In November 2019, India formally declared its nuclear triad stated in its nuclear doctrine operational after INS Arihant completed its first deterrence patrol, which means Arihant has begun prowling the deep seas carrying ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. It was quietly commissioned into service in August 2016 and its induction was not officially acknowledged.
Given India’s position of ‘No-First-Use’ (NFU) in launching nuclear weapons, the SSBN is the most dependable platform for a second-strike. Because they are powered by nuclear reactors, these submarines can stay underwater indefinitely without the adversary detecting it. The other two platforms — land based and air launched are far easier to detect.
The Advanced Technology Project (ATV) began in the 1980s and the first of them, Arihant, was launched in 2009. Since then it underwent extensive sea trials and the reactor on board went critical in 2013. In 1998, India conducted nuclear tests under Phokran-II and in 2003, declared its nuclear doctrine based on credible minimum deterrence and an NFU policy while reserving the right of massive retaliation if struck with nuclear weapons first.
Given the Arihant’s primary role as a technology demonstrator, it will likely take the Indian Navy at least until 2021–when the second Arihant-class SSBN the future INS Arihant (originally assumed to be named Aridhaman) is set to enter service — to achieve an operational long-range nuclear strike capability.
For a credible at-sea deterrence, a country’s SSBNs must be capable of, among other things, targeting population and industrial centres of the adversary. In India’s case, this means that the Indian Navy’s SSBNs must be capable of holding at risk cities not only in Pakistan but also in the Chinese mainland.
With the K-15’s 750-km range, targeting Pakistani cities would be possible only from the Arabian Sea, which lowers down the area the Pakistan Navy would have to keep watch over if it was trying to locate an Indian SSBN. This becomes more problematic when one factors in the fact that India has only one SSBN as of now.
Cities in the Chinese mainland would remain outside the range of the missile even if the boat was at the north-eastern edge of the Bay of Bengal. Therefore, in the event of a crisis with Beijing, New Delhi would not have the option of threatening a nuclear attack on a target of consequence in China. (Theoretically, the SSBN can reach closer to China to make up for the short-range of the missile, but it will be at an increased risk of detection or worse — an attack).
Therefore, India may have operationalised its triad, but the naval leg or the at-sea deterrent is not credible given the limited range of the missile it uses.
The DRDO, reports say, is already working on 5,000-km range K-5 and 6,000-km range K-6 SLBMs.
