatedly, So do we need to test again?
(20:37):
He says, no, we don't need to test. We have
all the data we've We're very satisfied with the kind
of test that we did, the five tests in Pokeron
two and we don't need any more tests. That's what
he told me. This. And this was his last interview
which we recorded about you know, twenty twenty four, just
before he passed, a few months before his passing, and
(21:00):
he repeatedly said this, we don't need any more nuclear tests.
I asked him about, you know, this thing of one
of his team members, doctor Santhanam, saying that it was
a fizzle. This is Santanam is wrong. And we've told
the government this and several of us have gone with
the data and we've said, look, this is the thing
that we didn't test to the full extent because we
(21:23):
were worried about collateral damage around to the villages and stuff.
So that has been mistaken for you know, uh, speculation
that it was a fizzle and it fizzled out and
therefore we need to test again, and this is no.
We're fully capable of testing. And you know, the funny
thing is that they've the Indian nuclear arsenal is one
(21:44):
of the most closely guarded secrets, possibly anywhere in the world.
Even Indians don't know about it, right, I mean, that's
it's that well guarded. It's rarely discussed. You don't see
many statements out in the public. Those who don't know,
those who don't, well they don't. But the fact is
(22:05):
that the government is very sensitive about talking about the
nuclear weapons program. The very few statements made about it
there would be you could probably count them on the
fingers of one hand. The total number of statements made
about the nuclear weapons program, which is primarily related to
the debate around no first use your should we have
(22:26):
an if you have nuclear weapons pointed at you, and
you know your adversary is going to launch what they
call launch on warning. So are you going to wait
for him to launch and hit your cities and your
basis and all before you strike back at him. You know,
those kind of debates have been there, They've been articulated
by none other than the Defense Minister, mister Manohar Parker.
(22:49):
He said that in a room in a building which
is now an institution that's named after him, the m PIDSA.
He actually said that maybe we should debate this point.
And I see where he's coming from, because now even
now that that debate is there, that's very much in
the room. When you're looking at a very fast going
Pakistan Pakistani nuclear arsenal, a Chinese nuclear arsenal, which as
(23:13):
I mentioned, is growing in leaps and bounds, and you're
looking at India that's threatened by both these arsenals. Right,
you have a collusive threat between China and Pakistan, and
of course China which has actually given Pakistan all the blueprints,
it's given them enriched uranium designs. It's even supposed to
(23:33):
have tested the designs for Pakistan. You're looking at a
level of collusivity that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
Between two nuclear weapons state and we share boundaries disputed
boundaries with both of them, then we have a problem, right,
So then we will have to kind of take a
call on whether we increase the size of our arsenal.
The numbers suggest there are no public estimates of there's
(23:57):
no government estimates on numbers. We can just go by
what Zipri and the others say, which is one hundred
and seventeen nuclear warheads what India is supposed to have,
and that's also growing, but not as rapidly as say
the Chinese nuclear arsenal and all the Chinese weapons. It's
not necessarily that they should be pointed early in the
United States. They can very well be pointed at India
(24:19):
as well. And you have some very respected voices in
the strategic community like Barth Karnad who argue that you're
pointing a KTI weapon at him right, which is your
twenty kiloton or a forty kiloton weapon, and he's going
to point a mega ton weapon at you like a
thermonuclear weapon. You don't guess who's going to you know,
(24:40):
win this battle of you know, chicken. That's what Barth
Ghannard is framed it as. So these are calls that
we might have to take in the next couple of
years because I see that window for us to say,
you know, no debate on and if you the arsenal
is good, we have adequate numbers for everything. Those numbers
(25:02):
could change as well. So in that sense, we are
not immune to this wave of fear that's going on
across the world because of you know, old traditional alliance
is fracturing, new players coming up with nuclear weapons, all
of that. We are also part of the soul matrix.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, I mean I think our nuclear policy has been
largely pacifist. I mean that's something that you know, I
can see. Uh, it's very ironic that I use the
word pacifists with nuclear weapons. But if you look at
SIPRI numbers, the estimate has betther gone up. You said
one seventy, but they have moved up to one eighty
for this year when you have five. This report just
came out of mind. We we add what ten ten
(25:40):
a year, ten, but that's what they probably take. So
the SIPRI numbers show that India does.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Not deploy its warheads.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
The SIPRI estimates show basically SIPRE claims to have information
or its estimates say, is that all of India's warheads
are stored there in the uncle limated climated from the
from the exactly from the in the Marcket weill China
actually has twenty four deployed warheads, US, of course, has
one thousand, seven hundred war its right.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Will talk more about this spart after.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
A quick break.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
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(26:40):
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Spotify and other audio streaming platforms.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Welcome back something.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Before the break, we were talking about testing and how
you said that Indian scientists convinced that India does not
need to test anymore.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
The test that it did were enough. We've done a
total of.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Three tests. We've done one in seventy four and two
tests in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Six six tests harbor.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
The sixty devices exactly six devices, less than ten. Let's say,
how is it like I won't understand this dis parody?
How is it that we are happy with nuclear weapons
based off six tests? While the US in its lifetime
had to conduct one thirty tests from forty five to
ninety two. Soviet truck as, Soviet Union and Russia they
(27:47):
have conducted seven hundred France has conducted two hundred tests,
China has connected forty five tests. UK has also connded
forty five tests. So tell me about this nuclear science
in very simple terms, what is it about India's tests
that we are more than happy with the six devices,
six tests that we have six seven tests that we've done,
while other countries have felt the need to do much, many,
(28:09):
many more tests.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
Well, one is, of course, the reliability of the test increases,
of their device increases when you test. And the other,
as our scientists have told me, is that we have
got enough data to keep testing, and they test quite often.
We don't know the lab tests, the lab test, the
cold tests, so gone other days. When you say in
(28:31):
the forties and the fifties and the sixties you had
to keep testing, you have to do those hot tests.
Today you have the data, you can crunch that data,
and you can do cold tests, which is what our
scientists have been doing since then. And also the other
thing is, of course that for the US and all that,
there is of course the legacy issue of testing back
in the sixties and seventies, when you had to literally
(28:52):
do these hot tests you had to see the mushroom
clouds and you know, to test your various designs. Numbers
were much smaller when you're looking at fielding an arsenal
that was basically primarily it was aimed at China and Pakistan.
That continues to be the case. The number of designs
(29:14):
that we looked at were very few. They were just
about I think the overall thing is about three or
four designs is what we have. There were two sub
kate tests. There was one boosted fission and then there's
your one, which is your fifteen to twenty ko ton weapon.
So the number of designs are fewer. The idea is
(29:35):
to have an arsenal of not more than one hundred
and fifty two hundred. Numbers were pretty conservative in ours,
so that is possibly one reason why we didn't test
as intensively as the other countries. And the other reason,
of course, is that you're looking at a country that
is a developing country, which needs investment, that needs science
(29:56):
and technology and all of that. If you start testing
the numbers that these other countries have tested, the P
five countries have tested, right, these are the recognized nuclear powers,
then be prepared to be a nuclear paraiya be like
North Korea. You will have all kinds of sanctions blow
(30:19):
on you and you won't get technology. We still don't
get technology. By the way, there are countries that don't
even respond to requests for information of certain you know,
access five, access milling machines, those kinds of things. They
won't even respond Japan, Germany, for instance, because they know
(30:40):
that this is going to be used for say the
strategic programs and stuff like that. So we are already
living through a bit of a technology denial regime. Space
capabilities were impacted, and so I think what the political
leadership felt is that we keep testing like that, our
economic progress is going to be derailed. Right, the investments
won't come in. So it was a call that they
(31:02):
took between fielding a massive nuclear arsenal where you're absolutely
flee confident about all your designs, but you don't have
an economy to support that. So I think the priority
was given for economic development post nineteen ninety one, but
at the same time to have a set of weapons
(31:24):
that you are fairly confident would go off, which they
have by the way, so you're not looking at and
precisely for the reasons that I mentioned that you're not
one of the P five countries, if you test on
those scales that the other countries had tested to be
one hundred percent, show that all your weapons will go
off when you press the button, a nuclear weapon will
(31:46):
take off, a nuclear missile will take off, and it
will detonate on target as plan. If you were to
do that kind of testing, your economy would take a hit,
precisely because you're not part of those P five countries.
And that is also one reason why the INDO US
Nuclear Deal two thousand and six was such a big deal,
(32:07):
because it kind of brought us to a level where
we could use we could buy uranium globally to run
our reactors. It actually began with the whole thing of
the reactors being so low on fuel that some of
them were practically not running so that's when the scientists
came and told the political leadership, Hey, listen, we need
some fuel. We need to buy fuel. So that's when
(32:28):
we approached the US And this was told to me
by the NSSA mister Narayanan in an interview where he said, look,
it began very small. We had no idea where we
would land up with this. It just so happened that
we started with a requirement for fuel and we ended
up with a nuclear deal, which is kind of brought
us into this kind of a shall we say, a trishanku,
(32:51):
you know, heaven where we're not in heaven yet, which
is the P five heaven, but we're in some kind
of a halfway house, right.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And also I think, you know, when it comes to
weapons in general, I think it's so easy to cause destruction.
I think it would require more technological progress to ensure
the dan thing does not go off, then, you know,
to ensure.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
And ultimately they, like you said, nuclear weapons are actually
political weapons. They're not weapons of war fighting. They become
a problem when you see tactical nukes are a big
problem because tactical nukes suggests, as the title suggests, that
it is meant for battlefield use. That they're given to,
you know, battlefield commanders, and they can use it if
(33:38):
the situation is so grim, they can immediately launch a
nuclear tip rocket or a mortar or a nuclear artillery
round or something like that. The US tried that, by
the way, during the Cold War, and it discovered how
unreliable it was, and which is why they quickly removed
all their tact nukes. So nuclear weapons remain now as
(33:59):
the political weapons, the instrument of last resort, and that
is something that you know, it is manned by the
apex level of the government, and all of them, all
the nine nuclear eight, in fact, eight out of the
nine nuclear weapons states have politicians in control of the weapons.
It's only in Pakistan. Pakistan is the only exception where
(34:20):
the military directly controls nuclear weapons and therefore has a
very big say in how they're deployed. And therefore you
have this thing of tactical nukes in Pakistan, which is
basically meant for battlefield use. These are rockets with nuclear weapons,
rockets tipped with nuclear warheads which can be used against say,
(34:44):
infantry formations, armor formations and all that advancing into Pakistan,
and those will be tested on the soil of Pakistan,
will be deployed on the soil of Pakistan. So extremely
unstable tactical nukes. Where Russia is talking about back to tacticals.
You know, twenty twenty two, they even threatened to use
(35:04):
nuclear weapons when they were faced with a certain amount
of battlefield reverses. So they have a policy that's, you know,
very funnily called escalate to de escalate, which means that
they will target a non nuclear weapons state also with
nuclear weapons, primarily to tell them that, look, if you
don't roll over, we're going to hit you with bigger
(35:25):
nuclear weapons. That's what Europe is going through. By the way, now,
right right, good.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
You've talked about tactical nukes, because I was going to
actually bring that up. So you've established that, you know,
India's not really looking.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
At it right now.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
As far as we know, but Pakistan could be. So
my question, then, a hypothetical one, is that in a
scenario where Pakistan considers using a tactical nuke on the battlefield,
would the response from India be to use its strategic
nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Well, good question, Dave, and this nobody really knows the
answer to that, because if you look at the Indian
nuclear doctrine, it says that massive retaliation, right, it calls
for massive retaliation if we're hit by nuclear weapons. I
(36:14):
was in the room with Goreff in two thousand and
one December. When was it December? Was a jan two
thousand and two when the Army chief General Pertabi Raman,
sorry General Padmanaban. He very clearly articulated what India would
do in case it was hit by nuclear weapons. And
(36:37):
I still remember his words. He said that, you know,
if anyone were to target our troops, our you know,
our bases, our ships at sea with nuclear weapons, that
person will be taught such a terrible lesson that his
existence in any form whatsoever will be in doubt. Where
he was actually talking about and you know, of very
(37:00):
high level of retaliation, massive retaliation. But Pakistan seems to
have looked at the threshold for using nuclear weapons below
the strategic level. That presents the conundrum to the Indian
strategic community. Look, we have launched a nuclear weapon, but
we've launched it on our soil, and we have done
(37:23):
it only to deter your armored thrusts or your strike course.
And therefore, will you use a massive bomb to target
Pakistani cities or nuclear bases or military installations. How will
your response be. This is a question that we really
(37:44):
don't have an answer for. The governan says, anytime the
government has been asked this, they said, look just look
at our refer to our nuclear doctrine. There's no ambiguity
over there. It's very clear. So if you were to
look at it by the nuclear doctrine, then we would
have to immediately escalate. We'd have to carry out a
series of nuclear strikes against Pakistani targets, which would you know,
(38:09):
cause a lot of unacceptable damage. But so that is
exactly the kind of dilemma that Pakistan is trying to
create with this deployment of the Nasar, which is a
rocket with a nuclear weapon in its step.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Sonipe also wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
The global treaties and what they have really done in
terms of or if they have done anything in terms
of either stopping countries that really want to have nuclear
weapons from getting them, or or like, do they serve
any purpose at all. The reason I asked that is
the NPT, the Non Proliferation Treaty that basically says that
(38:49):
countries that are nuclear weapons at a certain date.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
First of sixty seven, other countries can become nuclear No
one else can believe in state.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
But the countries that have, in their good heartedness, they
will give that tech for civilian use only of course,
so nuclear power for the greater world.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Yeah know where that's gone.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
Then you have the CTBT, the Comprehensive Test Band Treaty. Uh.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Surprisingly, the US has not ratified that, signed but not ratified,
Signed but not ratified, amazing. Russia had ratified it, but
revoke creation. India and Pakistan have not have not signed it.
There was something known as the I n F I
think it was between intermediate nuclear forces between US and
Russia U seven Yeah, US claimed Russia is not following it.
(39:37):
The most recent one was a New Start. Was the
New Start, sorry, the New Start that began in twenty ten.
It's supposed to last until next year twenty six, which
basically imposes a cap on the on a certain kind
of warheads that can be deployed by both Russia and
the US. Russia has suspended its participation, but it doesn't
really matter because the treaty ends next year and there's
(40:00):
no talk and there's no chatter about Russia and US
negotiating for a new one, and especially a Trump I
don't think that will happened because this takes me back
to what the cypre editor wrote that Trump would want
China to be part of such a treaty in the
future because of what you began this episode with China
obviously will and that's a different ball game altogether.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
That might take several years for negotiations. So have these treaties.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Have these international deals really achieved anything at all?
Speaker 4 (40:31):
Then well they have to an extent, they've you know,
they have limited the nuclear Club to just ten. Initially
there were ten nuclear weapons states. There's only one country
in all of history that's actually given up its nuclear weapons,
and that is South Africa, right, So there would be
ten today but for the fact that South Africa surrendered
its weapons. Everything was given up, all their enriched thying,
(40:54):
their bombs, designs, everything, so they completely been nuclearized. But
for all of these treaties, you can argue that the
number of countries that would have nuclear weapons would be
far greater. So if you look at it, the P
five countries are basically the countries that won the Second
World War, the victors. Now, how this worked is if
(41:18):
you look at it, it's the United States extending its
nuclear umbrella to something like thirty four other countries which
are its allies in some form or the other, like
you know, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey. Even all of these
guys have been extended in American nuclear umbrella. So the
Americans say, listen, you don't bother getting your nuclear weapons.
(41:42):
We're there for you. We are providing you are nuclear umbrella,
so you're safe under that. So those are those treaty
allies right now. India's position is unique that we don't
want to sign any treaty. We don't want to be
with any block, neither with the Warsaw Pack nor with
the NATO during the Cold War. But today you're looking
(42:03):
at a time when, because of this proliferation that from
one adversary, you're looking at three adversaries. The United States
and now the U S. Strategic community is saying that
how are we going to extend our already stretched nuclear
umbrella to so many other countries? So, and Trump has
been threatening his allies as well, Japan and South Korea.
(42:25):
The North Koreans are telling the Americans not in as
many words, choose California and sold. You know, if you do,
which country? Yeah, which state? Which city do you want?
Do you want? Do you want Los Angeles or do
you want Soul? Right? The Americans, which of course we
want sold. So they say, okay, so let us roll
(42:46):
over South Korea. And the South Koreans realizes, oh my god,
they're not going to fight for us, right, so we
better get our nuclear weapons. Japan is going to, you know,
say that, Look, we've been bombed atop ME bombs, two
of them in nineteen forty eighty years back. We don't
want that to happen to our people a second time.
So we're going to have to have our options. So
this is going to happen, and that is why the
(43:07):
American nuclear umbrella is under a lot of pressure. And
all of these treaties that you mentioned, they've all been
put in place at a very different time when you
had a very North Korea was not a nuclear weapons state.
Iran certainty was not. It was a signatory to a
lot of these test band treaties and it had pledged
not to nuclearize. North Korea was in there. China had
(43:29):
a small arsenal. But today you're looking at this fracturing
of this global set of treaties alliances that people are
saying that, look, it looks like we are on our own.
Saudi Arabia's feels the same that they're looking at Israel,
which is why they reached out to Pakistan, South Korea.
(43:50):
I just mentioned Japan, the Philippines. Everyone's been threatened. They're
feeling threatened, and depending on their levels of threat perceptions,
they will go for nuclear weapons. They have no option
but to do that. That's one school of thought. And
like the US is saying, listen, we've been tardy in
our own nuclear weapons program. We got too complacent. So
(44:12):
you had the eighteen Ohio class SSBNs, which are now
down to fourteen, and you have the Columbia class, which
will not come for another few decades. You have the
Minutement three, which is your land based ICBMs, which are
to be replaced by the Sentinels ICBMs that's not going
to come for a few decades. So the US Arsenal itself,
(44:34):
in terms of numbers, is under threat. They're looking at
spending a few trillion dollars on that, more than a
trillion over a couple of decades. But that's under a
lot of pressure now because they're numbers. Now they have
to either withdraw from all of these treaties and expand
the numbers if, for instance, they will have to look
at cruise missiles like the Tomahawk. Withdrawing from the NF
(44:56):
means that you can now deploy Tomahawks. The US has
started doing that ground based launchers which will have nuclear
tips on that. So the whole aim is now that
you have to deter China, you have to deter Russia,
and you have to deter North Korea, and the level
of the numbers that you had the sixteen hundred plus
might not be enough for that. You will probably have
(45:17):
to deploy them across multiple platforms, probably even look at
a space based option, look at other solutions, like the
Russian Federation is done with the Poseidon torpedo, which is
my argument is that it's a fourth leg of the triad.
You know, I've asked a few people this. They believe, no,
(45:38):
it's actually an extension of the third, the sea leg.
But my argument is that look, if the Poseidon travels
through out its course underwater, it is an underwater it
travels through the medium of water all the other weapons,
all the other weapons launched from the three point leg,
so that they are all air launched, right, they don't
(46:00):
travel through the water. This one travels through the water.
So it's possibly a fourth if you're looking at space
based weapons, that is a weapon that's positioned in space
in orbit, and then like there's a system called the
fractional orbital bombardments and FORBS, that would possibly be a
fifth leg of the triad. You know, it wouldn't be
a triad, then it would be a what five legs?
(46:21):
What do you call a highlight thing? A pentagon? So
that's where it's going. We are in that stage in
the post post World War world where all treaties are
possibly going to be ripped up. States are going to
have to figure out their own things, Like if the
US is under so much of pressure, the US President
(46:42):
himself is saying that I may have to test weapons.
Will he look at after our interests or is he
going to look at, you know, protecting the East coast
and the West coast and continental United States? And you
know that's where that movie that's just come out on
where was it on? Was it on Netflix? The House
of Dynamite?
Speaker 3 (47:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
That's a it's been hotly debated. It's a movie on Netflix,
House of Dynamite, which talks about twenty four hours in
the United States which is under ICBM attack and the
US interceptors failed to intercept those incoming enemy missiles and
what happens, right, So it's a bit of it's left
(47:21):
open ended. You don't know what happens there. But movies
like this, don't you know, come in a vacuum. They
articulate fears that have already been around for a while,
which have now manifested into cinema. Like you know, back
in the days when I was in school during the
Cold War, we had that very scary movie which all
(47:42):
of us were made to watch called The Day After
came out, an eighty two or eighty three utterly scary
movie of the kind of devastation that is, you know,
set off when the US and the USSR fight there's
nuclear weapons exchange. I mean, nuclear weapons are absolutely it
is horrific to even imagine this. You know, the consequences
(48:06):
of weapons launch cities being incinerated, and you know those
those effects are there, and there's possibly two generations that
have not fully discussed the horrific side effects of nuclear
weapons and those.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Bombs one nothing compared to what we have now, by
the way.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
Yeah, well, the kind of destruction that would be inflicted
on cities for instance. You know you're talking of wiping
out entire population centers, where countries will cease to exist
in any form. That that is a scale of devastation
that you're talking about. So, I mean, nuclear weapons are
not cool, right, absolutely not fault And you're doing it
(48:44):
only because you're being threatened with nuclear annihilation because you
have two countries based across your borders which have that
pointing it at you. So that is the reason why
we have news. But you know, long answer to your
short questions, the treaties did manage to restrict you know,
(49:06):
one hundred and ninety three countries from owning and possessing
and wielding nuclear weapons. It's a bit like this. Think
of it as an RWA with one hundred and ninety
three bungalows, right, and only about nine of them have
weapons of mass destruction. And there's this one big guy
who says that, hey, listen, sixty five of you or
(49:27):
thirty five of you guys, I'm going to look after
you the rest of you are all on your own.
And okay, now I see those three bungalows over there,
they've got WMDs pointed at me. So that's how the
thing is. So that RWA Residential Welfare Association, for those
of you are watching it, r WA is a very
delely term. It's like a gated colony with one hundred
(49:49):
and ninety three homes where only nine of them have
weapons of mass destruction. And to a large extent, this
is what the big five houses in that r WA
ensured that it would not go beyond those five big
house owners over there and the original inhabitants of the
(50:11):
r WA, and ensured that the others didn't get But
in course of time, various other countries for their own reasons,
Israel existential threat surrounded by Arab countries, or tried to
and highlight it Pakistan because it felt it was you
know what happened in nineteen seventy one lost half its country.
China says, well, maybe I need to play Pakistan against India,
(50:33):
you know that game. North Korea again, the same thing.
It's got the South Korea and this it has the
United States at its doorstep. Who knows Ukraine could be
another one could be armed in the future against Russia.
So there's a you know, you're heading into uncharted waters
at this point twenty twenty five. And here I was
(50:55):
thinking back in school in twenty twenty five, we would
all be very silver spacesuits, going around in flying cars
and sipping food from through a straw, you know, like
the world that two thousand and one promised us. We're
back to familiar times, back to familiar times.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
But I'm still hopeful though, I'm still I'm still optimistic
that we still won't see a time where the threat
of a weapon being used is an actual reality because
I think a lot of what you've said is also
just about getting that enough protection so that you are
not attacked.
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Right, But just wait for that first guy to test.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
I am going to ask that, I was going to
ask that it is going to set off, this is
it going it.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
Just it is just going to take one person to test.
I mean, just imagine hypothetical scenario. President Trump says, Listen,
I'm spooked. I'm rattled. I don't believe these scientists. They're
telling me that they're testing in the laboratory. But I
demand a hot test in the Nevada Desert. Yes, I
want content, right, and he goes ahead and tests. Right,
(52:04):
there's a massive fireball and you can see Trump wearing
dark glasses. I use Grock to create that image. By
the way, Trump with dark glasses and there's two mushroom
clouds in them, and it's going to set off a
chain reaction exactly like a nuclear reaction across the world.
Russia is going to want to have a test that listen,
we are not going to be left behind. China is
(52:25):
certainly going to test. North Korea is testing all the time.
I mean, irrespective of what anyone does, they're testing all
the time. It's going to set off a nuclear chain
reaction across the world, and a lot of other countries
is going to feel really left out, right, like the
countries that I mentioned, for instance, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine
might stand up and say, hey, listen, we guys, we've
(52:46):
lost twenty percent of our territory. You know, we need
nuclear weapons. Everyone wants nuclear weapons, and so that's what's
going to happen. It's bad tiding. So while I'm extremely hopeful,
I'm a glasses half full guy, right, but in the
last couple of months. The kind of statements that have
been coming out. Literally there's one nuclear weapons statement every
(53:07):
week in twenty twenty five. Right, Let's not forget the
British are deploying nuclear weapons on aircraft after a very
long time. They're buying the dial a yield be sixty
one's for f thirty fives. They're going to be deploying
it on aircraft. The Saudis want it, the Parki is
pakistanis they are looking at possibly testing again because they
(53:31):
feel that, you know, India is not adequately deterred. Prime
Minister mode Is called out nuclear blackmail, so you might
want You might see the Pakistani leadership that's under a
lot of pressure say, oh, so you're not going to
be black mail with nuclear weapons. Here goes boom. You
know they might do that. You never know that. So
(53:52):
the thing is that it is it all depends on
what the United States does really. Now do they given
to this pressure to test, as Trump says, how do
they say, listen, we're okay, we're good, we've got all
the data, we've got all the designs, and we're very
confident about our thing. Then nothing happens. If the US test,
(54:13):
then everyone else will.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Follow everyone else follows through that is true. I think
we'll end the episode there. Thanks on the great Chat
as always. And I never thought that the topic of
nuclear weapons would come up so many.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Times on in our defense.
Speaker 2 (54:27):
At the most, I thought we'd talk about the history
of nuclear weapons and the whole secrecy around India's nuclear
weapons program, and you know how we got at a
bomb and stuff like that. You've done that, But the
question of whether or not there will be a nuclear
tests there would be put the potential use of a weapon.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
I don't think. I never thought that would come up,
but sadly it's coming up very a very often now
these days.
Speaker 2 (54:51):
Sadly, let's pray for good times as always, great thanks man,
thanks a lot, Great Chat has always had lots of money,
and thanks as always to our listeners and viewers.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
That's it for this week's defense.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Does for more Tune in next week and then stay
safe and not lost any boundaries.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
Kas Kabi the mah Ha episode Arch the Radio, Apple Podcast,
(55:36):
Spotify audio platform, Sun
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