India successfully tests its first SLBM

India launched on February 26 a nuclear-capable SLBM off of its southeast coast near the port city of Visakhapatnam, which is home to the navy's Eastern Fleet. The test of the indigenously-developed SLBM with the designation Sagarika (K-15) was announced earlier this month. The nuclear-capable missile has a range of 700km and can carry a 500kg payload.

“This missile is a variant of the Dhanush and an advanced clone of Prithvi's naval version. The difference is that it can only be launched from a submarine,” a source at the Integrated Test Range (ITR) said.

The Sagarika is designed to be integrated with a nuclear-powered submarine that India is building and that is expected to be ready for sea trials by 2009. Since the Indian Navy does not have yet a submarine capable of firing an SLBM, the missile was launched from an underwater platform positioned 50 meters deep in the sea.

Developed by the Defence Research and Development Organization, the missile has at least twice been test-fired but without success as its trajectory deviated while in flight on both occasions. Other sources refer to six previous tests.

A defense ministry spokesperson said that “[t]he test was successful. We are waiting [for] further details.” Once the weapon is deployed, India would join the few other nations – namely United States, Russia, China, and France – capable of firing ballistic missiles from air, sea and land.

Soon after the test, Pakistan’s Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Afzal Tahir warned that the test “is going to start a new arms race in the region”. So far Pakistan possesses in addition to its various land-based ballistic missiles the Babur cruise missile that can be fired from warships, submarines and fighter jets and the Ra'ad ALCM which was tested on August 25, 2007.

Another test-flight of the Tiger

Pakistan conducted mid December another test of its first cruise missile, the Hatf-VII Babur (Arabic 'tiger'). The missile is subsonic and nuclear-capable; it possesses “near stealth capabilities and is a low flying, terrain hugging missile with high maneuverability, pin point accuracy and radar avoidance features”.

It is always stressed that the Babur was indigenously developed. However, the Babur cruise missile holds many similarities to the Tomahawk land attack cruise missile, with the two being roughly the same size and shape and having a similar wing and engine intake design. However, in 1998 US-destroyers fired Tomahawk missiles at Taliban bases in Afghanistan. Six of these missiles mis-fired and landed in Pakistan. Rumors exist that Pakistan reverse-engineered these Tomahawk missiles and developed its own prototype. In contrast to that, India’s oppositional Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that the missile was produced in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime because of allegations that China had transferred cruise missile technology to Pakistan.

The Babur entered serial production in October 2005. Pakistan conducted five missile tests so far:

· August 11, 2005: land-based transporter erector launcher
· March 21, 2006: second test of the original 500km range missile
· March 23, 2007: upgraded version, range extended to 700km
· July 26, 2007: upgraded version, launched from the torpedo tubes of an Agosta 90b submarine
· December 11, 2007: a surface-to-surface version was test-fired

Officials have announced, Pakistan is already working on a second, more advanced cruise missile, with a range of 1,000km.

Watch this short clip for some general information on the missile:



Some analysts complain that due to the Hatf-VII Babur, India feels compelled to match the cruise missile with a similar weapon type of its own, namely Nirbhay, which is expected to be first test-fired in 2009. Others do not see the threat of an accelerated arms race but perceive a momentum of stability. Pakistan’s President Musharraf was quoted: “[The Babur] will further improve the existing military balance in the region”. An arms race, in which the involved actors compete in introducing certain types of weapons faster than their opponents do, show a certain form of continuity, but definitely not stability.

To put the Babur into the context of the South Asian missile proliferation: Sharad Joshi from CNS published a series of four articles in WMDInsights on the intensifying competition between India and Pakistan in the development of increasingly advanced, nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles. See
· India's Missile Program: Diverging Trajectories, WMD Insights, February 2007,
· Pakistan's Missile Tests Highlight Growing South Asia Nuclear Arms Race, Despite New Confidence Building Measures, WMD Insights, April 2007,
· India Successfully Tests Agni-III: A Stepping Stone to an ICBM?, WMD Insights, May 2007, together with Peter Crail, and
· India and Pakistan Missile Race Surges On, WMD Insights, October 2007.