Estimates vary between 50 and 100 nuclear weapons. What will they throw at each other, and what will they aim at?
Pakistan has an impressive nuclear arsenal (with est 60-100 nuclear warheads available) for what is generally thought to be a politically chaotic nation. They will woof at each other but Pakistan and India dare not use nuclear force as that would spell the likely end of Pakistan and massive damage to India.
They are next door. The radiation will come back to kill them too.
So are the USA and Cuba. 
And the world learned from 1962 not to use nuclear weapons. Not gonna happen. Wouldn’t be prudent.
I thought that most simulations of conflict between India and Pakistan end with a nuclear exhchange. Is that still true?
Just out of sheer curiosity, has any simulation of conflict in recent times ever proved to be accurate in the real world?
Any answer here is going to be pure speculation. This is going to be better suited for GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Pakistan’s President supports no first strike policy
One of the important things to note is that Pakistan’s military will leave the border with Afghanistan and move to the border with India. That is one of the most significant factors.
I woulda thought the world learned from 1945 not to use nukes.
Nuclear War.
Most of Pakistans arsenal is land based mobile missiles. Air based weapons including standoff cruise missle also exist, while rumour has it that their subs have been armed with nuclear cruise missile.
India mostly air based, Jaguars and Mirage 2000, India dose have land based missiles but Agni is not deployed yet. Nothing as of yet about sea based, but they are developing an SLBM.
Pakistan’s arsenal was estimated at about 100 in 2002, suppose it would be 125-150 now.India slighty more or less, probably less since it is mostly air based.
Targets:
No idea.
Just to take this seriously…
No, the world hadn’t. Tactical use of nukes was a real option throughout the 1950s. The US had nukes in Turkey pointing at Russia, one reason the Russians were so jumpy. The Russians wanted an equivalent in Cuba. Both sides certainly thought they could get away with a limited nuclear strike without escalating it into full-scale nuclear warfare, something they knew they couldn’t survive, Dr. Strangelove’s General “Buck” Turgidson notwithstanding.
The Cuban crisis showed that was a pipe dream. Any use of nukes, any real threat of nukes, would set the whole arsenal off. Nikita Khrushchev saw that was insanity and backed off. Kennedy saw that it was insanity and never started.
That’s why the entire 50s was spent under school desks and in fallout shelters hiding from the threatened bomb. Nobody had learned enough.
Virtually every large staff exercise NATO ever did simulating a full scale conventional war against the Warsaw Pact ended in one side or the other requesting release of nuclear weapons. I’d expect the same could be said of their staff exercises.
If India and Pakistan actually started up a full scale war, it’d go nuclear.
Which is why they won’t. Nuclear weapons theory has not been consistent since 1945. As you point out, nuclear weapons use was standard NATO doctrine. Official US policy for most of the Cold War was that the USA would strike first; it was called the “Overwhelming response” doctrine. Possessing a massive advantage in nukes, in made sense for awhile. (I find it amazing how many people believe the USA and NATO had the opposite policy; this was not a secret. Our official position was first strike until at least the late 1960s.)
The rise of ICBMs, however, made it increasingly apparent that suich a strategy would inevitable result in nuclear holocaust, and so the doctrine of MAD began to take hold, and first strike was (gradually) taken off the table.
India and Pakistan have enough nukes that they’re now in MAD mode; use by one side likely results in enough nukes being thrown that both states will be destroyed. But a conventional war fought at full scale would have the same likely result; whichever side was losing might well panic and use one or more nukes to stop the advance, and then, kablooey.
It would be a Bad Thing.
Indian military policy would be directed toward securing Kashmir and (ideally) fracturing Pakistan into two or more more-manageable neighbors. Some dream of absorbing Pakistan.
Pakistani military efforts would (oddly) be directed to defending Kashmir and capturing as much Indian territory as possible. The goal would be to have chips at the negotiating table when the UN makes everyone play nice.
The most obvious cause of a nuclear exchange would be a threat to either nation’s existence. This would most likely come if the Indians fractured the front in Kashmir and drove on.
The Pakistanis (and Indians) lack the national technical means need to smite tactical military targets. (Where is their 53rd Tank Division?) So they would have no real choice of smashing immobile targets (like cities).
That would be Very Bad.
I point out the most obvious targets would be Islamabad and Mumbai.
Add in an American attempt to snatch the bombs from the Pakistanis before they can use them and you have the makings of Really Bad Things happening. But the worst is yet to come.
If the Indians smite the Pakistanis (or visa versa) on Monday, by Wednesday nations around the world would realize nukes have real utility. They are not only doomsday weapons. Nations around the world would all want the fool things.
I remember way, way back when India and Pakistan were at war, the conflict being described as two leprous beggars beating each other to death with their crutches. We have two hopes, one, that cool heads will prevail over seething religious and ethnic hatreds. The other is prayer. And there is always the hope that they will stare into the abyss and, when it stares back with vast and indifferent malice, they will come to terms. With any luck at all, this will coincide with the acceptance of my legitimate claim to be recognized as Queen of Rumania.
Grim Christmas present: it’ll give the Islamofanatic movement somebody else to hate besides us and Israel.
I’m assuming that every diplomat in the civilized world is loosing a barrage of words. May the Goddess pour honey on the lips and wisdom in the ears.
It’s interesting people so often get distracted by the nuclear horror that they completely forget about the possible horror that can occur by conventional means. The one that has a high likelihood of occurring, regardless of the nuclear option.
I am somewhat selfishly more concerned about radioactive material blowing around than people being killed in a conventional conflict.
Not really. I think you need to understand the full senario
There are three main fronts in the Indo-Pak senario
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Kashmir; Pakistan controls the heights pretty much. No real effort there, except on isolated posts. The only real area where there could be fighting would be in the South East of the territory, which is the only plain area, the Pakistanis are 30 Km from the town of Akhnur in Indian Kashmir, Akhnur has the only road from rest of India to Kashmir, if the Pakistanis take it, the Indians are cut off.
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Punjab; Again the Pakistanis have the advantage, they have interior lines of communication while the Indians have exterior lines, in both '65 and '71 the main Indian effort came here and was pretty badly mauled, Indian writers have conceeded that the offensives there was a mistake.
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The South/the desert
Although most of the south is not actually desert, it is often called that. The Indians have an advantage there, interior lines and numbers. In 1971 while the main effort was getting mauled in Punjab, a speculative two division offensive got nearly a 100 miles in before being repelled. In 2002 the main Indian concentration was in this sector. If I was the Indian commander, I would attack here, you have a good chance of taking territory. There are 10 Pakistani divisons in the area, plus 4 that could be committed later but a breakthrough here would threaten Pakistans N/S communications as well as the Indus itself.
Both countries have the means to identify and attack battlefield targets, a “tank division” has nearly 10,000 vehicals assigned, not a hard target to miss, in anycase both have UAV’s and other recce assets and India has spy staellite. Both countries have battlefield weapons such as India’s Prithivi and Pakistan’s Hataf missiles and these would no doubt be assigned to front line formations in a war.
The plan? Hard to say. Pakistan would probably fall back on the doctrine it has had since 1990, which is to use its advantages, better communications, interior lines faster mobilisation (they can move a corps to its staging area within 96 hours) to attack into India itself, with the aim of capturing territory in Punjab and Rajestan and to do it before the Indians can fully mobilise. India? Harder to say really.
Nukes; no idea.
Fine, but the likelihood of a conventional exchange is really high, whereas the likelihood of a nuclear one is considerably more remote. Also, a conventional exchange means the US HAS to join in. To me that’s more interesting and more directly impacting on my life than the fantasy of a nuclear exchange.
Also, nuclear material flying through the air isn’t quite the horror that people like to make it out to be.