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Keeping India busy on its western border is China’s main strategic goal in the Indian Ocean. This suits Pakistan too; it is in its interest to ally with China to achieve its own objectives.

India has been forced to maintain a defensive posture on both its borders. The greatest danger is not from land armies – those can be dealt with – but nuclear-tipped missiles.

In this context, it is important for India to build a missile defense and also to have nuclear weapons capability at sea, in order to call the Pakistani and Chinese bluff. A missile shield would stop incoming offensive weapons, and nuclear weapons at sea would deter attacks from that direction, which would only turn into suicide missions. Together, these two would frustrate a combined Pakistani and Chinese threat.

It is possible that China could mislead Pakistan into a nuclear confrontation with India and then back out. China would have much to lose in a nuclear confrontation; it would rather fight by proxy. It backed out after encouraging Ho Chi Minh into confrontation with the United States in Vietnam 40 years ago. The United States bombed Vietnam extensively while China sat on the sidelines. The same thing could happen to Pakistan if it relies on Chinese advice.

India should immediately go to work on building a missile shield. Peace overtures will not work, as Pakistan has U.S. money and Chinese support to keep expanding its nuclear capabilities. Pakistan wants to humiliate India; China wants to sabotage India and so will keep supporting Pakistan.

Once Pakistan understands that its imported missiles will not bring it great success against India, it will slow down. A nuclear showdown with India would be suicidal; most of its missiles would be intercepted and a return salvo from India would wipe out anything that moved in Pakistan.

A missile defense is a perilous pursuit involving finances, effort, talent and willingness to direct resources to shoot down incoming missiles. There are no foolproof systems, though Russia, Israel and the United States claim to possess partly successful systems.

Israel uses the Green Pine radar and Arrow missile; the United States has the Patriot-III system and Russia has the S-300 system. Each has a 50 to 70 percent success rate in simulated test conditions and costs between US$3 to US$5 billion initially to protect important strategic targets. India would need around US$10 billion to protect its interests.

When India’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government was in power in 2003, its coalition partners under the National Democratic Alliance supported the U.S. missile shield plan. India’s Finance Minister Jaswant Singh openly supported the idea of joining the U.S. missile shield program, which would have permanently tied India to the United States for advanced defense.

However, political discussions in the U.S. Congress about exporting sensitive hardware and debates in the Indian Parliament virtually axed any deal on this. Whether partnership on the shield plan would succeed now is hard to predict.

Indian technology is primitive. Nevertheless, in tests it successfully shot down tactical missiles in 2006, 2007 and 2009, at a height of 76 miles and also at 20 miles. Each test was heralded a success, although these can only be classified as lab experiments. At least 30 more tests are needed before anything resembling a missile defense system made in India could be termed operational.

Pakistan possesses tactical missiles with a range of 300 to 1,200 miles; they would take no longer than four to seven minutes to arrive at their targets in India. This leaves little time to detect and intercept them.

The Indian system would have to intercept an incoming missile one minute before impact. Indian technology has risen to the occasion in lab tests; interceptions at a height of 20 miles are the most promising.

Indian scientists last Friday claimed that interception technology for intermediate-range missiles has been perfected. The next stage is to build an interception system for incoming missiles with a range of 5,000-6,000 kilometers. This would essentially be for incoming missiles from China.

India has one advantage –Pakistani missiles are primitive and use the third-generation “fire-and- forget” missile guidance system, which makes tracking easy for a dedicated satellite, AWAC system or Green Pine radar. Tracking Chinese missiles would be harder, requiring a huge satellite tracking system and additional investments of US$8 -15 billion.

The political advantage of an Indian-built missile system is that Pakistan’s nuclear offensive capability would be degraded. Even if Pakistan masked its nuclear missile attack with multiple dummy missiles, the chances of interception would be three out of four. Also, if India intercepted an incoming missile, it immediately becomes free to launch its own return salvo.

Pakistan could still deliver weapons via jet fighters, but these would have an eight in ten chance of interception. India can thank Israeli-built AWACS and phased ray radars for that.

India will begin sea trials of a nuclear submarine on Aug. 15, which will last two years. Adding weapons will take another two. Sagarika, a submarine-launched missile with a range of about 300 kilometers, is tested and ready. Another cruise missile with a range of 1,000 kilometers is in final tests.

In short, by 2013 or 2014, India’s sea deterrence will be ready. Both weapons are nuclear capable. If media reports are true, India has already completed nuclear weapons miniaturization to fit the missiles. It is only awaiting the missile and missile platform before the three are united.

Two more Indian nuclear submarines are in various stages of design and development and should join the Indian Navy by 2016.

If everything goes well, the Akula class Russian nuclear submarine should arrive in India on lease this year. It will carry conventional weapons only, but its training capability cannot be underestimated and India will have crews ready when its own nuclear-armed submarine is ready to join naval service.

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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)