Sub-Kiloton Bombs Add Sting To N-Arsenal
India yesterday unveiled two new additions to its nuclear arsenal in the form of sub-kiloton (releasing energy equivalent to below 1,000 tonnes of TNT) bombs.
The sub-kiloton devices tested yesterday afternoon at Pokharan are low-yield nuclear devices. They are used as tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield support purposes to replace short-range missiles and bombs. Another purpose, which is more of an academic nature, of the blasts was to provide data for computer simulation for designing nuclear weapons and to provide technical inputs for ultra-low yield experimental blasts.
India now has a thermonuclear weapon (the Big Boy in the nuclear arsenal with an explosive yield of above 50 kilotons), a conventional fission explosive and a low-yield device (under 10 kilotons for medium range missiles like the Prithvi). Yesterdays blasts complete a possible nuclear arsenal.
Informed sources said the country now possessed the capability to make controlled reaction nuclear weapons whereby the damage can be limited to a specific area. The design of the lower yield explosives must have been unique as no country will dare to test these weapons without fully qualifying the design after extensive simulation, they said.
The sources said the results obtained yesterday will form the basis of a data bank covering all aspects of a nuclear reaction. For instance, weapon designers can measure the potential casualties of a particular weapon if it were exploded in an area having a specific population level.
The radiation release levels in a given area and the after effects on the terrain, land fertility and a host of other parameters will also be revealed.
In time-frames of microseconds, sophisticated sensors linked to computers and placed in a 10-kilometre radius around the test site measure data and record the same to specialised magnetic tapes. Upon explosion, in less than a microsecond, the nuclear explosive and its surrounding area is reduced from a bomb case to a mix of plasma gases as it encounters temperatures of a few thousand centigrade.
Going by the range of the weapons blasted, it appears that the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and the Defence Research and Development Organisation must have had a nuclear weapons program on the anvil for some years now. With the completion of the tests, the next phase in the countrys nuclear weapons program will be to manufacture and deploy the weapons a tough political decision to take.