Guarding the Nuclear Guardians
Christopher Clary; 07/15/2013
We
are just weeks beyond the fifteenth anniversary of the 1998 nuclear
tests, and less than a year from the fortieth anniversary of India’s
1974 “peaceful nuclear experiment.” India is justly proud of what its
nuclear scientists have accomplished. In the face of an international
regime to slow their progress, Indian scientists, engineers, and even
bureaucrats and politicians collaborated to find a way to build an
increasingly diverse nuclear energy infrastructure and the ability to
produce nuclear weapons. To overcome these obstacles, India built a
closed, close-knit nuclear enclave. Now that it has done so, will that
establishment open up?
Fifteen
years after Pokhran-II, it is possible the world knows less about
India’s nuclear weapons program than any other nuclear state except
North Korea. This is not proud company for the world’s largest democracy
to share. The Indian public has settled mostly for quiescence about the
program, punctuated by a handful of commentators eager to cheerlead the
program’s accomplishments. This lack of inquiry could be unfortunate.
Closed organizations develop pathologies that are often harmful to the
broader public interest. They sometimes accept decrements in safety to
achieve other organizational goals. Whether India’s nuclear stewards
have avoided dangerous practices is unclear based on the scant public
record.
The
Indian government has only shown the barest of glimpses of what steps
it believes are necessary to ensure deterrence while maximizing safety.
By far, the most information we have on the topic comes from a one-page
press release issued in 2003. Ten years is a long time to go without
additional public comment by India’s political leaders, particularly
since there are signs of major developments in the nuclear program
during that time.
Former
foreign secretary Shyam Saran did reveal a bit more in a speech he gave
in New Delhi in April, where he announced the existence of a Strategy
Programme Staff to support the Nuclear Command Authority and a Strategic Armament Safety Authority to review storage and transport procedures for nuclear weapons.
Other
than the existence of a body charged with safety, there is much that is
not known. There are isolated, anecdotal reports that the Department
of Atomic Energy and the Defence Research and Development Organisation
have personnel screening programs to prevent potentially dangerous
individuals from access to nuclear materials, but no information on the
program has been offered in the public domain. Nor is there information
on whether the Indian armed forces have a similar program.
This
is not just an academic concern. India’s armed forces are not immune to
mental illness, suffering a little over 100 suicides within their ranks
each year. Nor are they immune from violent insubordination, as
separate episodes with Army units at Samba and Nyoma in 2012
demonstrate. Nor is the Atomic Energy establishment invulnerable to bad
actors. After an episode in which someone spiked drinking water at the
Kaiga Atomic Power Station with tritium, one nuclear power official told The Hindu,
“Scrutiny of staff is totally missing in our power stations.” There
appears to be more screening for those working on nuclear weapons
issues, but what that scrutiny entails is not clear. It is worth emphasizing that, as far as is known in public, no individual has been held accountable for the Kaiga episode.
Elsewhere,
DRDO’s record is not without blemishes. We still know very little about
how one of its junior researchers was arrested in a terror plot despite
having passed his background checks. The National Investigative Agency
has recently dropped charges against the researcher, but the episode is
still troubling.
Fears
that personnel screening programs are insufficient have led most
nuclear weapons states, including Pakistan, to develop some sort of
“permissive action links” that prevent nuclear weapons from being
launched or detonated absent a code available only after authorization
of political leaders. Does India have permissive action links? Again, we
do not know.
If India has them, are they robust and tamper-resistant? Absent
a cryptic reference in a 1998 press release to “safety interlocks,”
there is no public information. Vice Admiral Verghese Koithara, in his
2012 study of India’s nuclear arsenal, concluded the National Command
Authority had a “lack of confidence” in its ability to exercise control
over nuclear weapons through electronic means, suggesting that
permissive action links are absent or rudimentary.
A
decade ago, if you had asked scholars studying India’s nuclear program,
they would have told you permissive action links were important, but
not necessary in the Indian case. India was believed to store its
nuclear weapons in a partially-disassembled, de-mated state that made
the weapons immune to unauthorized launch during peacetime.
However,
without any public justification, this appears to have changed. Bharat
Karnad reported in his 2008 study of the program that part of the
arsenal was kept mated in peacetime. DRDO head Avinash Chander said something consistent with Karnad’s claim when he stated earlier this month,
“In
the second strike capability, the most important thing is how fast we
can react. We are working on cannisterised systems that can launch from
anywhere at anytime…. We are making missiles so response can be within
minutes.” Cannestirized systems, where the missile is stored in a sealed
tube, seem to imply warhead mating and assembly is done long before
launch, meaning old safeguards relying on the physical separation of
warhead components have been discarded.
If
India has decided to keep missiles mated in peacetime, the presence of
tamper-proof permissive action links and trustworthy personnel
reliability programs is no longer preferable, but essential to avoid
unauthorized launches.
The
advantages of faster response are not as clear-cut as Chander
indicates. Would China or Pakistan be willing to absorb millions of
casualties if India retaliates within hours, but if India retaliates
within minutes, rulers in Beijing and Islamabad will decide to avoid
nuclear cataclysm? Moreover, speed can lead to accidents and mistakes,
so heightened readiness is not cost-free. With that said, a posture
where warheads are mated and assembled in peacetime is the norm among
nuclear weapons states. Pakistan appears to be shifting toward greater
peacetime readiness as well, despite its initial position of a more
“recessed” deterrent.
The
U.S. deterrent posture has its flaws, in particular, a reluctance to
reduce weapons to appropriate numbers for the post-Cold War world. But
it does provide a model in some ways. The United States has published in
detail the technical safeguards that prevent inadvertent launches or
costly accidents, as well as the procedural steps it takes to prevent
dangerous individuals from having access to nuclear materials.
Importantly, when mistakes happen, punishment is swift and severe.
All
individuals and organizations are fallible, and the U.S. model also
shows the importance of constant scrutiny and oversight. The established
nuclear powers, including the U.S., have a disturbing record of nuclear
accidents. As recently as 2007, the U.S. Air Force inadvertently
transported six nuclear warheads, believing them to be conventional
munitions. Seemingly innocuous, the episode was serious: if the bomber
transporting the weapons had experienced problems in flight, the crew
would not have known to handle the weapons with extra care. On the
ground, the weapons were not secured properly. That episode is also
instructive because reports of its occurrence became public within days
of the incident. Personnel at all levels were disciplined. Eventually,
the episode contributed to the resignations of the senior-most civilian
and military U.S. Air Force officials. Imagine if a similar episode were
to occur in India. Who would know? Would anyone be disciplined? Would
investigations into the mistake be undertaken? Would lessons be learned?
As
India’s nuclear weapons status achieves greater acceptance in the
international community, it can afford to be transparent about the steps
it takes to prioritize safety. The open question is whether it will do
so or fall back on old habits of secrecy.
Christopher
Clary is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and a Stanton Nuclear Security Pre-doctoral
Fellow at the RAND Corporation. He can be reached at clary@mit.edu
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