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India’s nuclear doctrine was built for 2003. The logic of deterrence has changed by 2026

India's nuclear doctrine assumed enough weapons would survive a first strike to ensure retaliation. That assumption now demands re-examination.

This is a most unpleasant subject, and hopefully, the world will never go anywhere near it. Like all grandfathers of the world, I love my grandchildren, now living all over the world, but duty calls. India rightly weaponised its nuclear capability in 1998. The great minds that drove our narrative, jocularly called the “Tamil Club”, then acquired the requisite stature to incorporate logic, modesty, and as much ethics as possible into our nuclear doctrine. The triple factors of technology, the arsenal, and doctrine, each deeply dependent on the others, have now been upended by galloping technology, which destroys the logic of the Indian arsenal’s composition and of the doctrine, designed for the world of 2003 but becoming obsolescent in 2026 and beyond.

The arguments supporting this anxiety have been researched by almost all worldwide research centres, with the first shot being fired by our own Centre for Land Warfare Studies in 2011, which said that conventional weapon stocks and accuracy in some countries were adequate to execute a successful first strike. Since then, the advent of real-time satellite surveillance, AI-driven tracking, hypersonic weapons, and long-range cruise missiles with pinpoint accuracy, followed by mathematical studies describing the vulnerability of even mobile ICBM launchers, has multiplied the concerns outlined below.

The erosion of survivability

The central problem is simple, though its consequences are not. Nuclear deterrence rests on survivability. If a retaliatory force cannot be confidently preserved after a first strike, the logic of deterrence begins to fray. For decades, survivability was ensured through hardened silos, dispersion, mobility and opacity. Today, each of these assumptions is being steadily........

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