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If — as the PMO press release says — that INS Arihant completed its first deterrence patrol, it is a welcome development.

Unlike other great powers of the past New Delhi has encountered, China impinges directly on India’s geopolitical landscape in multiple ways. The ris

There is no reason to expect that India’s deterrence strategy will change in the near future.

If military strength is the final argument in international politics, nuclear weapons are its most emphatic manifestation.

It is the fear of escalation, which the Pakistan army has masked behind bombastic threats, that India needs to exploit.

India's interests across its disputed frontier with China serves two purposes: deterrence and space warfighting.

Poor prosecution and conviction rates fail to act as deterrents. Credible deterrence needs to be created with successful prosecutions in cyberspace.

The deterrence game between India and Pakistan has changed dramatically with India’s decision to conduct a military strike across the Line of Contro

This paper evaluates the importance of a space military strategy for India against China. It argues that in light of China’s advances in space weapons, New Delhi needs to seriously consider developing at least a limited menu of space weapons and integrate them into India’s defence posture. It draws on conceptual literature on nuclear deterrence, air power and sea power to show that space weapons, at least some variants, are usable military in

The successful tests of Chinese nuclear device WU-14 has brought the emphasis back on deploying effective ballistic missile defences. The Chinese test is also definitely going to speed up the US' quest for enhancing both its offensive and defensive technological capabilities.

Even before coming to office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had implied that his government would address Pakistan-sponsored terrorism differently.

Deterrence 3.0 has to create a new consensus for a multipolar nuclear world, a world not of nuclear parity but asymmetry in terms of both sizes and nature of arsenals.

We should consider the effects of the Balakot strike

Indian announcement of having conducted surgical strikes across the de-facto border with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir has major implications for deterrence-stability in South Asia. New Delhi has sought to devise a military strategy to respond to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war that does not lead to escalation of conflict to nuclear levels and collapse of nuclear deterrence. This paper analyses India’s surgical strikes of September 2016, thei

Cyber war is a subject that is highly contested among strategists and experts. This brief assesses the impact of cyber operations against strategic targets and demonstrates that while cyber war is a real phenomenon, it is far from producing decisive outcomes. The cyberspace is a medium to conduct military operations and several countries have made investments in capabilities to both attack and defend against cyber-attacks. The brief evaluates the

As a China-specific missile, the successful test of the Agni-5 MIRV missile enables India to reach a milestone

Joe Biden’s decision may have the potential to drag the Trump administration into the conflict.

Real impetus for India's expansion of its second-strike capability is, in fact, the significant growth of the Pakistani and Chinese navies in the Indian Ocean.

While it cannot match the Indian Navy’s strength, the Pakistan Navy’s focus on asymmetric capabilities & growing synergy with the PLAN pose a significant challenge for New Delhi.

The formation of AUKUS (a security alliance between Australia, the UK, and the US) and its likely forward momentum in the near- and medium-term is certain to redefine the security architecture in the eastern Indo-Pacific region. Given the twin objectives of maintaining the balance of power and ensuring deterrence against China, several new initiatives and defence agreements between the member countries are on the anvil. The interface of A

AUKUS adds another layer of deterrence against China. The group is likely to strengthen the military dimension, contrary to the belief that it undercuts Quad.

India must urgently explore a variety of options to restore deterrence vis-à-vis China. This first thing is to back Japan. India also has to work on a range of options including economic and hard options. It must also take a fresh look at reinvigorating its ties with Vietnam, Japan, Australia, Singapore and the littoral states.

China’s evolving security dynamics with the United States have compelled it to rethink its nuclear strategy to achieve effective deterrence. It is aiming to modernise its nuclear arsenal and increase its nuclear ambiguity through conventional-nuclear entanglement. Ambiguity will increase the risks of mischaracterisation and can have a destabilising impact on the Indo-Pacific region. This paper highlights two areas where India ought to be most c

The extant scholarship on India’s nuclear doctrine, while problematising the credibility deficit in the strategy of massive retaliation, fails to provide a policy alternative. This study examines the alternative of flexible response available for India and makes an assessment of whether it provides a solution to this problem in India’s nuclear doctrine. Even when flexible response is often cited in India’s strategic circles as a likely alte

If massive retaliation is retained in the nuclear doctrine, it will be not because of its efficacy as a strategy of deterrence.

The Indo-Pacific region is becoming the world's new strategic and economic ‘centre of gravity’. Indeed, the accelerated trajectory of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in recent years highlights the region’s growing importance. The Quad countries have committed to a rules-based order and a free and open Indo-Pacific, and are aiming to develop resilience across domains, such as in the maritime space, to counter and deter aggressive

This brief examines India’s defence budget for 2023-24. It outlines the economic context for India’s latest defence allocations, and examines the drivers of growth, the broad distribution of resources among the defence forces, and the impact of such distribution on modernisation and the domestic defence industry. The brief posits that the new defence budget, coming on the back of a hefty mid-year upward revision of the previous alloca

Noting that the objective of the armed forces is not to win wars but to prevent wars, there was a consensus at an ORF discussion that India needs to overcome its deficiencies in order to create a credible deterrence.

In the past decade, India has successfully demonstrated the three pillars of effective deterrence—capability, credibility, and communication—in its strategic posture towards China. It has bolstered its defence diplomacy with key partners in South Asia and Southeast Asia, and across the broader Indo-Pacific region, through regular joint military exercises, military officers exchange programmes, frequent high-level diplomatic visits, and the co

Our hypersonic Shaurya and canisterized Agni capabilities aim to preserve strategic deterrence and thus maintain stability

MIRV is a complex technology, and India’s test this week puts it among a small group of countries that have managed to develop it.

When comparing the current geopolitical landscape of Europe to the circumstances in the years following NATO’s establishment, it becomes apparent that very little has changed.

Biological weapons can come from naturally occurring microbes and viruses; but innovations in genomic editing are opening up new, potentially more threatening avenues for their development. These innovations can cause or spread disease or resist known therapeutic approaches. Addressing such threats of biowarfare requires obtaining reliable and informative taxonomies for the pathogens and timely and effective responses. This, in turn, calls for co