A shower of lethal missiles strikes important economic and military targets across north-western India, devastating cities, nuclear installations, factories, cantonments and air bases. Our people are stunned, our economy paralysed and the armed forces rendered incapable of any significant military action. This dramatic picture might easily be conjured up by anyone reading the latest newspaper reports about Pakistan's new Hatf 3 surface-to-surface missile (SSM). The missile, after all, has a reported maximum range of 800 km -- bringing much of north-western India within its reach -- and is at present invulnerable to Indian air defences.

Such a picture would be erroneous. In fact, the most remarkable thing about the Hatf 3 might just be how little difference it makes to the strategic balance in the subcontinent. Even if the missile does attain its reported maximum range of 800 km -- and there are good reasons for scepticism -- the incremental advantage to Pakistan in both conventional and nuclear realms will remain marginal.

Conventional Warfare

When used in conventional warfare, SSMs substitute for strike aircraft and are used against targets both on and off the battlefield. A conventionally-armed Hatf 3 might, for instance, be used to attack aircraft on the ground at an Indian air base close to the border, or to destroy an ordnance factory deeper in Indian territory. Such heavily defended targets would extract major casualties from attacking pilots and aircraft-missiles, since they are unmanned, don't run that risk.

Like strike aircraft, SSMs can be employed either for the purpose of `denial', i.e., to directly target and thus hamper the enemy's military operations, or in `punishment', by striking against civilian and economic targets, demoralising the enemy and forcing negotiation. A variant of punishment strategy is aimed more specifically at a country's `industrial web', based on the theory that attacks on critical economic nodes like power stations can cripple the enemy's economy and diminish both morale and war-making capacity.

Operations based on the strategy of denial generally use SSMs with a range of up to 150 km, which is adequate to strike targets directly or indirectly involved in the combat-theatre. The Indian army visualises using the Prithvi SS-150 in this role, while Pakistan would use the shorter-ranged Hatf 1. An intermediate group of longer-ranged SSMs includes the 250-km Prithvi SS-250 intended for the Indian Air Force (IAF), the 280-km Scud and Pakistan's 300-km Hatf 2. These can be used for both punishment strategies against towns and factories closer within a limited range and denial strategies (against air bases, oil facilities and rail concentrations).

It is missiles with a maximum range exceeding 300 km that prove the most useful for punishment strategies and, in its conventional version, the Hatf 3 is almost certainly intended for this role. Unfortunately for those who urge an investment in such longer-range SSMs (by, for example, deploying our own Agni with a conventional warhead) history demonstrates that in conventional air warfare, punishment strategies are completely overrated.

Inspired by the theories of the Italian general Guilio Douhet, Allied forces waged a strategic air campaign against the Axis in WW2 which, rather than demoralising the enemy, strengthened German resolve a lesson they could have foreseen, considering their own experience of the London Blitz. Rolling Thunder, the 1965-68 American air campaign against North Vietnam, completely failed to halt the southward flow of men and arms. By contrast, the Linebacker 2 air campaign was aimed directly at North Vietnamese army operations in 1972 and succeeded in bringing them to a grinding halt: an instance of denial rather than punishment, says author Robert Pape.

More recently, the 1993 Gulf War Air Power Survey showed that tactical air operations aimed specifically at Iraqi forces and their support infrastructure in the Kuwait theatre were vastly more effective than industrial web operations in Iraq, which failed to make a significant impact on either Iraq's warmaking capacity, its nuclear capability or the regime's morale. The Allied coalition won because Iraq's in-theatre forces were isolated and destroyed, not because Saddam's will to fight was in the least bit diminished.

The lesson from these wars is that denial operations are the most cost-effective in terms of both resources and effort, and that punishment strategies are at best of limited utility. Apart from the obvious immorality of attacking civilian targets, punishment strategies neither weaken enemy morale nor diminish the combat capacity of a determined opponent. Industrial webs are somewhat more useful, but they take so long to take such a limited effect.

Most importantly, punishment bears a great opportunity cost compared with denial. The effort expended on developing weapons suited for punishment strategies and then implementing them reduces the resources available for in-theatre combat operations. If Pakistan wishes to spend its time and money developing (or buying) a conventionally armed missile with a range of 800 km, it will be wasting its effort. The shorter-ranged Hatf 2 should prove a more efficient investment. Similarly, India's Agni is wasted with a conventional warhead and makes sense only as part of a nuclear deterrent force.

Nuclear Deterrence

The second obvious role for SSMs like the Hatf 3 is that of a nuclear delivery vehicle. Because they are far more difficult to intercept than are strike aircraft, the deployment of SSMs renders any country's nuclear forces more effective. Unlike conventional air and missile forces, nuclear weapons are better used in the punishment role than as instruments of denial.

Nuclear weapons are so utterly destructive that the mere threat of nuclear punishment should be adequate to deter an adversary. The use of nuclear weapons in the battlefield is so unpredictable and potentially dangerous to one's own troops -- threatening, quite literally, to blow up in their faces -- that most commanders will shy away from using them. The punishment-oriented Hatf 3 with its 800-km range consequently seems a more useful addition to Pakistan's nuclear capability, outperforming even the Prithvi SS-350 now under development in India.

But that's not quite the whole story, Pakistan's 800-km missile just about manages to equalise with the IAF's Prithvi SS-250. With a 250-km range, after all, nuclear-armed Prithvis can target Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, while Pakistan's Hatf 2 can barely reach Delhi. The Hatf 3's claimed maximum range of 800 km is absolutely necessary for Pakistan to target Mumbai. In other words, Pakistan needs a superior delivery vehicle to compensate for India's geographic depth, just to keep up with Indian capabilities.

And why should Pakistan be allowed to target Mumbai and other population centres? The reason is that for a stable balance-of-terror to exist between India and Pakistan, both countries must be capable of targeting (and destroying) their adversary's major population centres. Which is not to recommend that they should do so, but simply that this mutual capability deters war.

Ironically, nuclear-armed missiles are better for deterrence than aircraft, because the difficulty of intercepting a missile makes an adversary more cautious, strengthening deterrence.

Briefly then, Hatf 3 is not a radical new threat to Indian security. It is a pretty useless battlefield weapon with little utility in conventional warfare. Its use as a conventional punishment weapon could certainly do a lot of damage, but it wouldn't affect the course of a conflict in any significant way.

The Hatf 3 is more useful as a potential addition to Pakistan's nuclear capability, but even here the value added isn't as much as it might appear at first glance. Pakistan could plausibly ignore Mumbai and concentrate only on Delhi, because the ability to target the capital should prove enough to deter India. At best, Pakistan needs the Hatf 3 to keep up with India, and it isn't a weapon we should lose much sleep over.

Provided we are confident of the virtues of nuclear deterrence -- but that's a different story.

(Special to The Indian Express)

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.