India nears completion of nuclear triad with armed submarine Arihant
India is close to becoming the world’s sixth country to put a nuclear-armed submarine into operation, a move that would give it a leg up on neighbouring Pakistan and intensify a race for more underwater weapons in Asia.
The 6,000-tonne Arihant, developed over the past three decades under a secret government programme, is completing its final trials in the Bay of Bengal, according to a senior navy officer who declined to be identified because he’s not authorised to speak about the programme. The vessel will be operated by the navy yet remain under the direct control of India’s Nuclear Command Authority headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The deployment would complete India’s nuclear triad, allowing it to deliver atomic weapons from land, sea and air. Only the US and Russia are considered full-fledged nuclear triad powers now, with China and India’s capabilities still largely untested.
India’s move may prod China to bolster its undersea arsenal and assist nuclear-armed allies Pakistan and North Korea in developing similar technologies. That risks potentially more dangerous altercations in Asia’s waters, where territorial disputes have contributed to a region-wide naval buildup.
Tensions will no doubt arise from subsurface encounters in such areas, particularly as both conventional and nuclear submarines continue to proliferate throughout the Indo-Pacific region
“You will probably see more friction in maritime sub-regions such as the South China Sea or the Bay of Bengal, which China and India increasingly view as their future bastions” for nuclear ballistic-missile submarines, said Iskander Rehman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution’s foreign policy programme. “Tensions will no doubt arise from subsurface encounters in such areas, particularly as both conventional and nuclear submarines continue to proliferate throughout the Indo-Pacific region.”
