India’s Strategic Triad: Current Trends and Future Prospects

Although India still contends that it follows No-First Use option and maintains credible minimum deterrence, many of its ex-officials who served India on important positions trigger a debate in India about the likely changes in the broader India's existing drafts of nuclear doctrine. The paper conceptualizes India's possible shift towards counterforce pre-emptive strike targeting strategy where India will find potential space for limited military/nuclear war against its adversaries as one of the major changes in its strategic triad. India's aerial assertion against Pakistan post-Pulwama incident is likely a step towards this direction. Similarly, India's strategic triad deterrent force posture also manifests the comparable goal to achieve. In this back drop, this paper concludes that as India develops bigger deterrent force projects, it is aimed at both counter-value and counterforce targeting options. It would hence bring challenges for both India's evolving nuclear strategy in general and to the South Asian deterrence stability in particular.