China’s Astrashastra

(By Deccan Chronicle ):  (S)ince no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?”
Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defence, US
June 4, 2005 These and other questions posed by the “peaceful rise of China” reflect the insecurities in its neighbourhood as also its impact on the uneasy equilibrium of Sino-India relations, particularly in the context of China’s special relationship with Pakistan. Geography has been strategically adverse to India in this matrix, in which  China’s core Han heartland is protected behind the strategic depth of outlying non-Han regions, whereas India’s own heartlands are well within strike ranges from both China as well as Pakistan. India has a declared no-first-use policy for its nuclear weapons, but it would be ostrich-like to dismiss the long-term perspectives of such doomsday contingencies, howsoever remote or unlikely at present.

The centrepiece of China’s military power is the formidable Second Artillery Corps, the land-based strategic missile force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), established in 1966. It functions directly under the Central Military Commission, China’s supreme military authority, and though it constitutes only four per cent of the PLA, is annually allotted 12-15 per cent of the national defence budget, and 20 per cent of the procurement budget. The formation is equipped with indigenous missiles of the DF (“Dong Feng” or East Wind) series, all of which are capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads. Sometimes referred to as “the Divine Swords”, Dong Feng missiles range in size and performance from strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) like the DF-5, and DF-31 which can reach targets in Europe and North America, to theatre-level intermediate and medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) like the ubiquitous DF-4 and DF-21 which can cover targets in Asia and the Pacific region, besides short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) like the DF-15.

The DF-21 MRBM has reportedly also been modified as an anti-ship “carrier buster” specifically designed to engage American carrier task forces in the western Pacific and East China seas, though there is some scepticism about these claims. In addition, the Chinese Navy has its own strategic assets in the form of a single nuclear submarine of the Xia class, carrying the Julang 1 (Giant Wave) submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) with a range of 1,700 kilometres.

Second Artillery Corps is headquartered at Qinghe, and organised into six “bases” dispersed throughout the country, numbered from 51 to 56, each fielding two to 12 missile brigades, for an estimated total of 40 operational missile units. Needless to say all parts of India are covered by the reach of China’s Dong Feng missiles, and of special concern are No. 56 Missile Base of eight missile brigades located in Tibet and north-western China, and No. 53 Missile Base of four missile brigades in south-western China, whose units can engage all parts of India almost in situ, while China’s Xia can emerge from its lair in the new submarine base on Hainan Island and engage targets in India from within Chinese territorial waters.

China has a record of unabashed proliferation of both missile as well as nuclear weapon technologies, most notably to Pakistan, to whom large numbers of the intermediate-range ballistic missiles DF-15 in the M9 and M11 versions have been sold or otherwise provided at “friendship terms”. The potential threat from China’s strategic missile forces positioned to the north and east of India is supplemented by those of Pakistan which poses a similar threat to the country from the west.

Pakistan’s missile forces are all nuclear capable and totally India-oriented, equipped with M11 and M9 export versions of the basic Chinese DF-15 missile, redesignated in Pakistan as the Hatf and Shaheen series respectively. Pakistan’s strategic assets are grouped under the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of the Pakistan Army, organised around three Strategic Missile Groups as a separate corps-level force headquartered at Rawalpindi. Their overall command and control rests with the country’s National Command Authority (NCA), the apex body controlling nuclear release with the Strategic Plans Division of the General Headquarters providing planning and staff support.

India’s plans for deterrence were initially hesitant due to political ambivalence based on moral philosophies, but subsequently, after several stumbles and false starts, the strategic weapons programme meaningfully commenced in 1983 with the Integrated Guided Missile Development Project comprising five missile programmes, including the (150/250 km) Prithvi SRBM series. Amongst these, the Prithvi programme subsequently expanded and developed along twin tracks, the shorter-range, Pakistan-specific Prithvi SRBM series and the longer-range Agni MRBM series oriented towards more distant objectives, the latest being the Agni III, with a 3,500 km range, but still inadequate for comprehensive deterrence against China.

Indian strategic weapons are held by their respective services, organised into missile groups with operational control resting with the tri-services SFC under the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the ultimate level of decision making by the NCA under the chairmanship of the Prime Minster. It must be emphasised here that India’s strategic forces can achieve true credibility only if they are completely based on ICBM and MRBM. The SRBM, like the Prithvi, have to be allotted a conventional battlefield missile role and possibly handed down to artillery divisions for support of tactical operations. Meanwhile, the Indian Navy has just commenced its own strategic programme with the launch of the nuclear powered submarine Arihant to be complemented sometime in the future with the short-range (reportedly 700 km) submarine-launched missile Sagarika (K-15), appropriate enough for a technology demonstrator, but of far too limited and uncertain a reach to be a credible submarine-launched deterrent.

In their present stage, India’s strategic missile forces can be dispassionately assessed as technologically adequate but numerically deficient for the multiple potential threats the country faces. Also, the critically vital necessity of a defensive shield of anti-ballistic missiles is completely lacking at present, but reported to be under development. It has to be expedited on priority, as a matter of national survival. Strategic missile forces are the hardcore of deterrence as well as coercion, and India’s strategic forces have to match and, where possible, dominate those of its potential adversaries. The Brahmastra is necessary to counter the Divine Swords.