Capping of ICBM – Uncapping of Debate

As per the news on 19 June 2007, government of India has decided to limit the range of any Indian missile to 5000 km, just falling short of the range of an inter-continental ballistic missile. At a point when world is waking up to the importance of India both militarily and economically, does it look like a right thing to do?

The answer can not be given in a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’, because on one hand it will strengthen the case on Indo-US 123 agreement and hence ease the supply of nuclear fuel for the Indian nuclear power plants which they sorely needs to fulfil domestic power needs. On the other hand, India is seriously jeopardising its stakes in the international community by constraining itself to be just a regional power when it can grow its stature to that of a global power and be counted in the leagues of US, Russia, China, France and UK.

By limiting the range India is clearly submitting to the wishes of USA, although government is and will continue to vehemently deny such allegations the fact remains that India is following the same path which it followed in the 1990s in the then Congress government of Narasimha Rao. At that time also India had not only postponed the missile tests of Agni-II but also postponed the nuclear tests, which were subsequently conducted in 1998. Incidentally, the current government of UPA is also led by Congress and the current Prime Minister of India is seen as far more submissive and docile than Mr. Narasimha Rao.

The process of making an ICBM had started as early as 1994 with the code name Surya. Surya-I was supposed to have a range of 12,000 km and Surya-II having range of 20,000 km. This program, to the best of my estimate, has been rechristened and the missile’s name will be in Agni series only. The reason why USA wants to stop this program is because it views Surya missile as USA-centric and would go to any length including blackmailing on 123-agreement to put this program on ice for ever.

Having vented my anger towards the government, an objective evaluation shows that any missile in the proximity of 5000 km range is sufficient for the short-term needs of India. The missile development is a long process, however, after testing Agni-III many crucial parameters have been verified and now it is a matter of possibly 12 to 18 months to add another stage in the current Agni-III and convert it into a longer range missile. If India makes a range long enough to reach USA or even Europe, then it may not be taken favourably by the international community and may deter the Nuclear Supplier Group to halt supplies despite the Indo-US agreement. The idea should be postpone the ICBM testing for a later time and in the mean time do not stop with the testing of missiles altogether and continue with testing of crucial technologies through shorter range missiles. There are many other missiles which can be improvised upon including Sagarika – a SLCM, Agni-III++ - a SLBM and Nag – an anti-tank missile.

This is what I believe the government has in mind but given the sensitive nature of this issue, the information remains highly classified and how the policy makers decide on the testing issue remains to be seen.