The missile squadrons

By C. V. Gopalakrishnan

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the test-firing of the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) Agni-II arises from its proposed induction into the country's defence arsenal to make it available for deployment like any other weapon of war. This distinguishes it from the missiles which had been test-fired earlier - the Akash, Trishul, the earlier Agni-I, the Prithvi - all of which were developed as ``technology demonstrators'' and intended to achieve a perfection to the skills built up for the design, development and production of missiles. Such technology demonstration was aimed at filling the country's defence scientists, engineers and technicians with a sense of confidence that they could take up the mass production of the missiles if the need arose. The Government's announcement that the Agni-II would be inducted into the defence arsenal takes the project a step forward.

If Agni-II could cover 2000 km in 648 seconds during which it could pick out its targets in the Bay of Bengal, it would raise questions about the missions which would be designed for it. Its elegant streamlining, to give it a very high velocity, could give only glimpses of the stupendous engineering which would have gone into giving it the capability for hitting its target 2000 km away with precision. Not to mention the miniaturisation which would have been required to ensure that the conventional warhead fitted to the nose of the missile would meet the demand to zero in on and destroy the target. The Agni missile has come a long way from the drawing board to its test-firing. The secrets of the missile arsenals which the developed countries have built up could not have for long been kept guarded from being prised open by scientists, engineers and technologists around the world. The graduation of the missiles from carriers of conventional to nuclear warheads should have made the stockpiles of the developed countries far more deadly.

India's Integrated Missile Development Programme undertaken by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had taken up the development of only non-nuclear missile systems - Prithvi, Trishul, Akash and Agni. All these progammes have been successfully completed to ensure their induction into the armed forces. The pressure on India to indigenise design and manufacture of the components for the missiles had become quite intense in view of the U.S. having tightened restrictions on their export. The restrictions should have delayed the progress of the Agni, the Prithvi, the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle, inspite of the fact that the PSLV and the GSLV have no military applications to justify them.

Exports were prohibited if the U.S. Commerce Department, which is empowered to implement the President's Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI), suspected that the components would be used for the production of chemical and biological weapons. The sense of insecurity arising from its fears over other countries developing their missile strike capability could be readily seen from the U.S. going ahead with its own missile development and production programme under its Theatre High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) for making advanced space sensors such as ``Brilliant Eyes'' which can significantly enhance the coverage of both ``lower and upper theatre defences'' and help ground-based interceptors ``provide full coverage of the continental United States'', according to an official statement made earlier by an acting Director of the U.S. Strategic Defence Initiative Organisation. A great deal of the destructive potential of conventional missile warheads had been discovered with their use during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1990, the Falklands conflict (1980) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and this led to the development of a later generation of cruise missiles, TV and laser-guided and anti-radiation missiles equipped with advanced sensors for increasing their lethal power.

The non-nuclear missile systems which are now in place and ready for development during a perceived emergency are themselves highly destructive. The further induction of missiles equipped with nuclear warheads by the nuclear weapon states is the biggest menace which the world is now living with since even an accidental detonation could bring about a global inferno which even a thousand Hiroshimas could not match. Grave doubts over the safety of simply maintaining squadrons of aircraft such as the U.S.' B-52s and FB-111s, which are nuclear weapon carriers, and nuclear missile armoury and fears of accidental triggering of the weapons have repeatedly been raised. The end of the Cold War has left unsolved the problems thrown up by the missile stockpiles.

The seriousness of the accidental going off of nuclear missiles and weapons had come to light from reports - there is in all probability a greater number of unreported incidents - of potential disasters which had been luckily averted. There was a collision at sea between a U.S. aircraft carrier, the uss Kitty Hawk, and a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine way back in March 1984 though this did not result in any catastrophe. There were a number of other such scrapes. The task of defusing the stockpile of nuclear warheads remains very much unattended to - since even if the nuclear weapon states muster the will to get down to it, the dismantling itself presumably calls for technology which may not be readily available or is yet to be perfected.

According to an earlier estimate, there were over 60,000 nuclear warheads in Europe and the U.S. awaiting defusing and destruction. The status of over 3,000 warheads in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus which have seceded from the erstwhile Soviet Union is yet to be determined since it is not known whether these states accept obligations which the former USSR had agreed to under START-I and START-II with the U.S.

A persisting disaster potential resulting from nuclear weapons and missiles awaiting dismantling is the radioactive contamination of facilities and the exposure of populated areas to the same. The volume of Russian liquid missile propellants packed in the missiles is also very high amounting to more than 100,000 tonnes which are to be destroyed under the START agreements. The storage cost of these propellants is itself very heavy and and had been estimated at over $50 millions. Their destruction, assuming that it could be safely completed, has been estimated to cost $15 millions. The costs for the defanging of the U.S. non-nuclear and nuclear missile are even higher. According to an estimate made by the U.S. Department of Energy, the cost of decontaminating warhead production sites was as high as $60 billions and it was placed even higher at $155 milllions by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. No immediate results could be expected since the cleaning up of the contaminated earth, waterways and the buildings requistioned for missile production, nuclear and non-nuclear, would itself take as long as thirty years and the cost might actually go up to $ 300 billions.

The enormous and crazy extravagance of the building of non- nuclear and nuclear missile stockpiles has been projected in all its starkness by a study of how much even a much smaller part of the billions of dollars could have made Earth a happier planet had they been spent on the following programmes: reforesting the earth: $2 billions (cost of a nuclear submarine); providing safe water to all: $5 billions (cost of a few nuclear bombs); rollback of deserts: $2 billions (cost of a dozen nuclear tests); protection of the ozone layer: $1 billion; reduction of air pollution: $5 billion (cost of six stealth bombers); stabilisation of population: $6 billions; cleaning up hazardous wastes: $10 billions.

The fractional cost of these programmes for the implementation of which Planet Earth endangered by weapon programmes, non-nuclear and nuclear, is crying out bares the prodigal criminality of the nuclear weapon states.

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