IDSA COMMENT

What Does Pakistan Hope to Achieve with Nasr?

http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/WhatDoesPakistanHopetoAchievewithNasr_aahmed_170811

Ali Ahmed

August 17, 2011

A partisan debate has understandably followed the unveiling of Nasr in April 2011. While analysts in Pakistan have taken pains to underline its utility, those in India have expressed an informed scepticism. This debate notwithstanding, the assumption informing this commentary is that Nasr exists as a potent weapon system with capabilities as advertised.
An answer for the question posed in the title can be hazarded along four levels: grand strategic, strategic, operational and tactical. There appears to be a contradiction in the implications of Nasr at these different levels. How Pakistan resolves these contradictions will determine how it will eventually employ the weapon system.

At the grand strategic level, the idea seems to be to focus international attention on South Asia as a ‘nuclear flashpoint’. The possibility of use of nuclear weapons increases with the ‘use them lose them’ connotations of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). It is expected that this would energise the international community towards crisis de-escalation and conflict termination. The aim would be to have the pressure work on Indian decision makers, depriving them of autonomy of decision making.

At the strategic level, it has been rightly pointed out by Indian nuclear analysts that Nasr is an attempt at lowering, or rather projecting, a low nuclear threshold. The idea is to restrict the scope for India’s conventional operations. In the limited war logic, India does not intend to flirt with Pakistan’s nuclear thresholds. In any event, keeping these low would help Pakistan preserve its territory and military forces to the extent possible.

At the operational level, the impact of Nasr is more psychological. The aim would be to slow down Indian offensive pincers by making them ‘button down’ for a battlefield that could potentially suddenly ‘go nuclear’. The precautions, logistics load and time cycle of standard operations procedures would slow down and complicate operations. This would translate into increased combat friction, resulting in an increased leadership burden. There will be higher levels of vulnerability of bottlenecks such as bridgeheads. Pakistan would be able to counter thrust lines that it cannot address due to the relative imbalance of forces or if it is surprised. Indian forces will not be able to exploit opportunities with a sense of impunity, even those of pursuit. In fact, the more successful they get, the more the nuclear shadow of Nasr will loom large. The element of fear, surprise and its disconcerting effect will be exploited fully by Pakistan. India may need additional forces to cater for various contingencies. This will have a corresponding affect on logistics, the pace of progress of operations, coordination, presenting potential targets, etc.

At the tactical level, the physical and psychological pressures of operating in a potential nuclear battlefield will add to the strain of combat. In hot weather there would be increased physical attrition to troops, requiring earlier relief and time consuming rotation in subunit/unit roles. Wider dispersion that nuclear tactics necessitate will increase command and control problems and the fog of war. Wide frontages increase the vulnerability to counter attack, since the freedom to concentrate would be with the counter attacker.
It would appear that the seeming advantages stated above are behind Pakistan’s development of Nasr. However, it is surely not an unmixed blessing. What are the cons?

At the grand strategic level, attracting international attention to the region as a crisis point works both ways. As the Kargil conflict showed, India can profit from the situation and the onus on backing off could well be on Pakistan. Any propensity for first use may prompt the feared crackdown on its nuclear assets by the US-led international community, which would be to India’s advantage. This may convulse the Pakistan military into an internal battle over its assets, which would be especially untimely when faced with an Indian ‘threat’. Pakistan will finally end up a nuclear pariah with a dysfunctional military, a state it has managed to avoid so far.

At the strategic level, by displaying its new found capability, Pakistan has partially attempted to go down the NATO route during the Cold War. The NATO planned to employ TNW to counter the overwhelming mechanised attacks which were expected to be carried out by the Warsaw Pact forces. Using TNW would destroy the very land being defended. The difference in Pakistan’s case would be in the limited numbers of such weapon systems and, secondly, on India’s self-restraint in pulling its conventional punches. Therefore, the employment of Nasr will not be so much as to effect the military situation as to signal the crossing of the nuclear threshold. Since this would trigger the Indian nuclear doctrine of assured retaliation, in uncertain ways, it is not self-evident what Pakistan could achieve by this. It could, however, attempt to escape paying the price by choosing a ‘green-field’ option of a demonstration strike on its own territory, for instance, in the Cholistan desert.

The operational level fallout of the use of Nasr will be equally on Pakistani forces. Once nuclear weapons have had battlefield incidence, they will prove to be an equaliser. The advantages that Pakistan seeks as a defender would be nullified in a violent, possibly nuclear, Indian response. (The former Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee Air Chief Marshal P. V. Naik let on as much in his meeting with the press prior to demitting office.) The psychological, physical and logistics load will be exponentially increased by the panic among civilian populations. This will be relatively greater in Pakistan since the theatre of operations, defined by proactive Indian offensives, will be inside Pakistan.
At the tactical level, there are no empirical studies on the sociological impact of a nuclear battlefield. If combat cohesion breaks down, it will be as likely among Pakistani troops as Indian. The depth in terms of numbers available with India may help it compensate. This luxury is not available to Pakistan. The effect on the force multiplier that Pakistan intends using - irregulars – can only be expected to be negative. Since Pakistani civilians will be more affected, the ties of Pakistani soldiers to kith and kin may prove distracting. There is no evidence of either side having thought through the leadership, bonding and discipline issues on a nuclear battlefield. The emphasis has only been on personal protection at best, and that too is largely lip service for want of training equipment.

As can be seen, there are some operational level dividends that would accrue to Pakistan by using Nasr though it will come at some strategic cost. Two possibilities emerge. The first is that the Pakistani military - true to its wont in being more sensitive to military as against political and strategic concerns - has perhaps focused overly on the operational gains as against strategic costs. Alternatively, given the inescapably obvious costs that it will incur, the military is sensitive to the contradictions. It is only milking Nasr as an information war opportunity.

The judgment here is in favour of the latter. Nasr can at best likely increase India’s natural restraint and operational caution. There is no particular harm in this for there is little case for nuclear haste and any additional operational caution can only energise prior preparation. In its employment, the Nasr is unlikely to halt India in its tracks. Instead, it will likely be employed in nuclear signalling, the most likely manner of which could be in a demonstration strike.

India can arrive at prudent answers, both at the conventional and nuclear levels, to deal with this issue. What might such an answer be? The suggestion here is that the employment of Nasr, even in a ‘green-field’ mode, must release India from NFU constraint. This does not imply default retaliation. Instead, it is for debate whether manipulating the threat of nuclear attack(s) will beget India more political and military dividends than indulging in the

IDSA COMMENT

Making Sense of ‘Nasr’

http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/MakingSenseofNasr_aahmed_240411

Ali Ahmed

April 24, 2011

News reports have it that Pakistan has successfully conducted a test of a surface-to-surface short range Hatf IX (Nasr), described as a multi-tube ballistic missile with a ‘shoot and scoot’ capability. The statement of the Director-General of the Strategic Plans Division, Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, that the flight consolidated Pakistan's strategic deterrence capability at all levels of the threat spectrum indicates that Nasr is nuclear capable.

To Pakistani analyst, Dr. Shireen Mazari, ‘It (Nasr) will act as a deterrent against use of mechanised conventional land forces. This was essential in the wake of India's adventurist war-fighting doctrine formulations, which envisaged the use of rapid deployment of armed brigades and divisions in surprise and rapid attacks.’ She believes, ‘Indian dreams of a limited war against Pakistan through its Cold Start strategy have been laid to rest. This will allow for a reassertion of a stable nuclear deterrence in the region.’ This article analyses if Dr. Mazari is right.

Pakistan is the weaker side in the India-Pakistan dyad. Recognising this structural factor, its military, which also runs the state, has been constantly innovative in addressing what it perceives as an asymmetry. It has resorted to external balancing in renting out its strategic location for geopolitical use by external powers. It has forged a close relationship with China to balance India and help China in its strategic purposes in relation to India. For over quarter of a century, it has tried to gain ‘depth’, forward of its defences, by rendering rear area security problematic for Indian forces through its proxy war. It has attempted internal balancing by reportedly training five lakh irregulars for making India’s stabilisation operations untenable, even at the risk and cost of the backlash it is currently enduring. This explains the utilisation of the development of Nasr for purposes beyond merely doctrinal.

Further, Pakistan employs information operations interestingly and to some effect. For instance, it claims to have equalised India’s number of nuclear tests at Chagai and insists that these give a variegated capability. It periodically claims success of missile tests from the point of view of deterrence signalling. The Nasr test, for instance, coincided with the launch of corps level Indian military manoeuvres, Exercise Vijayi Bhav, in the Rajasthan deserts. Pakistan’s nuclear related rhetoric is also designed to increase the salience of the nuclear overhang and addresses multiple audiences, in particular the US. Its prosecution of operations against the Taliban in FATA and Khyber Pakhtoonwa province has been marked by much sound and fury, particularly with respect to the displacement of people. Its deployment of nationalist strategic analysts to inform, rationalise, legitimise and influence has been proactive. All these resulted in a former US president once famously mistaking South Asia to be the most ‘dangerous’ place in the world!

This creditable record of information warfare requires to appropriately condition analyses of developments like that of the Nasr. Nasr’s flight test had both Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai and Dr. Shireen Mazari giving their opinions. This clearly indicates that even if Nasr is a forbidding reality by itself, the same needs underlining and highlighting for effect. Multiple aims are thus achieved. The purported aim is deterrence, which explains the timing to coincide with the Indian exercise. It could also be to get the US focus back on the eastern front in terms of making the admittedly delicate balance seem untenably unstable, in light of US keenness to get the Pakistani Army take on the Taliban in North Waziristan.

That said, taking Nasr seriously at face-value helps arrive at its actual significance. The development of Nasr indicates that Pakistan views India’s Cold Start doctrine with concern. The Nasr is meant to deter India’s launch of Cold Start. Since Nasr is reportedly nuclear capable, short range and light weight, it could imply the use of tactical nuclear weapons were such a conflict to occur. Fearing a lower nuclear threshold, implied by availability of tactical nuclear weapons, India may be deterred from embarking on Cold Start. This would enable Pakistan to recreate the space it once had for continuing its prosecution of proxy war - a space that has been constricted by India’s formulation of a Cold Start doctrine, even though all the components of the doctrine such as weapons acquisitions, relocation of formations and change to a manoeuvre war culture are not yet entirely in place.

It has been assessed that Pakistani reliance on its nuclear cover would increase with India’s increasing felicity with Limited War doctrine. Pakistan is reportedly ahead of India in numbers of nuclear warheads and in a more variegated missile delivery capability. This, to one analyst, spells a strategy of ‘asymmetric escalation’. In the Pakistani logic, nuclear deterrence is also to operate at the conventional level. Nasr, to Dr. Mazari, makes for deterrence stability since it helps strengthen this dimension of nuclear stability. Dr. Mazari is right on deterrence stability, but gets her reason wrong - the reference to Cold Start being anachronistic.

India’s Army Chief has indicated that no such doctrine exists. It appears that the Indian military is looking to respond to subconventional provocations at the same level. This may be in the form of surgical strikes, Special Forces operations, border skirmishes, activation of the Line of Control, select punitive operations, etc. The Indian intent will be to convey a message of resolve as well as to punish and cause selective attrition. And the aim would be to address Pakistani cost-benefit calculations in such a manner as to coerce Pakistan into limiting its provocation below India’s ‘level of tolerance’. Such a course of action by India has internal political utility in letting off steam in terms of ‘something’ being done. It is also decidedly less expensive, preserving India’s grand strategy of economic rise from being unnecessarily buffeted.

The Indian move away from a default resort to Limited War places the onus of escalation on Pakistan. India’s conventional capability is to ensure that Pakistani reaction to such subconventional retribution is non-escalatory. Should Pakistan try to respond with conventional action, that would provoke a ‘Cold Start’ by India. Pakistan would thus be placed a second time round in a position of decision to escalate, this time by using Nasr. The prospects of Pakistan’s self-deterrence under such circumstances are higher. In the event, Pakistan will be forced to react defensively to India’s ‘contingency’ operations.

In case push comes to shove and Pakistan does resort to the use of Nasr, then this would more likely be on its own territory, rather than provocatively on Indian launch pads close to the border. India’s promised retaliation may not then necessarily be along the lines of its nuclear doctrine of ‘massive’ punitive retaliation (strategy having the privilege of departing from doctrine). The net result would be further nuclear impact(s) on Pakistani territory.

In other words, stability reigns not due to India being deterred, but Pakistan being self-deterred. Accountability for initiating both the conflict and a possible nuclear conflict would rest with the Pakistani military. The aftermath would surely find it decisively pushed off its commanding perch in Pakistan by an angered people.

In rethinking Cold Start as a default option and working towards proactive ‘contingency’ options, India is a step ahead in doctrinal shadow boxing. It appears to be playing by Schelling’s concept of Limited War as a ‘bargaining’ process:

‘It is in wars that we have come to call ‘limited wars’ that the bargaining appears most vividly and is conducted most consciously. The critical targets in such a war are the mind of the enemy…the threat of violence in reserve is more important than the commitment of force in the field… And, like any bargaining situation, a restrained war involves some degree of collaboration between adversaries.’ (Schelling, Arms and Influence (1966).

The challenge in South Asia is to ensure that the contest remains at the doctrinal level. Keeping it so entails getting into a doctrinal dialogue with Pakistan so that the ‘collaboration’, mentioned by Schelling, can be from a mutually intelligible script.

Hatf IX and possible Indian responses http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=831&u_id=77  Article No.:	1830	Date:	05/05/2011
Hatf IX and possible Indian responses
Ali Ahmed
E-Mail- aliahd66@hotmail.com
Pakistan has recently demonstrated the short range SS Hatf IX or the NASR claiming it is nuclear capable. The test was reported on 19 April in media networks across the region. Its nuclear capability depends on the miniaturisation achieved since the Chagai tests at which three low yield (sub-kiloton) devices are said to have been detonated. Analysts in Pakistan have described this as the country’s answer to ‘Cold Start’, espoused by the Indian Army. The surface-to-surface (SS) tactical nuclear capability of Pakistan came from a need to deter any conventional attack by India. Over the last decade, India had shifted to a conventional doctrine of ‘Limited War’ in which it intended to launch multiple shallow thrusts to keep below the nuclear threshold of Pakistan. The SS missiles have been depicted as serving to deter even such shallow depth attacks in a low nuclear threshold mode. Implicit analysis is the intent of nuclear first use. So, what is the effect of this development on Pakistani nuclear doctrine? The doctrine is generally taken as effecting first use, in the absence of Pakistan’s espousal of ‘no first use’ or NFU. It must be acknowledged that absence of explicit doctrine of NFU does not imply ‘first use’. Since Pakistan has not brought out a declaratory doctrine, preferring ambiguity, it is not known for certain as to what its doctrine is. In other words, Pakistani operational doctrine could well be of NFU. However, consensus has it, based on its actions and statements of personages that the bias in Pakistan’s case is in favour of ‘first use’. Pakistan seeks to ‘do more’ with nuclear weapons than is usually credited to them. Like the NATO in the Cold War period, it also employs its nuclear deterrent to cover the conventional level. This it does in the belief of conventional asymmetry with India. The ‘first use’ threat is to deter India from leveraging its conventional advantage. India has anticipated such a posture and gone in for a Limited War doctrine. The doctrine taking cognisance of possible nuclear thresholds, stipulated multiple-pronged offensives by integrated battle groups over a broad front keeping below any appreciated thresholds. Pakistan, in demonstrating its SS tactical nuclear capability has attempted to depict a lower threshold so as to restrict further the scope of these limited offensives. Knowing that Pakistan relies on information warfare to enhance the credibility of its deterrence to cover the conventional level, there is little reason to take Pakistan at its word. Shallow thrusts do not do much damage to Pakistan. At best it would suffer infrastructure damage along the border and require managing refugee flows. Air operations would likewise be circumspect in the extent of attrition they inflict on strategic reserves. This would be a more consequential threshold and therefore airpower will have to be more carefully calibrated. Since the political and military aim in a limited war would be to keep the conflict restricted in scope, time and intensity, Pakistan has the conventional capacity to respond adequately without having any deficiency being compensated by nuclear weapons. Given this, the utility of nuclear first use is less in order to deter shallow depth offensives, but more to deter possibility of launch of strike corps in wake of shallow depth offensives. India’s conventional doctrine lends India the flexibility to fight a wider war since it reckons with strike corps employment in war. Strike corps could use any of these shallow depth offensives as launch pads for deeper objectives. In the words of the conventional doctrine they, ‘should be capable of being inserted into operational level battle, either as battle groups or as a whole, to capture or threaten strategic and operational objective(s) with a view to cause destruction of the enemy’s reserves and capture sizeable portions of territory (Indian Army Doctrine, 2004: 55-56).’ While Pakistan has practiced its counter to ‘Cold Start’ in the Azm-e-Nau III exercises last year, it may not prove equal to stemming India’s strike corps, particularly if more than one of the three, are employed simultaneously. In the event, it may have to react with the SS missile against threatening pincers. The missiles therefore under-grid Pakistan’s first use posture described by one analyst as ‘asymmetric escalation’. The Hatf IX therefore attempts to extend the cover of the nuclear overhang more credibly to cover the conventional level. In the current scenario of Pakistan’s strike reserves being also employed for counter-insurgency tasks and into the near future, they may have to reel in and then deploy into action. While they are doing so and traversing to battle stations, they would be subject to attrition by airpower. They would thus be sub-optimal and may not be able to stanch India’s conventional inroads. Implicit in building the NASR is the threat of first use on elements that do not have a conventional counter or reserves suitably positioned for reaction. There are three options at which India could prove responsive to the threat. One is in the additional step it has built in at the sub-conventional level before resorting to the conventional level. This may be seen in the recent distancing from the ‘Cold Start’ theory through launch of proactive contingency operations calibrated to Pakistani proxy war provocations. The second is by going in for a ‘Cold Start and Stop’ strategy. This would mean retaining the strike corps in a posturing role geared to escalation control by deterring conventional escalation by Pakistan. This builds in two fire breaks prior to the more credible possibility of nuclear first use by Pakistan. The last is in extending nuclear deterrence to cover the low threshold mode. Presently, the doctrine of assured retaliation posits that such retaliation must be to inflict ‘unacceptable damage’. However, Pakistan may delude itself into believing it can get away with lesser punishment in the event of a strike with low opprobrium quotient. It may be prompted towards this by its risk taking capability, deficiency in strategic sense and a military dominant aggressive strategic culture. India could in such a circumstance resort to a quid pro quo or quid pro quo plus strike. This may mean a departure from ‘unacceptable damage’, but the threat of the same remains to deter nuclear escalation. Even if India’s declaratory doctrine meant for nuclear deterrence and in tune with India’s interpretation that nuclear weapons are political weapons is retained as such, this shift can be done in India’s operational doctrine. This would deter Pakistani first use even in the low threshold mode as suggested by the development of NASR. The window that Pakistan has tried to reopen for continuing its proxy war taking advantage of the stability/instability paradox can thus be slammed shut once again. Ali Ahmed is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi