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India explodes two more nuke devices

At 1221 hours on May 13, India exploded two more nuclear devices at its testing range in Pokaran in the Rajasthan desert.

An official statement said that with this latest series, involving sub-kiloton devices, India has completed its planned series of tests.

The tests were fully contained, and there was no release of radioactivity into the atmosphere.

The series of tests, carried out on Monday and today, are believed to have yielded a valuable data base, which is useful in the design of nuclear weapons of different yields for different applications and different delivery systems.

Further, they are expected to carry Indian scientists towards a sound computer simulation capability which may be supported by sub-critical experiments, if considered necessary.

After Monday's tests, the government had said it would reiterate its support to the efforts to realise the goal of a truly comprehensive international arrangement which would prohibit underground nuclear testing of all weapons as well as related experiments, generally described as 'sub-critical' or 'hydro-nuclear'.

India said it was prepared to consider being an adherent to some of the undertakings of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but that this could not obviously be done in a vacuum. The Indian government's stance, reitered on Monday, was that any valid treaty would necessarily be an evolutionary process from concept to commitment, and would depend on a number of reciprocal activities.

In a statement issued in the aftermath of the latest tests, the government said it was deeply concerned about the nuclear environment in India's neighbourhood and that the tests provided reassurance to Indian citizens that national security was paramount, and would be promoted and protected at all cost.

The cumulative outcome of the tests is that India now has a proven capability for a weaponised nuclear programme.

The series of tests at Pokaran closely resembles those conducted by France, which conducted a series of six tests in 1996 shortly signing the CTBT. The goal appears to be the same -- an attempt to gather all possible data before putting an end to testing.

Defence experts, reacting to news of the second series of tests, indicated that they had come as no surprise.

The consensus was that having conducted the first series of tests on Monday, there was really no point in India's abandoning further testing until it had collected all necessary data.

"What is the point of waiting for a few months and then going in for further tests, and in the process rubbing the nuclear powers the wrong way?" asked Mahruf Raza, Star News defence correspondent.

The general feeling is that since sanctions are inevitable, it made perfect sense to go the whole hog, collect all relevant data at one stretch -- on the 'might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb' theory.

Further, among the Indian defence community, the feeling seems to be one of self-congratulation. It is pointed out that the United States has conducted 1,200 tests, the Russians 700, and China 45. India, with just six tests including the latest one, is believed to have caught up on the thermonuclear technology.

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