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Old Thursday, May 18, 2017
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Default Command & Control: India & Pakistan Nuclear Program

What is nuclear command-and-control?

Nuclear command-and-control (C&C) refers to an interlocking series of institutional arrangements, operational procedures, and technical mechanisms that could provide leaders with the means to manage and employ nuclear forces as well as prevent their unauthorized or accidental use.

What are the primary components of C&C?

Leaders establish a national command authority (NCA), which is the highest decisionmaking body for nuclear posture and use. The composition of the body and the importance of its members vary from state to state.

In India, the NCA is comprised of a Political Council to make nuclear-employment decisions and an Executive Council to execute those orders. The Political Council includes the prime minister’s Cabinet Committee on Security and his or her national security adviser while the Executive Council includes the head of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), the chiefs of the air force, army, and navy as well as the directors of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), among others (see graphic below) (Koithara). The SFC retains custody of delivery systems whereas the DAE and DRDO maintain nuclear warheads and trigger assemblies in separate locations (Kampani). Military advice is part of the decision making process, but the power of decision lies firmly in civilian hands, and the apex decision maker is the Indian prime minister, who chairs the NCA.


Pakistan has established and published charts of its NCA, which place the civilian prime minister at the apex of decisionmaking. But in Pakistan, prime ministers take their cues on national security issues from the army leadership. Pakistan has released publicly the composition of its NCA and its supporting bodies, including the Employment Control Committee (ECC), the Development Control Committee (DCC), the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), and the Services Strategic Forces (SSF) (Khan, 334). The Pakistani prime minister chairs both the ECC and the DCC. Other key members of the ECC are the ministers of foreign affairs, defense, interior, and finance; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the three service chiefs, among others (see graphic below) (Khan, 336). The SPD staffs both the ECC and DCC as the NCA’s secretariat in addition to implementing nuclear force policies and directing fissile-material and delivery-system production (Khan, 332 and NTI). The prime minister sits at the head of the ECC, but the most powerful man in the country is the chief of army staff.

If leaders are incapacitated or otherwise unable to chair deliberations in India and Pakistan, there is an order of succession to assume leadership. Neither India nor Pakistan has issued public statements about these procedures.

What is the always/never dilemma?

The always/never dilemma refers to a stark challenge facing nuclear-armed states: how to design decisionmaking procedures and physical mechanisms for nuclear weapons so that they will always work when proper authorization for use occurs, but never work without proper authorization.

For nuclear weapons to pass the test of the always/never dilemma, they must be:

Reliable, i.e., they will function properly if the need to use them arises;
Safe, i.e., they will not detonate if they are acquired by outsiders or by unauthorized personnel, and they will not create a mushroom cloud in the event of an accident or if subject to attack (Krepon); and
Secure, i.e., they are protected against theft and other internal security threats.
The safest and most secure place for nuclear weapons is at extremely well-guarded facilities. This assumes, however, that the guardians of nuclear weapons are completely trustworthy. An adversary presumably knows the location of these facilities because they can be readily recognized by satellite imagery. Because these locations can be targeted, nuclear weapons and their means of delivery might be moved in a crisis. The more a nuclear weapon is readied for use, which includes removal from highly-guarded facilities, the harder it is to maintain nuclear weapon safety and security.

One mechanism to guard against unauthorized use and to gain time for sound decisionmaking is to maintain warheads separate from launchers. In a crisis, warheads can be mated with launchers, awaiting authorization for use by the NCA. Close observers suspect that both India and Pakistan maintain warheads separated from launchers (Koithara and Lavoy). This safety and security mechanism is very hard to maintain when warheads are placed at sea, which both India and Pakistan are in the process of doing (Rehman). This safety mechanism is also very hard to maintain with tactical delivery systems (Krepon). Pakistan has embraced short-range systems as part of full-spectrum deterrence to counter Indian conventional military advantages.

Some nuclear weapons have no range at all—such as the atomic demolition munitions that the United States and the Soviet Union embraced during the Cold War. These “backpack” bombs along with nuclear artillery shells are the most unsafe and least secure nuclear weapons.

What are negative and positive control?

Scholars sometimes discuss the always/never dilemma in terms of leaders’ preferences for negative or positive control. Negative control refers to systems that are “designed to prevent unauthorized use of nuclear weapons” while positive control deals with “those elements that assure [a NCA’s] instructions to launch nuclear weapons reach the forces and will be carried out” (Congressional Research Service, 6).

How do states attempt to address the always/never dilemma?

National leaders cannot expect to resolve the always/never dilemma. A perfectly safe and secure nuclear weapon may not be available for use when deemed necessary, and an available nuclear weapon may not be perfectly safe and secure. National leaders are obliged to choose command-and-control arrangements that best suit their security needs.

A state like India, which prioritizes civilian control, enjoys conventional military advantages, and has adopted a no-first-use nuclear posture, may choose “assertive” command-and-control arrangements. An assertive C&C orientation is characterized by “the fact that central commanders have constrained the autonomy of lower-level operators and asserted control over operations” using “intrusive” and “physically restrictive measures” (Feaver, 169).

A state like Pakistan, in which the military maintains control over nuclear weapons and which adheres to the option of using nuclear weapons first because of conventional military disadvantages, may select “delegative” command-and-control procedures. A delegative C&C system means that leaders grant military operators a “degree of autonomy” in nuclear-weapons employment situations while imposing “fewer physical constraints” and relying on “the operators’ voluntary obedience” to their directives (Feaver, 168).

Peter Feaver contends that two factors determine leaders’ ultimate choice of command-and-control procedures: 1) civil-military relations and 2) “time urgency” (Feaver, 174). Whereas assertive arrangements predominate in countries where patterns of civil-military relations are stable and the military does not participate in politics, delegative procedures are more common in countries with volatile civil-military relations and a history of military intervention in the political arena.
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