What’s a country to do if the international milieu, or one’s own self-constrained nature, prevents physical explosive tests. You do the next best thing to actual testing. Like, get yourself a Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) facility. Such a unit uses X-ray cameras to see just how a hydrodynamic shock to simulate implosion works — the process in effect of a fission bomb blowing, and study the integrity of this process in a fission bomb, or in the fission trigger of a fusion weapon. Technically this takes some doing. But, not if an all weather friend is supplying designs, expertise, and materials. As is the case with the DARHT unit the Pakistanis have succeeded in engineering and installing with, of course, China’s help and assistance, at Chaklala — headquarters, Strategic Plans Division — the Pakistani counterpart of the Indian Strategic Forces Command, the weapons directorate at BARC, and the nuclear cell in PMO rolled into one. It is expected to become operational by September-October this year. Boy, does that advantage Pakistan! And it shows just how serious the Pak Army is about that country’s nuclear security. Now turn your gaze homewards and what do we find? India has no DARHT, no inertial confinement fusion chamber, no nothing — not even computing speeds, but GOI still finds the situation hunky-dory! That same old — no need to test — canary continues to hold fort as S&T adviser to the PM — R Chidambaram, erstwhile chmn, AEC, the man singularly responsible for keeping the Indian boosted-fission and thermonuclear weapons sub-par, when he should have been the first person Modi ought to have unceremoniously dumped! This state of affairs about sums up the situation India is in today. India is forced to rely over much on Agni-5 (and technologies), a damned accurate missile at extreme range. The case made in govt circles no doubt prompted by this same Chidambaram is that, high accuracy means India can field just this one low yield but only proven warhead/weapon in our arsenal — the 20KT fission, and that this is more than adequate for the country’s strategic deterrence purposes! And to think the incoming Chinese DF-21mod2s will have a one megaton warhead, and nothing less than a fully performing 500 KT warhead. One is compelled to bury one’s head in a pillow, and moan. In the past, I called India’s approach “nuclear amateurism”. It is actually much worse, it is “nuclear fatalism”.