# Pokhran to Agni-V: How And Why India Got the Bomb ? S3 | Ep 20

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 29 Aug 2025, 1 h 02 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67552759/29_aug_25_in_our_defence_mix_29_aug_128.mp3

India's latest Agni-V missile test, just days before the PM's visit to China, got tongues wagging this week. Was it a message to Beijing? Islamabad? Or both? In this episode of In Our Defence, national security expert Sandeep Unnithan joins host Dev Goswami to unpack the story of how and, more importantly, why India became a nuclear power. From the first "Smiling Buddha" test in 1974 to the Pokhran-II Shakti series in 1998, and today's Agni-V, this is the story of India's nuclear weapons programme. Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound Mix by Suraj Singh

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to Season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
[0:08] Speaker 2: takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
[0:12] Speaker 2: Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
[0:16] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:19] Speaker 2: to decode all things to do with India security and
[0:23] Speaker 2: explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
[0:27] Speaker 2: stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
[0:32] Speaker 3: This is in our defense.
[0:35] Speaker 2: Welcome to Another Defense. Something unusual happened in the middle
[0:39] Speaker 2: of this month. We're recording this towards the end of August,
[0:42] Speaker 2: so this I'm talking about somewhere around tenth of August,
[0:45] Speaker 2: when India issued a no TAM, which is basically a
[0:49] Speaker 2: communication for pilots across the world to avoid a certain
[0:52] Speaker 2: piece of airspace.
[0:54] Speaker 3: For a likely missile test.
[0:56] Speaker 2: The first note TAME that was essued on August eleventh
[0:59] Speaker 2: was for around few teen hundred kilometers. The second at
[1:02] Speaker 2: the range basically the that that that that no time
[1:05] Speaker 2: basically gave an indication of how long the likely missile
[1:08] Speaker 2: test was going to going to be and therefore giving
[1:11] Speaker 2: people an estimate of which particular missile may have been
[1:15] Speaker 2: tested or may be tested. That no time was then
[1:18] Speaker 2: revised on August twelfth for twenty five kilometers and again
[1:23] Speaker 2: on August fourteen for this time for four seven ninety kilometers.
[1:27] Speaker 2: The test took place of five and the last note
[1:31] Speaker 2: time actually was the the max max range that we
[1:35] Speaker 2: know of the ugly five ballistic missile, which of course,
[1:38] Speaker 2: like people are there is a nuclear capable missile. We
[1:42] Speaker 2: know these not times thanks to this person called Damien
[1:44] Speaker 2: Simon who's a very popular austenter handle on X and
[1:49] Speaker 2: somebody who's who's who's followed widely for when it comes
[1:54] Speaker 2: to information about missile tests and no times.
[1:56] Speaker 4: UH.
[1:57] Speaker 2: This test, like we discussed in the previous episode, to
[2:00] Speaker 2: just ahead of pmo's visit to China where he's going
[2:03] Speaker 2: to be meeting. The meeting has been confirmed pilotle will
[2:07] Speaker 2: be held between the two on thirty first August, just
[2:10] Speaker 2: a couple of days from now. So I thought this
[2:13] Speaker 2: is perhaps the right opportunity to decode and the classify
[2:16] Speaker 2: if I can UH and de mystify UH India's nuclear.
[2:21] Speaker 3: Weapons program, and for that I have with me.
[2:25] Speaker 4: Good to be back, Dave.
[2:27] Speaker 3: You know that thing about Damien's tweet.
[2:30] Speaker 2: So when he issued the last tweet where he said
[2:32] Speaker 2: the range had an extent once again to four thousand
[2:35] Speaker 2: and seven and ninety kilometers, somebody replied saying, oh bye
[2:40] Speaker 2: Antarctica A penguins can't. I love Twitter. I love x now,
[2:46] Speaker 2: know you know, people have the the strangest and funniest
[2:50] Speaker 2: of comments at times, the things that I am of
[2:53] Speaker 2: great significance. Actually, but I've always wondered, you know, things
[2:55] Speaker 2: like these no times being studied. That used to be
[2:58] Speaker 2: a very sort of something that was done by experts earlier,
[3:02] Speaker 2: bye bye bye, by geological experts, by channel journalists like you.
[3:06] Speaker 2: But since the advent of social media, you have almost
[3:09] Speaker 2: everybody chiming in, and you know how you have comments
[3:11] Speaker 2: like these, and you have it in near real time,
[3:13] Speaker 2: real time exactly. So do you think people in the establishment,
[3:18] Speaker 2: in the in the in the national security setup, when
[3:21] Speaker 2: they come across stuff stuff like this, even they have
[3:23] Speaker 2: a hearty laugh with stuff like that.
[3:24] Speaker 4: Yeah, possibly they do. I mean, uh is Twitter, I
[3:29] Speaker 4: mean x now is a great platform. It's super engaging.
[3:33] Speaker 4: I think everyone of consequences on x and yeah, it's
[3:37] Speaker 4: it's stuff like this that uh, you know, it has
[3:41] Speaker 4: its lighter moments, but I mean this is very serious.
[3:45] Speaker 5: It's very serious, and.
[3:48] Speaker 2: Uh, you know, while I was researching, and while I
[3:51] Speaker 2: was reading something that you shared with before this recording,
[3:55] Speaker 2: it just truck me that there are so many aspects
[3:58] Speaker 2: and angles of this program that are that people don't
[4:01] Speaker 2: really know much in detail. Because you just have those
[4:04] Speaker 2: two great headlines Pokran one and Pokran two, the great
[4:08] Speaker 2: tests that were conducted. People have a have an idea,
[4:11] Speaker 2: especially nowadays, that you know the tests led to youth
[4:14] Speaker 2: sanctions from the West, from the US specifically, which has
[4:18] Speaker 2: been talked about a lot in recent in the recent
[4:20] Speaker 2: few weeks in light of your US President Donald Trump's
[4:24] Speaker 2: tariffs on India. Uh, and people are referring to those
[4:27] Speaker 2: seminal moments as an example of why India should, like
[4:30] Speaker 2: it did back then as well, stand up to Western pressure.
[4:34] Speaker 5: Uh.
[4:35] Speaker 2: That's something that will come up during a discussion, I'm
[4:38] Speaker 2: pretty sure. But I want to start with the history
[4:41] Speaker 2: of the program itself, how it took shape.
[4:43] Speaker 3: You kind of kind kind.
[4:45] Speaker 2: Of briefly referred to this in the in our previous episode,
[4:48] Speaker 2: where you rightly said that the missile test that was
[4:51] Speaker 2: done was a message maybe to Pakistan, maybe to the US,
[4:55] Speaker 2: but more so for China, because by testing only five,
[4:59] Speaker 2: which is a five one thousand kilometer intermediate range ballistic missile,
[5:03] Speaker 2: you can reach almost the whole of whole of China,
[5:07] Speaker 2: whole of me and China.
[5:09] Speaker 3: So I want to start by talking about how did we.
[5:12] Speaker 2: Get on this trajectory, How did we decide independent India
[5:16] Speaker 2: to build nuclear weapons? What happened between Pokran one and
[5:21] Speaker 2: Pokran to very the two tests were you know, there
[5:24] Speaker 2: was a lot of gap in between them. So what
[5:26] Speaker 2: happened during those decades?
[5:28] Speaker 5: Uh?
[5:29] Speaker 2: And and how did we basically end up with the
[5:31] Speaker 2: arsenal that we have have today? And of course I
[5:34] Speaker 2: think you're going to start by I think talking about
[5:37] Speaker 2: P and Haskar.
[5:38] Speaker 3: That's something that yes, of course you you.
[5:42] Speaker 2: Shared with me, and I could the piece that you
[5:44] Speaker 2: shared with me, I could see glimpses of what we
[5:47] Speaker 2: have today back then.
[5:49] Speaker 4: Absolutely, this was a ninety sixty eight sixty eight absolutely,
[5:52] Speaker 4: that's where it begins. That's when the first the Huxter
[5:56] Speaker 4: paper that you refer to, it's a declassified document that
[5:59] Speaker 4: P and R was Secretary to Prime Minister in dra
[6:02] Speaker 4: Ghandi at that time, one of the most influential figures
[6:07] Speaker 4: political figures, you know, a bureaucratives. Of course, a former
[6:10] Speaker 4: bureaucrat is an IOFS officer who was later in the
[6:15] Speaker 4: service of the government Prime Minister in Draghand. He's one
[6:18] Speaker 4: of her closest advisers. And he actually came up with
[6:22] Speaker 4: this paper in nineteen sixty eight where he writes in
[6:26] Speaker 4: such utter clarity, what India needs to do in response
[6:30] Speaker 4: to China's atomic tests. Now, I mean there have been
[6:33] Speaker 4: a series of events that took place from nineteen sixty
[6:37] Speaker 4: four onwards, which is when China tests at lopnow for
[6:40] Speaker 4: the first time. Then it starts test firing the means
[6:45] Speaker 4: to deliver the bomb in the late sixties. In sixty
[6:49] Speaker 4: seven and all they start testing intermediate range ballistic missiles
[6:53] Speaker 4: and then they go on to ICBM capability. You know,
[6:56] Speaker 4: their arsenal is expanding at an alarming rate. Now, while
[7:01] Speaker 4: that arsenal might have been not so much of a
[7:05] Speaker 4: threat direct threat to the United States, it was to
[7:08] Speaker 4: parts of the then Soviet Union. But India was in
[7:12] Speaker 4: the firing line. You know, it's just two years after
[7:16] Speaker 4: we fought a border war with China in nineteen sixty
[7:19] Speaker 4: two sixty four China tests and the fears of the
[7:24] Speaker 4: Indian political class come out in Huksar's document where he
[7:28] Speaker 4: writes with such clarity that we will have deterrence with
[7:32] Speaker 4: China against China only if we do the following and
[7:36] Speaker 4: he outlines what we need to do, which is to
[7:39] Speaker 4: get missiles nuclear tip missiles of ranges of between two
[7:44] Speaker 4: thousand and three thousand miles, exactly what we have right,
[7:47] Speaker 4: exactly what we have so what the agne that we've tested,
[7:50] Speaker 4: what we've inducted today, more than half a century later,
[7:53] Speaker 4: is exactly the ranges that were put out in Huckser's
[7:57] Speaker 4: paper of nineteen sixty eight. It's one of the most
[7:59] Speaker 4: influential documents in Indian strategic thinking. It was declassified a
[8:05] Speaker 4: couple of years back. It is in Vivek pra Ladan's
[8:08] Speaker 4: book The Nation Declassified, the book which came out about
[8:10] Speaker 4: eight years back. It's a very good book. For those
[8:13] Speaker 4: of you who want to further reading on this, you
[8:15] Speaker 4: should read that book by Vivak Now. In this he
[8:19] Speaker 4: outlines what all we need apart from the nuclear weapons,
[8:23] Speaker 4: the means of delivery, which is long range missiles, intermediate
[8:29] Speaker 4: range ballistic missiles and very interestingly nuclear parts, submitges, so
[8:35] Speaker 4: innocences outline the entire triad that we have today. And
[8:39] Speaker 4: these things actually take a long time to put together.
[8:43] Speaker 4: They are not something that you can go and buy
[8:45] Speaker 4: off a shelf. You could in theory, but no country
[8:48] Speaker 4: will sell.
[8:49] Speaker 3: Them to you.
[8:50] Speaker 4: Well, Pakistan did that. But but the thing is that
[8:55] Speaker 4: what was articulated back then, see the nuclear weapons. India's
[8:59] Speaker 4: nuclear weapons program begins somewhere in the fifties when we
[9:03] Speaker 4: start getting our nuclear reactors, and there's that big question
[9:06] Speaker 4: where India looks around and sees the countries of the
[9:10] Speaker 4: world going in for nuclear weapons one after the other.
[9:13] Speaker 4: So you have nineteen forty five, of course the United
[9:15] Speaker 4: States Hiroshima Nagasaki, they use it for conflict termination in Japan.
[9:20] Speaker 4: Then you have very rapidly the Soviet Union just four
[9:23] Speaker 4: years later, testing its nuclear weapons, and then the Soviets
[9:25] Speaker 4: go on to test a hydrogen bomb, and then quickly
[9:28] Speaker 4: followed by the UK and then France, and finally it's
[9:32] Speaker 4: China that's the last country to enter this exclusive club
[9:36] Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty four. Now India is in a bit
[9:39] Speaker 4: of a quandary. We are this, you know, the Gandhian
[9:46] Speaker 4: way of life, and you know all of that peace
[9:50] Speaker 4: and non violence and all and weet confronted with the
[9:53] Speaker 4: most terrible weapons ever devised, which are city killers, right,
[9:57] Speaker 4: which can wipe out entire cities. But at the same
[10:00] Speaker 4: time you're faced with an enemy, an adversary who's thought
[10:03] Speaker 4: a war with you in nineteen sixty two and who
[10:05] Speaker 4: could possibly threaten you with those weapons. So we're in
[10:09] Speaker 4: a bit of a quandary there. And Homi Baba and
[10:12] Speaker 4: javal A Nehru, that's the time when our nuclear weapons
[10:15] Speaker 4: capability starts to emerge when you have an atomic energy program,
[10:19] Speaker 4: and all of these nuclear weapons come out of atomic
[10:23] Speaker 4: energy programs. And it's the Homi Baba Nehru duo that
[10:28] Speaker 4: actually put the building blocks of this capability in place.
[10:32] Speaker 4: But it's actually Missus Gandhi who starts taking the big
[10:35] Speaker 4: steps towards weaponization. And Hukser in nineteen sixty eight is
[10:40] Speaker 4: advisor to Missus Gandhi. And in between you have Prime
[10:43] Speaker 4: Minister Lal Bado Chassy for a very brief while now
[10:46] Speaker 4: he's an idealistic man and he's the one who's in
[10:50] Speaker 4: the firing line when China tests its weapons in sixty four,
[10:53] Speaker 4: and he advocates a joint nuclear umbrella with the United
[10:58] Speaker 4: States and USSR protecting India from nuclear weapons. Right, very
[11:02] Speaker 4: idealistic way of thinking that, oh, you know, I won't
[11:05] Speaker 4: develop my own weapons, but I will get these two
[11:08] Speaker 4: big powers to protect me in case China.
[11:09] Speaker 5: Attacks me with these weapons.
[11:11] Speaker 4: Now this is again, of course, just two years after
[11:14] Speaker 4: the Chinese nuclear weapons tests, but since nineteen sixty you
[11:18] Speaker 4: see a steady build up of intel in India's diplomatic,
[11:23] Speaker 4: political and strategic community. It's a very small community. It's
[11:27] Speaker 4: you know, it's mea, it's the Prime Minister's office, and
[11:30] Speaker 4: they're all worried about China's nuclear weapons program. Right from
[11:34] Speaker 4: nineteen sixty you see a steady drumbeat of assessments where
[11:40] Speaker 4: the diplomats these writing papers. They're saying that China is
[11:43] Speaker 4: going to go on nuclear And you have a very
[11:45] Speaker 4: influential paper from nineteen sixty four written by kr Naarinen,
[11:50] Speaker 4: who's a director of the China desk in the MAA
[11:54] Speaker 4: who later becomes President of India, and he writes about
[11:59] Speaker 4: China's weapons program and he says that it is a
[12:02] Speaker 4: threat to India, and therefore India must go in for
[12:04] Speaker 4: a nuclear weapons program.
[12:06] Speaker 5: But of course that's not the start point.
[12:09] Speaker 4: You can trace that back to pien Huser's paper, and
[12:12] Speaker 4: that is the Long Telegram where a long telegram, the
[12:17] Speaker 4: Long Telegram being the one written by the United States
[12:21] Speaker 4: ambassador to Moscow in nineteen forty six when he cables
[12:25] Speaker 4: a five thousand word telegram to Washington where he talks
[12:29] Speaker 4: about the fact that we need to contain the Soviet
[12:33] Speaker 4: Union because he's just heard Joseph Stalin's speech and he
[12:36] Speaker 4: realizes that they are in expansionist mode because Stalin was
[12:40] Speaker 4: an advocate of global revolution, and you know, so he said,
[12:43] Speaker 4: we need to contain this march of communism. And that's
[12:46] Speaker 4: when this whole US policy goes towards containing communism, fighting
[12:50] Speaker 4: communism wherever it erupts, and stuff like that. But the
[12:53] Speaker 4: fallout of that is on us. When China actually gets
[12:57] Speaker 4: the bomb, China has its own reasons to get the bomb.
[12:59] Speaker 4: It's it's of course called the United States. It's fought
[13:02] Speaker 4: a very vicious war with the US in Korea where
[13:06] Speaker 4: a lot of Chinese soldiers that tens of thousands of
[13:09] Speaker 4: Chinese soldiers died. It broke up with the Soviet Union,
[13:12] Speaker 4: who helped get it its first nuclear weapons. And you know,
[13:16] Speaker 4: the Chinese nuclear weapons program owes its origin to the
[13:20] Speaker 4: Soviet Union. The Soviet Union helped them with the bomb designs,
[13:23] Speaker 4: they gave them the know how and all of that.
[13:26] Speaker 4: But of course they abruptly terminated this relationship in nineteen
[13:29] Speaker 4: fifteen nine when the Sino Soviet split happened. But China
[13:33] Speaker 4: pursued this path and sure enough, by nineteen sixty four,
[13:36] Speaker 4: they had the bomb. Now, while the bomb might have
[13:39] Speaker 4: been primarily to threaten and deter the Soviet Union and
[13:44] Speaker 4: the United States, they had fought a very severe war
[13:48] Speaker 4: with a border war with the Soviet Union in nineteen
[13:52] Speaker 4: sixty nine. There's just five years after they tested the
[13:55] Speaker 4: weapon China, and this was possibly one. This was the
[13:59] Speaker 4: first clash between two nuclear armed states nineteen sixty nine.
[14:03] Speaker 4: So when you talk about Sindhu, that that's possibly the third.
[14:06] Speaker 4: You had cargil in between. Now, when they clashed, the
[14:10] Speaker 4: Soviet Union contemplated using tactical nuclear weapons against the Chinese.
[14:15] Speaker 4: They wanted to incinerate their cities and knock out their
[14:18] Speaker 4: nuclear weapons. Capability, it had gone to such a extent
[14:22] Speaker 4: it would almost spiral into nuclear conflict. That is possibly
[14:25] Speaker 4: one of the most dangerous moments in the world. Of course,
[14:27] Speaker 4: the Human Missile crisis a couple of years earlier.
[14:30] Speaker 5: Was the first.
[14:31] Speaker 4: So in sixty nine we're in the firing line. We realize, hey,
[14:35] Speaker 4: we need to develop our own nuclear weapons. And the
[14:39] Speaker 4: result of that is nineteen seventy four when we actually
[14:41] Speaker 4: tested in Pokern one and it was primarily China. Our
[14:47] Speaker 4: entire focus at that point was China, because again it's
[14:50] Speaker 4: just a few years off. Pokron one in nineteen seventy
[14:54] Speaker 4: four is eight years after the nineteen sixty two border
[14:58] Speaker 4: war with China. So you had the Indian political class
[15:02] Speaker 4: being threatened with the loss of territory, significant amounts of territory,
[15:05] Speaker 4: which is not just Axi Chin, which is the size
[15:09] Speaker 4: of you know, an area the size of kel over
[15:11] Speaker 4: thirty thousand square kilometers that you lost the state of
[15:14] Speaker 4: Kerala is what you lost. You could potentially lose the
[15:17] Speaker 4: entire Indian Northeast. So to protect the state from either
[15:23] Speaker 4: nuclear annihilation or you know, the loss of large tracts
[15:27] Speaker 4: of territory is why India began to develop nuclear weapons.
[15:31] Speaker 4: And you know, the thing about nuclear weapons is we
[15:33] Speaker 4: know that they are not military weapons, they're not weapons
[15:36] Speaker 4: of tactical war fighting. They are actually strategic weapons. They
[15:39] Speaker 4: have political weapons. So if you want to understand the
[15:42] Speaker 4: origins of what drove a country to get nuclear weapons,
[15:46] Speaker 4: you have to look at the political class, because the
[15:49] Speaker 4: military they come into the.
[15:51] Speaker 5: Stage much later.
[15:52] Speaker 4: And if you see Oppenheimer, it's very clear the movie
[15:54] Speaker 4: for those of you watching, if you see Oppenheimer, you
[15:57] Speaker 4: know that this is a political project that's driven by
[16:00] Speaker 4: the political class of the United States. Because the US
[16:05] Speaker 4: wants to end the war in Japan, they turn to
[16:07] Speaker 4: their the the scientific community, they turn to the US industry,
[16:12] Speaker 4: and of course the military is supporting. They helped dig
[16:15] Speaker 4: the chefts, set up the teams and all. But the
[16:17] Speaker 4: primary focus is usually it is political, it is technological,
[16:21] Speaker 4: which is the scientific establishment. So that's true of India
[16:25] Speaker 4: as well. You have the political class in very close
[16:28] Speaker 4: collaboration with the scientific community, and of course Indian industry
[16:32] Speaker 4: and the military comes in much later.
[16:34] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[16:35] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're right, because I think nuclear.
[16:37] Speaker 2: Weapons aren't about really fighting wars or winning the deterrence.
[16:43] Speaker 4: He listen, don't attack me, yeah, don't attack me. Don't
[16:46] Speaker 4: threaten my cities, don't you know. And when we as
[16:50] Speaker 4: a democracy are a very young democracy, nascent democracy, it's
[16:53] Speaker 4: just about two decades old, you're faced with the communist
[16:56] Speaker 4: dictatorship which doesn't think about, you know, much about sacrificing
[17:01] Speaker 4: its citizens ten million, you know, what's a big deal.
[17:04] Speaker 4: And they speak very casually about nuclear war fighting Mao Zedong, right,
[17:09] Speaker 4: And that frightens the political leadership in India. And that's
[17:14] Speaker 4: when they say that, look, we need weapons. And if
[17:17] Speaker 4: you see the autopanic that set in New Delhi after
[17:22] Speaker 4: the Chinese initial assaults in October nineteen sixty two, there
[17:26] Speaker 4: was almost a complete collapse of confidence when the Prime
[17:31] Speaker 4: Minister of the day, that's Prime Minister News sent out
[17:33] Speaker 4: that telegram to the United States. It's not a long telegram,
[17:37] Speaker 4: it's a short telegram where he asked for a lot
[17:39] Speaker 4: of assistance, like you know, like a dozen fighters, squadrons
[17:44] Speaker 4: and bombers, and he asked for an entire US forced
[17:47] Speaker 4: to be positioned here in India to protect against the
[17:50] Speaker 4: Chinese invasion. Of course, they took back that telegram and
[17:54] Speaker 4: this pretended nothing had happened, and they went on as before.
[17:57] Speaker 4: But that's when you know the political class is threatened
[18:02] Speaker 4: with either annihilation of the country or loss of significant territory.
[18:07] Speaker 4: That's when you turn towards nuclear weapons. And then that's
[18:09] Speaker 4: when you realize at that moment that we were alone
[18:13] Speaker 4: and the only way you could guarantee the security of
[18:15] Speaker 4: your people and to protect your territory was to go
[18:19] Speaker 4: in for the nuclear option. However terrible it might have been,
[18:21] Speaker 4: however repulsive those images or the experience of the people
[18:25] Speaker 4: in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, we decided that we had
[18:30] Speaker 4: no option but to go for it, and as awful
[18:34] Speaker 4: as it might have been. You know, for the longest time,
[18:38] Speaker 4: India and China didn't have a problem. You're separated by
[18:41] Speaker 4: the tallest mountain range in the world, right it is
[18:44] Speaker 4: a massive, massive wall, is bigger than the Great Wall
[18:48] Speaker 4: of China. It is more imposing than that. It's naturally built.
[18:52] Speaker 4: But when China gets nuclear weapons, you suddenly have the
[18:56] Speaker 4: ability to strike across the Himalayas, to incinerate Indian cities
[19:03] Speaker 4: and the ranges are you know, very interesting that China
[19:07] Speaker 4: could hit all of India's cities with just one thousand
[19:11] Speaker 4: mile wrong intermediate range ballistic missiles. That's about two thousand
[19:16] Speaker 4: kilometers plus missiles, whereas we would need to build missiles
[19:20] Speaker 4: twice that range to target Chinese cities for a retaliatory strike.
[19:25] Speaker 4: And you know the principle of China. More than ninety
[19:29] Speaker 4: percent of China lives on forty three percent of its territory,
[19:32] Speaker 4: which is towards the east. So here were our strategic
[19:35] Speaker 4: thinkers like Hugsar and the rest sitting and planning what
[19:39] Speaker 4: we need to do. If China attacks us, we need
[19:41] Speaker 4: to threaten them with a retaliatory strike, and that would
[19:44] Speaker 4: have to be covering all its industrial areas, population centers,
[19:48] Speaker 4: cities which are all towards the east, the Yangsa River
[19:50] Speaker 4: basin and you know in Manchuria and those kinds of things.
[19:53] Speaker 4: So that's how you see the first contours of a
[19:57] Speaker 4: nuclear strategy for India emerging in the late nineteen sixties.
[20:01] Speaker 4: And in the nineteen seventies. Of course, you test the
[20:03] Speaker 4: weapon and this this goes on, this is perfected, it's refined,
[20:07] Speaker 4: and today in twenty twenty five, you are where we
[20:09] Speaker 4: are with the ugly five.
[20:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, in fact, so fast cited was his writing
[20:16] Speaker 2: and his letter that one of the points that he
[20:18] Speaker 2: also raised is that India you should immediately start aducate
[20:23] Speaker 2: stockpiling sensitive instruments and machinery which will be difficult to
[20:27] Speaker 2: import from abroad increasingly. So he could imagine that there
[20:30] Speaker 2: would be best pressure, there would be Western pressure that
[20:33] Speaker 2: will this allow you and technology denial regime, which is
[20:36] Speaker 2: exactly which which kicked.
[20:38] Speaker 5: In post nineteen seventy four.
[20:39] Speaker 4: And you know, the interesting thing about this is there
[20:41] Speaker 4: is that our entire nuclear weapons program had a certain
[20:45] Speaker 4: element of subterfuge and camouflage because you always had to
[20:50] Speaker 4: disguise your program. You had to tell the world that
[20:55] Speaker 4: we are not aggressive, We don't want to be a
[20:57] Speaker 4: nuclear weapons you know, a bomb making, a bomb wielding
[21:02] Speaker 4: country threatening nuclear So it kind of went against our
[21:07] Speaker 4: green right, and you see some of the writings that
[21:09] Speaker 4: come out from then. It's they realized that we're not
[21:12] Speaker 4: a country that's gone out and captured other countries like
[21:15] Speaker 4: China has done and they've killed, you know, hundreds of
[21:19] Speaker 4: thousands of people.
[21:20] Speaker 5: The Soviet Union.
[21:21] Speaker 4: Has done that as well, and we are largely, you know,
[21:23] Speaker 4: a peaceful, peaceful lot. And you know, we forced to
[21:27] Speaker 4: go in for nuclear weapons for the following reasons. And
[21:30] Speaker 4: all of our programs are hidden under various you know, disguises,
[21:36] Speaker 4: like you have the nuclear weapons program being called a
[21:39] Speaker 4: peaceful nuclear explosion. Pokeroon one is called a p and E.
[21:42] Speaker 4: A peaceful nuclear explosion. There's nothing like a peaceful explosion, right,
[21:46] Speaker 4: I mean, it's yeah, it is. I mean, if if
[21:48] Speaker 4: you had X then back in seventy four, you would
[21:51] Speaker 4: have had a lot, you know, a lot lot to
[21:55] Speaker 4: answer for back then online, right, p and E s
[21:58] Speaker 4: and India's moving vast tracks of land. You know, so
[22:02] Speaker 4: some of those skeptical guys who saw are rational back
[22:06] Speaker 4: then in nineteen seventy four for testing weapons. I remember
[22:09] Speaker 4: one book which was that which talked about nuclear weapons
[22:14] Speaker 4: way back in the early nineties. They said that India's
[22:18] Speaker 4: rational for nuclear weapons the p andy was that you
[22:22] Speaker 4: could move used to build large hydroelectric projects.
[22:27] Speaker 5: You could use it to move last vast tracts of land.
[22:29] Speaker 4: And it said, look, those vast tracks of land that
[22:31] Speaker 4: you move would be clearly across the border. It would
[22:34] Speaker 4: be on your side of the thing. So, I mean,
[22:36] Speaker 4: that's the day and even the nuclear Submary. It was
[22:38] Speaker 4: always you know, disguised camouflage. It was a ballistic missile
[22:42] Speaker 4: submarine that we were building all around, right, And this
[22:46] Speaker 4: is a myth that you know, we had. We wanted
[22:50] Speaker 4: to build an SSM, which is a tactical weapon, which
[22:53] Speaker 4: is a tactical platform, which is a nuclear power submarine
[22:58] Speaker 4: powered by nuclear nuclear reactor but not carrying nuclear weapons. Right.
[23:03] Speaker 4: But the fact is that we all along wanted to
[23:05] Speaker 4: build a ballistic missile submarine, which is a nuclear parts
[23:08] Speaker 4: submarine which is armed with nuclear weapons. And we always
[23:12] Speaker 4: said that, oh, it is just a naval a reactor
[23:15] Speaker 4: propulsion program, and it's just meant to power a conventional
[23:19] Speaker 4: submarine but with a nuclear reactor. And then they said
[23:23] Speaker 4: we have a PSLV test. Oh that's a space program.
[23:25] Speaker 4: We want to launch satellites into space. Now, all of these,
[23:29] Speaker 4: if you see, they very interesting. It's like the blind
[23:32] Speaker 4: men feeling the different sides of the elephant. You know
[23:34] Speaker 4: that paralle one guy is pulling the tail, the other
[23:37] Speaker 4: guy is pulling the pillar. But if they all took
[23:40] Speaker 4: off their blindfolds, they would and they read PN Huckster's
[23:47] Speaker 4: original paper, they would know what the Indian nuclear weapons
[23:51] Speaker 4: program was all about. It was about fielding a whole
[23:55] Speaker 4: range of vectors, both ground launched and sea launched, which
[24:00] Speaker 4: is ground based missiles, nuclear tip missiles, and c launched
[24:05] Speaker 4: missiles on nuclear parts submarines. So this was and all
[24:09] Speaker 4: of the technologies that you had to get were camouflage
[24:12] Speaker 4: under a naval reactive program, a civilian nuclear program, a
[24:18] Speaker 4: space satellite launching capability. All of these have military elements
[24:24] Speaker 4: and they all come together very quietly over the years
[24:28] Speaker 4: when you have very bright scientists like epj Abd Kalam,
[24:32] Speaker 4: we pulled in from the ISRO and brought into the
[24:37] Speaker 4: ABIDO to do the IGMDP thing. Now the IGMDP is
[24:41] Speaker 4: also very it's an interesting camouflage. Someone who's very key
[24:46] Speaker 4: to this program who I interviewed, said, I don't want
[24:50] Speaker 4: to mention naming because he'd be a little uncomfortable hearing this,
[24:55] Speaker 4: but he told me that, you know, primarily the IDMDP
[24:59] Speaker 4: was all about rategic weapons, right. We just wanted the
[25:02] Speaker 4: PRETHV and the Agne. All the other missiles were just
[25:06] Speaker 4: minor tactical thing. We did that just to you see
[25:10] Speaker 4: five missiles together. You look at it, Okay, one's a
[25:13] Speaker 4: long range nuclear vector. The other one is a short
[25:16] Speaker 4: range one. The other one is an anti tank missile.
[25:18] Speaker 4: The other one's a UH two, you know, anti aircraft missiles.
[25:22] Speaker 4: So we disguise the nuclear delivery platform in this larger
[25:29] Speaker 4: mix of many innocent missiles, very tactical missiles. The real
[25:33] Speaker 4: missiles they wanted to go for were the preth Wey
[25:36] Speaker 4: and the agree Prethy is the short range ballistic missile.
[25:39] Speaker 4: The Ugnes of course, the long range I RBM, which
[25:42] Speaker 4: is what we wanted all along, and that became the
[25:44] Speaker 4: building blocks for our entire range of long range capability
[25:49] Speaker 4: I RBM two, near ICBM threshold i CBM, and even beyond.
[25:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, that actually was gonna be.
[25:55] Speaker 2: One of my questions is that when you look at
[25:58] Speaker 2: a nuclear weapon, you have the two distinct elements. You
[26:01] Speaker 2: have the bomb and you have the delivery system. So
[26:04] Speaker 2: the bomb is something you've been perfect in since seventy four.
[26:06] Speaker 2: That's when you sort of first demonstrated the capability to
[26:09] Speaker 2: be able to essentially carry out a nuclear explosion. Uh
[26:13] Speaker 2: and then in prokrun to the operations chuckte tests, you
[26:18] Speaker 2: had basically bombs that could be put onto a missile.
[26:22] Speaker 4: A deliverable clear bomb.
[26:24] Speaker 2: So I think you've already kind of answered my question,
[26:27] Speaker 2: but also put out there that was India's space program.
[26:32] Speaker 2: With a successful space program, they have one of the
[26:34] Speaker 2: few countries in the world to be able to land.
[26:37] Speaker 3: On the Moon for example.
[26:39] Speaker 2: Was it a result of this or were these missiles
[26:42] Speaker 2: because of that program?
[26:44] Speaker 4: Well, they were clearly a result of that program. It's
[26:46] Speaker 4: a dual use technology, right, It's exactly like the civilian
[26:52] Speaker 4: energy program. Our nuclear atomic weapons program was a by
[26:56] Speaker 4: product of the civilian nuclear energy program, which is why
[27:00] Speaker 4: the Indo US nuclear deal was such a big deal. Right.
[27:04] Speaker 4: There are some who will argue that we should never
[27:06] Speaker 4: have signed that god in for the deal because the
[27:07] Speaker 4: US capped are capability at a very lower.
[27:10] Speaker 5: Level, whereas we needed to test and stuff.
[27:13] Speaker 4: But there is the vast majority of the Indian security
[27:16] Speaker 4: establishing military. You look, we tested everything. I mean, I've
[27:19] Speaker 4: heard this from doctor Chidambram himself, the bomb master of
[27:22] Speaker 4: seventy four and later ninety eight chairman of the Atomic
[27:25] Speaker 4: Energy Board where he commissioned, and he said that we've tested.
[27:28] Speaker 5: Everything in ninety eight. We don't need to do any
[27:30] Speaker 5: more tests.
[27:31] Speaker 4: We've got all the data but the fact is that
[27:33] Speaker 4: all of our programs spin offs from the civilian programs,
[27:37] Speaker 4: whether it is the ISROS capability to launch the PSLV,
[27:42] Speaker 4: thegn program was a spin off from that, and so
[27:46] Speaker 4: all of this came. But because you know, the fact
[27:49] Speaker 4: is that if you went out there to say that
[27:51] Speaker 4: you were going to develop, you know, a military weapons program,
[27:55] Speaker 4: there would be a lot of technology denial regimes on
[27:58] Speaker 4: you which would not allow you to get the technologies,
[28:01] Speaker 4: either for the nuclear reactors or for missile launch capability.
[28:06] Speaker 4: And you saw that after nineteen ninety eight, you had
[28:09] Speaker 4: certain countries that would never sell you machining tools even
[28:14] Speaker 4: you know, we were completely on the blacklist, and you know,
[28:17] Speaker 4: country the entities, anything linked to India's weapons program, nobody
[28:23] Speaker 4: would sell anything to them. So we had no option
[28:25] Speaker 4: but to develop it on our own. But this is
[28:27] Speaker 4: also very interesting thing they've like I discussed that a
[28:30] Speaker 4: lot of the nuclear weapons programs. There are eight countries
[28:35] Speaker 4: today that have nuclear weapons. You know, at least half
[28:39] Speaker 4: of them have had them hand me downs, Like the
[28:42] Speaker 4: Chinese got it from the Soviets, the Pakistanis got it
[28:46] Speaker 4: from the Chinese, the North Koreans got it from the
[28:48] Speaker 4: Pakistanis and the Chinese. The Israelis possibly got some of
[28:53] Speaker 4: it from the Americans, but a lot of it was
[28:56] Speaker 4: different because they're genius scientists. Right, India is one of
[29:00] Speaker 4: those programs which is largely standalone. We've not had any
[29:04] Speaker 4: handholding for our programs, our missile launch technologies, all of
[29:08] Speaker 4: this is developed by ourselves. And in that sense, it
[29:13] Speaker 4: is a kind of a civilizational weapons program. I would
[29:17] Speaker 4: call it that, you know, So it's like we are
[29:19] Speaker 4: on our own, we need to protect like you know,
[29:22] Speaker 4: Like I keep saying this at the risk of reputation.
[29:25] Speaker 4: It is our two biggest achievements shortly after nineteen forty seven.
[29:30] Speaker 4: The first one is of course, the Green Revolution, where
[29:33] Speaker 4: you're able to feed your people, and the second is
[29:36] Speaker 4: the sixties and seventy four onwards when you test weapons,
[29:40] Speaker 4: which is to protect your people. Because we're not treaty allies, right,
[29:44] Speaker 4: no one's coming to our rescue in case there is war.
[29:47] Speaker 4: And I've heard this from some of our best and
[29:49] Speaker 4: brightest thinkers, generals, soldiers, scientists and all that our entire
[29:55] Speaker 4: premise of non alignment is that we don't have allies.
[30:00] Speaker 4: We are not in we don't have a NATO or
[30:03] Speaker 4: we don't have a warsaw Pact, we don't have AUCOS
[30:05] Speaker 4: or you know nothing. No one is going to come
[30:08] Speaker 4: to our rescue in times of war. We have to
[30:10] Speaker 4: defend ourselves, and which is a good thing because, like
[30:13] Speaker 4: we are seeing now with the tariffs, the kind of
[30:16] Speaker 4: pressure that's been put on you. If you were, you know,
[30:19] Speaker 4: a treaty, ally you had to subordinate yourself to another
[30:24] Speaker 4: country and you would have to bend to their will,
[30:26] Speaker 4: which is what we didn't want to do. And the
[30:30] Speaker 4: only time we actually went into what I would call
[30:33] Speaker 4: a quassie treaty was in nineteen seventy one, the Indoor
[30:38] Speaker 4: Soviet Peace and Friendship Treaty, which we signed in August.
[30:42] Speaker 4: Now it's very interesting that treaty had been around for
[30:44] Speaker 4: a couple of years. Soviets wanted to have wanted us
[30:47] Speaker 4: to sign it. We signed it only because the Soviets
[30:51] Speaker 4: afforded us a certain element of military protection in case,
[30:56] Speaker 4: because we were up against form formidable alliance of China, Pakistan,
[31:01] Speaker 4: and the United States. That's three out of five permanent
[31:06] Speaker 4: members of the UN Security Council. So you have China
[31:09] Speaker 4: on the northern borders, you have Pakistan on the west
[31:11] Speaker 4: and on the east, and you have the United States
[31:14] Speaker 4: in the south. And when Missus Gandhi moved in and
[31:17] Speaker 4: this was a war. I mean, this is an open secret.
[31:22] Speaker 4: This is a war that we planned. This is the
[31:24] Speaker 4: only war that India has really planned to fight after
[31:27] Speaker 4: nineteen forty seven, the war in East Pakistan to buy
[31:31] Speaker 4: for kate East Pakistan to create the new nation of Bangladesh.
[31:34] Speaker 4: We of course fought it on West Pakistan and East Pakistan.
[31:37] Speaker 4: But when we went into this, Missus Ghandhi had to
[31:40] Speaker 4: be absolutely sure she had the Soviets on her side,
[31:44] Speaker 4: which is when the Soviets we signed that treaty. And
[31:47] Speaker 4: what the Soviets did was to position we see, the
[31:51] Speaker 4: Indian strategic community had this eternal fear that it's just
[31:55] Speaker 4: been nine years since the Indo Sino Indian War, right
[32:02] Speaker 4: India China Border War of nineteen sixty two, What if
[32:05] Speaker 4: the Chinese come in when we are engaged fighting with
[32:07] Speaker 4: the Pakistani is that two front war threat? So that
[32:10] Speaker 4: is when we called the Soviets and the Soviets moved
[32:14] Speaker 4: several divisions fifteen twenty divisions along the border with China. Now,
[32:19] Speaker 4: so that meant that Mao had to counter deploy just
[32:22] Speaker 4: to ensure that the Soviets didn't strike him in the back.
[32:24] Speaker 4: So that took the Chinese out of the equation, right,
[32:28] Speaker 4: And this is a time when Kissinger is telling the
[32:31] Speaker 4: Chinese envoy in New York, we want you to move
[32:34] Speaker 4: in threaten the Indians move a couple of divisions there
[32:38] Speaker 4: because they were afraid what would happen to Pakistan? Right,
[32:42] Speaker 4: And when we moved into East Pakistan at the speed
[32:46] Speaker 4: that we did, it was an out of syllables question. Right,
[32:50] Speaker 4: they panicked. And that is when they sent the seventh
[32:52] Speaker 4: fleet in and they realized, oh my god, the Chinese
[32:54] Speaker 4: are not coming to our assistance. We don't have anything
[32:57] Speaker 4: in the vicinity. Send the seventh fleet in. Rattle the
[32:59] Speaker 4: ins a bit, that's what. So that gunboard diplomacy is
[33:02] Speaker 4: what unfolded. And my sense is that that is also
[33:07] Speaker 4: one factor that accelerated our quest for weapons. You said that, look,
[33:11] Speaker 4: a superpower has sent his carrier battle group into the
[33:15] Speaker 4: Indian Ocean to threaten us.
[33:17] Speaker 5: It could happen again.
[33:18] Speaker 4: And as we've seen with countries in the twenty first
[33:22] Speaker 4: century which have been invaded and torn apart, on the
[33:26] Speaker 4: premise of them having weapons of mass destruction. This is
[33:31] Speaker 4: a fate that a lot of smaller countries were threatened
[33:33] Speaker 4: by bigger countries, would worry about that. You know, maybe
[33:39] Speaker 4: I should have a nuclear bomb to deter you know,
[33:42] Speaker 4: a big bully from coming in, you know, dethrowning, decapitating
[33:47] Speaker 4: my leadership and all of that. I'm sure the Iranians
[33:50] Speaker 4: would be worrying about that a lot.
[33:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I wasn't sure if I was gonna
[33:57] Speaker 2: eventually end up bringing up this next point, but I
[34:00] Speaker 2: think I will because you briefly sort of referred to
[34:03] Speaker 2: it as well just now. So I think the nuclear
[34:08] Speaker 2: weapons program, Indian news program is one of those examples
[34:11] Speaker 2: of what you say is you can get it right.
[34:14] Speaker 3: If you go into it.
[34:15] Speaker 2: With mission mode, like you know, our entire nation you
[34:18] Speaker 2: treated as a strategic project, you will get it right.
[34:20] Speaker 2: So I always thought that this program was without controversy,
[34:24] Speaker 2: was your your perfect example of how to develop something
[34:28] Speaker 2: on your own successfully.
[34:30] Speaker 3: So we have been successful.
[34:32] Speaker 2: But I was surprised to know. Okay, there was some
[34:34] Speaker 2: controversy during the ninety eight tests, especially with the test
[34:38] Speaker 2: number one SHUTTU one, which was believed to be a
[34:42] Speaker 2: thermonuclear device, and one of one of the people you
[34:47] Speaker 2: mentioned right now, he was actually part of that controversy
[34:50] Speaker 2: that there was this very very vocal group of Indian
[34:53] Speaker 2: scientists who believed that the tests were not enough that
[34:58] Speaker 2: Indian to test more work because there was one section
[35:03] Speaker 2: that said that one of the bombs, especially the thermonuclear
[35:05] Speaker 2: nuclear device, had sort of fizzled out, did not really
[35:09] Speaker 2: second stage, yeah, did not really perform the class to
[35:13] Speaker 2: that to that extent. And if I want to just
[35:15] Speaker 2: break it down to my listeners and viewers before you
[35:17] Speaker 2: get in, is basically, I think what.
[35:19] Speaker 3: We have for sure are fission bombs yea.
[35:22] Speaker 2: And the device number one that we're talking about is
[35:25] Speaker 2: basically a fusion bomb. And if you go back to
[35:27] Speaker 2: your physics lessons, fusion generates much much more energy than
[35:31] Speaker 2: fission does. Fusion is basically when you fuse into one atom,
[35:35] Speaker 2: where fission is basically when you break apart an atom.
[35:38] Speaker 2: So that energy is what causes the radioactivity that the
[35:42] Speaker 2: devastation and stuff like that. So one your take on
[35:46] Speaker 2: this controversy, and second, my belief that why is this
[35:51] Speaker 2: controversy even relevant? Because fusion, fission, whatever you have a
[35:55] Speaker 2: nuclear bomb at thend of fit.
[35:56] Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, you know. So the thing is that I've
[35:59] Speaker 4: asked this question to doctor Jeddo. I've actually spoken to
[36:02] Speaker 4: both sides of the debate. That the person who raised
[36:05] Speaker 4: this issue was Casanthanam, who was also part of the
[36:09] Speaker 4: pokroon to.
[36:10] Speaker 5: Tests in nineteen ninety eight.
[36:12] Speaker 4: As a brilliant man, and he's a nuclear scientist. He's
[36:17] Speaker 4: possibly one of the very few people who have worked
[36:19] Speaker 4: across multiple verticals. He's been in the DRDO, he went
[36:23] Speaker 4: into the Atomic Energy Commission. Of course, he was in
[36:26] Speaker 4: the BRC. So he said that it was not a
[36:30] Speaker 4: full test and it was a partial success, and there's
[36:33] Speaker 4: nothing like a partial success. But he said that it
[36:35] Speaker 4: wasn't a full scale thermonuclear test, and he advocated further testing.
[36:41] Speaker 4: So there was a small group of people who backed him.
[36:44] Speaker 4: But we have to go with what the scientific community,
[36:49] Speaker 4: led by doctor Chidamram have said. And I've asked him
[36:52] Speaker 4: this a number of times and he's insisted, and he said,
[36:55] Speaker 4: you have to believe us.
[36:57] Speaker 5: It was a success.
[36:58] Speaker 4: We did not test it to the full potential because
[37:01] Speaker 4: we did not want to create issues for the villages
[37:05] Speaker 4: around there. You know if they tested to the full
[37:07] Speaker 4: extent there would be problems, and that is why they
[37:10] Speaker 4: kind of, you know, didn't test it to its full potential.
[37:12] Speaker 4: But we know that it was tested as for the design,
[37:16] Speaker 4: everything was fine, So there is no need for further tests.
[37:19] Speaker 4: So when I asked him, you need further tests maybe
[37:22] Speaker 4: you know other thermonuclear weapons or tactical weapons and all that,
[37:25] Speaker 4: he says, absolutely not. We've told the government that we
[37:29] Speaker 4: don't need to resume testing and nineteen ninety eight was
[37:32] Speaker 4: all that we needed. And if you look at it,
[37:35] Speaker 4: you know, thermonuclear weapons. The rationale for it was at
[37:40] Speaker 4: a time when you didn't have the kind of missile accuracy,
[37:43] Speaker 4: missile ranges and missile accuracy you needed to really have
[37:46] Speaker 4: a big explosions, massive explosions one mega turn you know,
[37:50] Speaker 4: two mega turn weapons to literally instant it because your
[37:53] Speaker 4: cps were so wide off target. To hit the target
[37:57] Speaker 4: with a very high degree of you need to have
[38:01] Speaker 4: a very large explosion, right whereas now you can argue
[38:05] Speaker 4: that when your missile ranges your cps are dropping to
[38:09] Speaker 4: single digit meters, right, just like five ten meters, do
[38:14] Speaker 4: you really need a nuclear weapon of that size your
[38:16] Speaker 4: hit with a nuclear weapon, doesn't matter if it was
[38:18] Speaker 4: like a you know, a massive nuclear blast or a
[38:22] Speaker 4: massive thermonuclear blast. That's the rashal so and that that's
[38:27] Speaker 4: one of the reasons why, you know, I believe I'd
[38:29] Speaker 4: go with the establishment on this one to say that
[38:32] Speaker 4: that test was a success, and we do have that
[38:35] Speaker 4: as one of our one of the weapons in our arsenal.
[38:39] Speaker 4: There are, of course a couple of tactical weapons that
[38:43] Speaker 4: were tested sub kyloton yield weapons, and then of course
[38:47] Speaker 4: there was the the twenty kt weapon and of course
[38:50] Speaker 4: the boosted fission which is a thermonuclear weapon.
[38:54] Speaker 2: Yeah right, we'll talk more about this but after a
[38:56] Speaker 2: quick take.
[38:57] Speaker 3: Welcome back, Sandypa.
[38:59] Speaker 2: So before the break, we've talked about India's quest for
[39:02] Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, how it went on to develop these weapons
[39:08] Speaker 2: on its own, very importantly successfully.
[39:10] Speaker 3: So now I want to.
[39:12] Speaker 2: Talk in the second half about the implications of this
[39:15] Speaker 2: program and how it sort of helped help India. And
[39:20] Speaker 2: I'll start with our nuclear doctrine which was formalized in
[39:25] Speaker 2: January two thousand and three. Very nice press PIB release
[39:29] Speaker 2: and very good SEO on this SEO by the people
[39:32] Speaker 2: who don't know is search engine optimization basically essentially how
[39:35] Speaker 2: well the website's technicals are.
[39:38] Speaker 3: For it to show up.
[39:39] Speaker 2: So, if you google the word India Nuclear Doctrine, this
[39:42] Speaker 2: PIB link from two thousand and three, a very old
[39:44] Speaker 2: page by the way, it's the first Google.
[39:46] Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a number of times it's been searched.
[39:49] Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, and it's a really nice document. It's a
[39:52] Speaker 2: one page release. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the actual document
[39:55] Speaker 2: is much longer and much more detail, but this was
[39:57] Speaker 2: for like public consumption. It's a one page least that
[40:00] Speaker 2: basically lines out and charts out what when India would
[40:05] Speaker 2: use its nuclear weapons and how in terms of the protocol.
[40:08] Speaker 2: So I'll just summarize it for our listener than viewers.
[40:11] Speaker 2: It's basically a posture of like everyone knows, no first use.
[40:15] Speaker 2: I think, apart from China, we are the only country
[40:17] Speaker 2: in the world no first use, no use of nuclear
[40:24] Speaker 2: weapons against countries.
[40:25] Speaker 3: That do not have nuclear weapons.
[40:26] Speaker 2: However, if countries attack US with chemical or biological weapons,
[40:31] Speaker 2: which basically costume level of devastation the nuclear weapons would,
[40:34] Speaker 2: then you obviously reserve the right uh in case of
[40:37] Speaker 2: a nuclear attack, the retaliation will be massive.
[40:40] Speaker 3: It will not be proportionate.
[40:41] Speaker 2: It will be meant to basically and highlight the enemy
[40:45] Speaker 2: or the person or the country that has fired the
[40:47] Speaker 2: weapon towards you.
[40:49] Speaker 3: Uh, there would.
[40:50] Speaker 2: Be strict controls and basically we will not be going
[40:52] Speaker 2: around selling our nuclear technology on the black market.
[40:56] Speaker 5: Is one of the things.
[40:57] Speaker 2: And the last point, the summary of the last point
[41:00] Speaker 2: is basically how this setup works is that you have
[41:03] Speaker 2: a council led by the PM, under whom you have
[41:05] Speaker 2: an executive Council led by the NSA that gives you
[41:08] Speaker 2: sort of information when you when things you may want
[41:11] Speaker 2: to launch a nuclear weapon and when the PM says go.
[41:14] Speaker 2: Then you have the Strategic Forces Command which reports to
[41:17] Speaker 2: the to the Council, And basically the officer who heads
[41:22] Speaker 2: that command does not take orders from his parent services
[41:25] Speaker 2: of Army chief or the for chief or the Navy chief.
[41:29] Speaker 2: He takes orders from the Council and if ordered.
[41:32] Speaker 4: So, then he would the nuclear commander.
[41:35] Speaker 3: He would then deploy.
[41:36] Speaker 2: Either a Miras two thousand, a Jaguar or Dianasarihant or
[41:41] Speaker 2: maybe one of the land missiles and attack road and rail. Yes, yes,
[41:45] Speaker 2: a very nice document, like I said, and it's been
[41:49] Speaker 2: there for many years, but in the recent past six
[41:52] Speaker 2: seven years, you've heard some murmurs. I'm not sure how
[41:55] Speaker 2: serious they were, coming from officials within the government, elected
[42:00] Speaker 2: ministers who basically said it's not set in stone, it
[42:05] Speaker 2: can always.
[42:05] Speaker 3: Change and stuff like that. Do you think making.
[42:08] Speaker 2: Such comments was ever a good idea because I think
[42:12] Speaker 2: having a policy like this well stated for the world,
[42:15] Speaker 2: I think it's a very It's something should be very
[42:17] Speaker 2: proud of, is my belief.
[42:19] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely no. And what you're referring to is
[42:23] Speaker 4: there have been some you know, murmurs in the past.
[42:27] Speaker 4: I think it was around twenty eighteen, seventeen eighteen when.
[42:31] Speaker 5: We were we saw some.
[42:36] Speaker 4: Informed commentary about the need to revise our no first
[42:40] Speaker 4: use doctrine and that you know, suggested that something called
[42:46] Speaker 4: launch on warning. Yes, you know, is a posture that
[42:49] Speaker 4: we need to get onto, which is that when you
[42:51] Speaker 4: see your adversary about to launch nuclear weapons, you know,
[42:54] Speaker 4: you have a readiness posture that will you know, strike
[42:57] Speaker 4: first instead of waiting to be hit by you know,
[43:00] Speaker 4: nuclear weapons. And that stems out of the fact that
[43:04] Speaker 4: these rational thinkers have questioned our ability to absorb a
[43:10] Speaker 4: first strike. You know, what is an few, and a
[43:13] Speaker 4: few means that you will not use nuclear weapons first.
[43:17] Speaker 4: You will not be the first to attack. You will
[43:19] Speaker 4: wait for a first salvo to come to You will
[43:24] Speaker 4: absorb that first salvo your cities or your military targets,
[43:30] Speaker 4: and then you will launch a retaliatory strike. Now these
[43:35] Speaker 4: well you can call them nuclear hawks. They say that. Look,
[43:40] Speaker 4: Indian cities can't even absorb monsoon showers, you know, leave
[43:45] Speaker 4: alone a massive salvo of nuclear weapons, you will be annihilated.
[43:51] Speaker 4: You know, thirty of your population centers will be taken out.
[43:55] Speaker 4: It will cause unacceptable damage, It will disrupt your your
[43:59] Speaker 4: complete way of life. And are you going to wait
[44:01] Speaker 4: for such a eventuality before you launch weapons? So that
[44:08] Speaker 4: is where they're coming from. That, look, we need to
[44:10] Speaker 4: revise our because you're faced with That's not forget they
[44:15] Speaker 4: when Hukshar wrote that paper, you had Pakistan that had
[44:19] Speaker 4: not yet begun to eat grass and developed nuclear weapons.
[44:22] Speaker 5: Right.
[44:22] Speaker 4: The Pakistani nuclear weapons program came much later in the
[44:26] Speaker 4: nineteen seventies. It began developed, It was developed in the
[44:29] Speaker 4: nineteen seventies. It until nineteen eighty one, India's nuclear weapons
[44:35] Speaker 4: program was entirely focused on China. It's only in the
[44:39] Speaker 4: nineteen eighties that it starts looking at Pakistan. Hey, Pakistan
[44:44] Speaker 4: started developing a nuclear weapons program as well, and therefore
[44:47] Speaker 4: you have to ask China's transfer of nuclear weapons designs,
[44:53] Speaker 4: bomb blueprints, know how, highly enriched uranium designs, and they're
[45:01] Speaker 4: believed to have even tested weapons for the pakistanis was
[45:05] Speaker 4: this part of this plan to ensure that India would
[45:09] Speaker 4: never become a direct nuclear threat to China. Distract India
[45:13] Speaker 4: with a nuclear armed Pakistan, right, So that is when
[45:17] Speaker 4: in the early eighties is when the China Pakistan nuclear
[45:21] Speaker 4: access begins to take shape. So all of these are interlinked.
[45:24] Speaker 4: Nothing happens in isolation. You know, it is the United
[45:28] Speaker 4: States that tests first, the Soviet Union goes after that,
[45:32] Speaker 4: then you have the UK and France. Then you have China,
[45:35] Speaker 4: of course, and because China tests, it's like a domino effect,
[45:39] Speaker 4: you know, exactly like how a nuclear chain reaction takes place.
[45:42] Speaker 4: It's a domino effect. And you come to the situation
[45:47] Speaker 4: in the nineteen early twenty first century when you face
[45:50] Speaker 4: with two nuclear armed tribals which have very different nuclear doctrines.
[45:55] Speaker 4: One says n few, it's China and the other one
[45:58] Speaker 4: has no such doctrine, which is Pakistan, which says that
[46:02] Speaker 4: you know, they maintain a posture of nuclear ambiguity. So
[46:07] Speaker 4: a lot of our strategic thinkers are nuclear hawks, have
[46:10] Speaker 4: advocated for re looking at this nfew because they say that, look,
[46:15] Speaker 4: there's no way you can possibly absorb a nuclear strike, however,
[46:18] Speaker 4: and you don't know how many weapons that guy is
[46:21] Speaker 4: going to throw at you, because we don't have nuclear
[46:26] Speaker 4: dialogue with either China or with Pakistan. So there is
[46:30] Speaker 4: a certain sense of we have an agreement not to
[46:34] Speaker 4: attack each other's nuclear reactors between India and Pakistan that
[46:38] Speaker 4: came up in the late eighties. But we don't have
[46:41] Speaker 4: any other nuclear kind of we don't have salt, we
[46:45] Speaker 4: don't have start, we don't any of these. Maybe that's
[46:48] Speaker 4: a good start point for us to start looking at,
[46:51] Speaker 4: you know, who wants to get into an unending nuclear
[46:55] Speaker 4: weapons race of the kind that the Soviets and the
[46:59] Speaker 4: United States and now of course the Russian Federation have
[47:02] Speaker 4: over ten thousand weapons. And this is where it's going
[47:05] Speaker 4: to end, because what you set into motion is a
[47:09] Speaker 4: production line, and that production line will go on producing
[47:14] Speaker 4: weapons as long as the ECHU is available. So which
[47:19] Speaker 4: is why the Pakistani nuclear weapons program is steadily gone on,
[47:22] Speaker 4: producing weapon after weapon after weapon, and they're approaching the
[47:26] Speaker 4: two hundreds. The Chinese are approaching They've crossed five hundred
[47:30] Speaker 4: and yeah, and they're approaching one thousand. Right, No one
[47:35] Speaker 4: knows about our weapons thing, but I have a feeling
[47:38] Speaker 4: that we will revise our numbers based on the two
[47:43] Speaker 4: front threat of Chinese and Pakistani nuclear weapons. The numbers. Right,
[47:47] Speaker 4: when you get into the numbers game, then you'll have
[47:49] Speaker 4: to factor in not just the Chinese nuclear arsenal, but
[47:52] Speaker 4: the Pakistani nuclear arsenal as well. So it goes into
[47:55] Speaker 4: a mad death spiral. That's what I'm saying.
[47:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, I get your point.
[47:59] Speaker 2: It's a stick point on something I've never thought of. Actually,
[48:02] Speaker 2: uh So when you were answering that, I just thought of.
[48:05] Speaker 3: I pictured it. Forget a nuclear missile.
[48:07] Speaker 2: What if there is a bunch of missiles launched towards Jamnagar, Right,
[48:12] Speaker 2: uh that poses an existential question for India because it's
[48:16] Speaker 2: maybe perhaps a conventional attack, but it's going to do
[48:19] Speaker 2: the effect is going to be massive for your country,
[48:21] Speaker 2: right because that's like perhaps your biggest source of refined petroleum. Absolutely, so,
[48:28] Speaker 2: your transportation, your food supplies, everything will take a hit.
[48:33] Speaker 4: So you know where the Prime minister is coming from.
[48:35] Speaker 4: And he speaks about Sudarshan Chakra. We still don't know
[48:38] Speaker 4: the full contours of that. It's unusual for a prime
[48:41] Speaker 4: minister to talk about specific nuclear weapons, a specific weapons
[48:46] Speaker 4: program from the ramparts of the Red food. But that
[48:48] Speaker 4: clearly tells you which way we are headed now posts Indur,
[48:53] Speaker 4: which is to build up a huge defense shield, which
[48:56] Speaker 4: is like your you can call it the iron dome
[49:00] Speaker 4: or a Golden dome kind of project, but this has
[49:03] Speaker 4: elements of that, and my sense is that they're going
[49:06] Speaker 4: to combine what is already available, what we've built. We're
[49:10] Speaker 4: going to build on our proven capabilities like iiccs that
[49:15] Speaker 4: the Air Force demonstrated. It's going to integrate the Rocket
[49:19] Speaker 4: Force elements into it. It's going to integrate the DRDO's
[49:23] Speaker 4: anti ballistic missile programs. It will bring in the S
[49:26] Speaker 4: four hundred as well and create a very large network
[49:30] Speaker 4: of defensive interceptors, defense interceptors and of course the offensive
[49:36] Speaker 4: element also built into that. Tod You know, primarily tell
[49:41] Speaker 4: the pakistanis that you can you know, it's not going
[49:43] Speaker 4: to be easy for you to say, hated jam another
[49:46] Speaker 4: for instance, if they attempted to do that, throw a
[49:49] Speaker 4: missile shield over most of India, especially our strategic targets
[49:54] Speaker 4: and all that, which is going to make it very
[49:56] Speaker 4: difficult for them, which has been largely the plan from
[49:59] Speaker 4: the nineteen ninet But the fact that the government has
[50:02] Speaker 4: articulated and given it a deadline as well a ten
[50:05] Speaker 4: year time frame suggest that there's a lot of serious
[50:08] Speaker 4: thought that's going on to this, and a lot of
[50:10] Speaker 4: it has to do with the nuclear weapons program, the
[50:13] Speaker 4: acceleration and the numbers of nuclear vectors in both China
[50:17] Speaker 4: and Pakistan. Nuclear armed missiles for instance, irbm's you know,
[50:23] Speaker 4: hypersonic missiles and all that, So that that's what this
[50:26] Speaker 4: threat is, That's what this capability is all about, defending
[50:29] Speaker 4: from these threats.
[50:30] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[50:31] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[50:32] Speaker 2: In fact, I think one of the post operations indured
[50:34] Speaker 2: analysis within the government or the military would also have
[50:37] Speaker 2: been that, Okay, we were happy that we were able
[50:39] Speaker 2: to do that, but what if tomorrow somebody else is
[50:42] Speaker 2: able to do that with us to have the air
[50:44] Speaker 2: defense that Pakistan did not in order to prevent such
[50:48] Speaker 2: attacks in the future. And also I think a good
[50:51] Speaker 2: point where you said that perhaps it's time for India
[50:54] Speaker 2: and Pakistan to sort of consider some sort of treaties
[50:56] Speaker 2: around nuclear weapons. But I think for that and you
[50:59] Speaker 2: need not to have field marshals of Pakistan going to
[51:02] Speaker 2: Washington talking about being dumpsters filled with mysterious elements and
[51:08] Speaker 2: taking down half the world with them if they were threatened.
[51:14] Speaker 2: If you have that happening, I don't see what treaty
[51:16] Speaker 2: will be.
[51:16] Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know Pakistan, and Pakistan always negotiates with
[51:19] Speaker 4: a gun to its head.
[51:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right.
[51:23] Speaker 2: Last points one is about the other effect that I
[51:28] Speaker 2: believe has happened, but obviously you can talk at length
[51:31] Speaker 2: about that, is that I think this is the nuclear
[51:35] Speaker 2: weapons program is one of the seminine seminal moments apart from,
[51:38] Speaker 2: like you said, the Green Revolution and the liberalization that
[51:42] Speaker 2: do you think this also has helped India as a
[51:45] Speaker 2: country build its diplomat diplomatic theft. And when I say that,
[51:49] Speaker 2: what I mean is basically give you that leverage at
[51:52] Speaker 2: that table where you today are in that space to
[51:57] Speaker 2: sort of stand up to President Donald Trump and like broke,
[52:00] Speaker 2: calm down. I'm not going to give you agriculture of
[52:03] Speaker 2: course you need, of course you need a very strong
[52:05] Speaker 2: a political conviction for that. There are various factors, but
[52:09] Speaker 2: the larger question being that the sanctions that happened after
[52:13] Speaker 2: the Poke Run one and Poke Run two tests. Do
[52:16] Speaker 2: you think we were eventually able to absorb the effects
[52:19] Speaker 2: of that and lead to that two thousand and eight
[52:23] Speaker 2: nuclear agreement with the US, because in part we actually
[52:27] Speaker 2: became a nuclear weapons date on our own.
[52:30] Speaker 4: Good question, Dave, And you know, I think what it
[52:34] Speaker 4: showed us was that, you know, while like I explained,
[52:37] Speaker 4: our entire strategic weapons program was always scouched and it
[52:41] Speaker 4: was disguised, it was a basement bomb. It was always
[52:45] Speaker 4: you know, hidn't is for instance, Israel. Israel has never
[52:49] Speaker 4: tested nuclear weapons, but it's believed to have a very
[52:52] Speaker 4: large arsenal of weapons, and Israel needs it for its survival. Right.
[52:54] Speaker 4: It is ring by hostile countries, none of which have
[53:00] Speaker 4: nuclear weapons, but they have overwhelming conventional forces. Then they
[53:05] Speaker 4: could storm Israel, and as they have tried to do
[53:10] Speaker 4: in the past. So be that as it may. India's
[53:13] Speaker 4: nuclear weapons program has kind of brought in a certain
[53:16] Speaker 4: degree of autonomy to our foreign policy. Like you have
[53:20] Speaker 4: to back your autonomy up when you say I have
[53:22] Speaker 4: strategic autonomy. If you were at the mercy of another
[53:26] Speaker 4: country's nuclear umbrella, as we briefly contemplated in the past,
[53:33] Speaker 4: you would not have an independent foreign policy. Can Germany
[53:37] Speaker 4: and Japan, who were defeated in the Second World War,
[53:40] Speaker 4: can they claim to have had an independent policy when
[53:43] Speaker 4: it came to the security policy, for instance? Could they
[53:46] Speaker 4: move that far away from the United States and from
[53:49] Speaker 4: the Western Bloc?
[53:50] Speaker 5: I think not.
[53:51] Speaker 4: The whole premise of the post nineteen forty five restructuring
[53:55] Speaker 4: of Japan and Germany had to do with the fact
[53:58] Speaker 4: that they were given a nuclear umbrella by the United States,
[54:01] Speaker 4: and we certainly did not want to do that. And
[54:04] Speaker 4: if you see the writing now, there are a lot
[54:07] Speaker 4: of political differences there In India, there is there is
[54:11] Speaker 4: right this center, but on certain very large programs, very
[54:16] Speaker 4: large national projects of consequence, like the nuclear weapons program,
[54:21] Speaker 4: economic reforms, there is bipartisan consensus.
[54:25] Speaker 5: Right whoever comes to power, And I.
[54:27] Speaker 4: Have a feeling that even if the Communist Party of
[54:29] Speaker 4: India were, by some freaky coincidence miracles, were to come
[54:37] Speaker 4: to power, they would not be able to reverse all
[54:39] Speaker 4: of this. Right, what has been set into motion is
[54:43] Speaker 4: cast and stone. You cannot roll back reforms, You cannot
[54:46] Speaker 4: roll back the nuclear weapons program because all these are
[54:50] Speaker 4: premised on certain fundamental principles. That our strategic autonomy is
[54:56] Speaker 4: anchored in the fact that we have the ability to
[54:59] Speaker 4: protect our selves and our people and our territory.
[55:03] Speaker 5: And all of that.
[55:04] Speaker 4: So I think that is where nuclear weapons kind of
[55:07] Speaker 4: has come in. It has shown us that we can
[55:10] Speaker 4: stand up like we did in seventy four, we got
[55:16] Speaker 4: hit by the largest number of sanctions on any country.
[55:19] Speaker 4: In fact, certain technology denial architectures was set up precisely
[55:24] Speaker 4: because of India. The NPT and all of that came
[55:28] Speaker 4: in just to ensure that no other there would not
[55:31] Speaker 4: be a seventh country that tested a weapon. Right, So
[55:34] Speaker 4: it taught us about the importance of strategic autonomy, the
[55:38] Speaker 4: fact that we could stand up when we chose to.
[55:40] Speaker 5: We did that in nineteen.
[55:42] Speaker 4: Ninety eight, and I think in twenty twenty five, when
[55:46] Speaker 4: you're looking at Donald Trump, you know there is a
[55:49] Speaker 4: certain sense of confidence as well. Look, we've stood up
[55:52] Speaker 4: in the past when it mattered. In nineteen seventy one,
[55:55] Speaker 4: we stood up in nineteen seventy four, we stood up
[55:57] Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety eight. We stood up when it is
[55:59] Speaker 4: core Indian interests, India will always stand up for those,
[56:03] Speaker 4: whether it is you know, bullying. I mean, there's been
[56:06] Speaker 4: so much of pressure open up your agricultural sector. Oh
[56:09] Speaker 4: you know, there are Indians in the United States or
[56:11] Speaker 4: consuming milk. Why can't the Indians in India consume the
[56:15] Speaker 4: same kind of milk? You know, buy some of our milk,
[56:18] Speaker 4: give us a win, you know that kind of thing.
[56:20] Speaker 4: We're not going to stand up. We're not going to
[56:22] Speaker 4: be caught down by this pressure. So I think this
[56:25] Speaker 4: is the big takeaway for us from the nuclear weapons
[56:29] Speaker 4: tests that in these core fundamental principles, when it's national
[56:34] Speaker 4: survival or it is strategic autonomy or something that think
[56:38] Speaker 4: India comes together and that's what our nuclear weapons program
[56:41] Speaker 4: has taught us.
[56:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess this is part of what you
[56:45] Speaker 2: said right at the beginning, that a nuclear weapons program
[56:48] Speaker 2: for any country is not about wars, is not It's
[56:51] Speaker 2: not a military project, it's a strategic political project, is exactly.
[56:55] Speaker 4: Yeah, it is. These are weapons for fighting. They should
[56:58] Speaker 4: never be used and got forbid, they should never ever
[57:00] Speaker 4: be used. They've only been used twice, and I hope
[57:04] Speaker 4: they're never ever used again. But it's about deterring someone
[57:08] Speaker 4: else who's got more weapons than you from overwhelming you,
[57:11] Speaker 4: overpowering you, using it, being tempted to use it, or
[57:15] Speaker 4: to move in. As we've seen in the last twenty
[57:19] Speaker 4: twenty five years, countries that did not have nuclear weapons
[57:22] Speaker 4: have been invaded, their territories been occupied, the regimes have
[57:25] Speaker 4: been overthrown. And these are countries that aspired for nuclear
[57:30] Speaker 4: weapons at some point, but were assured that if you
[57:32] Speaker 4: gave up your nuclear weapons, no harm would come to you.
[57:35] Speaker 4: And they've met dusty deaths on roadsides, those dictators and
[57:40] Speaker 4: those people. So this is India to ensure that nothing
[57:44] Speaker 4: like that ever happened to us.
[57:47] Speaker 2: And also because I mean, that's the reality of the world,
[57:49] Speaker 2: the thing which really applies to and I think that
[57:52] Speaker 2: should be sort of the it's a cruel world, actually
[57:54] Speaker 2: the cool world exactly, it's very cruel to countries that
[57:59] Speaker 2: don't stand up for themselves that it is the law
[58:02] Speaker 2: of the jungle out there at some point. And I
[58:04] Speaker 2: think that should be a disclaimer for this podcast. Is
[58:08] Speaker 2: because I think at times people must wonder our viewers
[58:10] Speaker 2: and listeners how are the two of these guys so
[58:13] Speaker 2: casually talking about weapons of mass destruction with smiles on
[58:16] Speaker 2: their faces and you know the importance of them.
[58:18] Speaker 3: But that's what it is, right.
[58:19] Speaker 4: It is, and these are those essentials for ensuring state survival.
[58:25] Speaker 4: And we were among the last people to go in
[58:28] Speaker 4: for nuclear weapons. Again, I don't think we would have
[58:31] Speaker 4: gone in for nuclear weapons or tested them in seventy
[58:34] Speaker 4: four if the Chinese had not tested. But of course,
[58:36] Speaker 4: if you draw that rational, the Chinese probably wouldn't have
[58:39] Speaker 4: tested exactly if the Soviets haven't gone in for that.
[58:42] Speaker 4: So I mean it's a chain reaction, I know. But
[58:44] Speaker 4: then this is this is the way of the world.
[58:47] Speaker 4: This is real polity.
[58:48] Speaker 2: And if you trace it right back, it just goes
[58:51] Speaker 2: to that hypocritical country, which is the only one in
[58:54] Speaker 2: the world to have bombed to places with nuclear birth.
[58:57] Speaker 4: But they had they had a rational to that day,
[58:59] Speaker 4: you know. I mean, however terrible that might have been.
[59:03] Speaker 4: The casualties that would come from an invasion, a planned
[59:07] Speaker 4: invasion of Japan, Operation down that enormous would have been
[59:13] Speaker 4: in the millions. I mean, Japan they say, was literally
[59:17] Speaker 4: going to commit mass suicide. The country would commit suicide.
[59:20] Speaker 4: And for the Americans this this was an acceptable thing
[59:25] Speaker 4: that they would, you know, destroy two cities. But even
[59:28] Speaker 4: as horrible decision as that, I mean the number of
[59:32] Speaker 4: innocent civilians who died because of that.
[59:35] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[59:35] Speaker 3: No, my point about hypocrisy was not that.
[59:37] Speaker 2: My point about hypocrisy was that you don't get to
[59:40] Speaker 2: go around telling the war lecturing the rest of you
[59:42] Speaker 2: will not develop. You will face sanctions from me if
[59:46] Speaker 2: you do that. But I can do that part.
[59:49] Speaker 4: Of it, you know, say as I do, yes, not
[59:54] Speaker 4: as I what?
[59:56] Speaker 5: What was that? What is that line? Against the beautiful line?
[59:59] Speaker 4: And now as I say not as I do.
[1:00:01] Speaker 2: Not as I do exactly exactly, I think that feels
[1:00:05] Speaker 2: it and I think we'll end the episode there. Then,
[1:00:07] Speaker 2: thanks and the great chat, fantastic discussion, and looking forward
[1:00:12] Speaker 2: to more episodes.
[1:00:12] Speaker 4: With you as always.
[1:00:13] Speaker 2: There and a special thanks to the people behind the scenes,
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: behind the cameras, behind the mics who help us produce
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: this this this podcast, the producer vishal and so much,
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: and thanks as always to our listeners and viewers. That's
[1:00:28] Speaker 2: it for this week's Defense goes for more tune in
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: next week. Till then, stay safe and do not cross
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: any boundaries with the past.
[1:00:42] Speaker 1: In a world of contested borders and silent battles, one
[1:00:51] Speaker 1: voice cut through the noise.
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: Was Israel able to achieve its aim when Israel bombed Iran?
[1:01:00] Speaker 4: Do you think that Chinese army is at war with itself?
[1:01:05] Speaker 1: Joined veteran war correspondent God of Seventh, one of India's
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: most trusted voices in defense journalism.
[1:01:13] Speaker 4: Navaskar and jahind I'm God of Seventh.
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: Listen to Chuck review with God of Sava on India
[1:01:20] Speaker 1: Today Podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube music and your favorite
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: audio utity platform stay Alhert. The war for truth start here.

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