India has long needed a longer range missile to deter the Chinese nuclear forces. Therein lies the strategic significance of Agni III. Since Beijing conducted its first nuclear test in October 1964, bridging the nuclear gap with China has been an important Indian national security objective.

India’s decision to conduct five nuclear tests in May 1998 and proclaim itself a nuclear weapon state did give it a sort of psychological equivalence in the strategic domain with Beijing. But in operational terms the Indian nuclear deterrent did not have a credible retaliatory capability against China. Its Prithvi missiles and the shorter range Agni I and II were not capable of giving India the much vaunted second strike capability against China.

Agni III should help India overcome that limitation, but only notionally at this moment. It would be a while before the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) proves the operational viability of Agni III. Since the first test of Agni III last July was a failure, and the centrality of the latest missile in India’s architecture of its nuclear delivery systems, the Armed Forces and the government must insist on repeated tests of the latest missile before inducting it into service.

The real challenges that the nation must deal after Agni III are more strategic rather than techno-military. Whether it is the size of the Agni III arsenal that India must build, or the mode of its deployment, or questions that demand political judgements, at the highest level, on what constitutes a credible second strike capability vis-a-vis China. Given the high political stakes built into the Agni III development, the government can no longer leave these decisions on strategy to any particular scientific enclave. Abandoning political responsibility for nuclear decisions in the past has come back to haunt New Delhi in recent years.

... contd.