Younis Ahmad Kaloo

The rising tensions between India, Pakistan and China due to various lingering issues throw up some serious concerns, which the top leadership of the country also seem to acknowledge. The biggest and the worst of them all is the possibility of a nuclear war. The Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat shared the same concern at the inauguration of a workshop in New Delhi earlier this year. He said, “Chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) threat is becoming a reality.” Earlier, the standing committee on defence report (2016-2017) also said that there has been an increasing threat of non-conventional war, involving nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

According to a report ‘Worldwide deployments of nuclear weapons, 2017’ published in the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, Pakistan has a rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal of 130–140 warheads and an increasing portfolio of delivery systems, which it stores at nine locations. About India’s nuclear arsenal, the report says that the country has 120–130 nuclear warheads stored at least at five different locations.

India and Pakistan have signed an agreement prohibiting attack on each other’s nuclear installations, however, as observed by the standing committee on external affairs in a report ‘Indo-Pak relations’ submitted on 11 August 2017, the nuclear doctrines of the two countries are contradictory. The report says that while India follows the ‘no first use of nuclear weapons’ policy, Pakistan does not.

This brings home the need for preparedness of CBRN war.

On the preparedness for CBRN war, the standing committee on defence was informed in 2017 that there had been no experience with regard to CBRN warfare till date. The committee, however, was informed that a training module had been started in this regard and preparation for it was go