ENHANCING CRUISE MISSILE CAPABILITY

India’s cruise missile capability has largely evolved as a credible conventional level deterrence since the turn of the new millennium. But much more needs to be done, writes AMARTYA SINHA

- AMARTYA SINHA

The last century was a transformative and transitional period in the history of contemporary warfare as new generation kinetic strike weapons took to the skies after the Second World War. Starting right from the first Gulf War in 1990 and ending with the Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria campaigns in the first two decades of the 21st century, and now as visible in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, the world has witnessed the usage of game-changing aerial weapons which tipped the balance in the aggressor’s favour in the opening hours of the war. Such weapons play a very critical role not just in maintaining conventional deterrence, but also in executing tactical-level nuclear strikes over the enemy’s ground-based infantry battalions and armoured mobile formations in case of an escalation.