> India is now part of MCTR (Missile Control Technology Regime) that limits ICBM development. So that's no longer a valid concern.

That's regime sounds like a great intent, but the simple fact is that taking a satellite launching rocket, replacing the satellite with a nuke, and aiming it back at the ground somewhere is trivial.

A typical liquid fueled satellite launching platform would make a very poor ICBM. Liquid fueled rockets can't be stored fully fueled. The fuel is extremely volatile and slowly seeps out of the tanks. This means you have to store it empty, adding a huge launch delay.

ICBMs use much more stable fuels so they can sit in a silo for years on end. This requires totally different engines and fuel tanks.

tldr: You can't just stick a nuke on top of a liquid fueled rocket and use it like an ICBM.

Some liquid fueled rockets can be used more-or-less effectively as an ICBM. Despite being extremely volatile, rocket engines powered by hypergolic and room-temperature liquid fuels/oxidizer mixes can be stored fueled in silos for long periods of time. The notable example of this is the Titan II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II) whiched served as the primary ICBM for the U.S. for 20-odd years (with some mishaps)

Yeah, I may have spoke too soon. After reading up on the India's PSLV rocket, it doesn't appear to use any cryogenic fuels or oxidizers. Maybe it could be used as an ICBM...

You can't use it as a deterrence/defensive ICBM because of the liquid fuels but it's still very viable as an offensive ICBM because you could just fuel it up when you're about to launch. It's not particularly practical but it's a viable make due if you've been unable to design a more normal ICBM.

But India has already done that. They're not at a nascent stage that they need help, they already have a fully functional nuclear program with working ICMBs.

You are underestimating how much importance world politicians give to pieces of paper that mean shit for commonsense. Do you think it is hard for a country like India to send a small nuke to USA and blow it off ? They can send it via ship, commercial jets and what not.

The point of MCTR is to prevent a nation from openly admitting they have such a weapon and hence it can not be used as an argument in any future negotiations.

The issue isn't India performing a terrorist strike agains the US. They'd love to send nuclear missiles to Pakistan, though.

They can already do this, and they don't thanks to

1) Their no-first-use policy

2) Pakistan already having nuclear weapons

US money that funded Osama, current money that ends up funding Pak Army/ISI seems to be a lot greater factors in destabilization of Pakistan than anything India has ever done.

For example I never understood USA providing F16s to Pakistan. It is nothing but USA's attempts to escalate the tensions.

And India needs ICBM for that ? If India wants to wipe out Pakistan off the map it is perhaps the easiest things to do than developing some nuke technology.

It's doable, not trivial. Tying your shoe laces is trivial.

You are mixing perspectives.

Trivial for a nation-state is different than trivial for a person. A nation like India could accidentally lose the amount of money required to hire a team of 20 to do the engineering to mount a working nuke to a working rocket.

Intentionally paying and assembling that same team would be trivial for a nation like India, USA, China or Russia. It could be as simple as a single line item on some military spending bill.

I think he meant that relative to the difficulty of actually creating a platform for accurate delivery of payloads to space, changing out the payload is, in fact, trivial

Thanks, I'm well aware of what he meant. Rockets have very specific requirements in terms of payload weight and shape. So do nukes. Matching the two would take actual engineering effort. Enough that I may not be possible to do so in total secrecy. Which is what this thread was originally talking about.

A treaty will not save the city erased in such and attack.

A treaty does provide a way for bureaucrats and ambassadors to meddle with, discuss and possibly prevent that attack in advance... if they know about it.

Mounting a working nuke to a working rocket can easily be done in secret by a small team.

They're also one of the two countries still in a nuclear deadlock with their fingers on the "button". Lets be realistic about this.

The United States and Russia have been in a nuclear deadlock since both sides got their hands on ICBMs.

Neither adhere to a no-first-use doctrine. That means that they reserve the right to scorch the world with nuclear fire, in response to an attack by conventional weapons.

It's hard to pin down exactly how disproportionate this level of hubris is.

Maybe it's the decades of arms reductions, the diplomatic relations, and the lack of a highly disputed border area which periodically erupts into violence?

But no... it must just be a double standard... if you squint hard enough.

As opposed to decades of proxy wars, sponsoring terrorism, election-dependent schizophrenia on the part of the Department of State, and much larger weapon arsenals?

The decades of arms reductions still put the arsenals of either the US, or Russia at ~10 times that of India and Pakistan combined.

At least India has a no-first-use policy. I'm not saying things are better in that conflict, but this is the pot calling the kettle black.

That's a whole lot of red herrings there, which have nothing to do with nuclear policy or not wanting to empower one side of an ongoing nuclear standoff with superior tech.

It does at least tell anyone with a scrap of skepticism though, where you're coming from. Equivocation is at the heart of apologism.

All of these things are incredibly relevant. Over the years, US-Russian relations have fluctuated between begrudging tolerance, open contempt, proxy wars, and even nuclear brinksmanship.

While the odds of nuclear conflict between them may be lower then the odds of one between India and Pakistan (And this is an arguable point), it will be incredibly more devastating.

As such, it's incredibly disingenuous to claim that New Delhi has it's thumb on the doomsday button, but that Moscow or Washington don't.

Except that you reversed the order of that list, which is in fact just the deescalation away from nuclear brinksmanship.

As for devastation, http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010...

> nuclear deadlock with their fingers on the "button"

So much sensationalism in this comment! It's like watching a sensationalist news channel. Anyone who follows India-Pakistan politics know that nuclear war is unlikely. Neither of them can afford another war.

The "realistic" situation is that unless nuclear weapons end up in the hands of terrorists in Pakistan, there is no real nuclear threat.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but that sounds like PR to me.