Sharif had reportedly said: “The enemy will have to bear <g data-gr-id="28">unbearable</g> <g data-gr-id="29">cost,</g> if they prove to be adventurous.”
Sharif’s statement has obviously not gone down well with the Indian defence authorities, who read this in the context of ‘battlefield nuclear weapons’ that Pakistan now possesses.
A senior Indian Army official said if they (Pakistan) try to use these in the Thar desert area, adjoining Sindh in Pakistan, or as a response to a strike through the heart of Punjab plains, they will have to manage the nuclear fall-out on its own citizens.
He said that if Pakistan has plans of using ‘battlefield nukes” it ought <g data-gr-id="43">not</g> have its own troops on the way. That means Indian forces could push to major population centres in Pakistan without opposition till <g data-gr-id="41">the those</g> small nukes are used. A former director general military operations (DGMO), retired Lieutenant General <g data-gr-id="27">Vinode</g> Bhatia had recently told Millennium Post: “There is now settled population on the Punjab or Sindh border. How can they use nukes in those areas?”
An important point to be noted is the subtle change in India own nuclear weapon-use policy. While ‘no first use’ remains the bedrock of that policy, India has made it clear that its massive retaliation in terms of city busters can be triggered even by the use of tactical nukes.
Having said that, the Indian authorities are clear that a surgical strike into Pakistan will not allow <g data-gr-id="38">use</g> of tactical nukes because the Indian mechanized forces are nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons proof. They can move even in a nuclearised environment.
A senior serving official, who is about to take command of a corps, said: “If the Pakistani command authorities seek to nuclearise the battlefield, that will mean that they cannot have their own troops in that area. As a result, we will have a cake walk.”
But according to international studies conducted by the US ‘think-tanks’, the use of Pakistan’s nuke-based war plan is a folly. For as late General K Sundarji had once calculated that <g data-gr-id="33">a air</g> burst on Delhi will take the headwinds with nuclear isotopes reach Pakistan’s Punjab real soon.