India to test nuclear missile that can hit Beijing

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_INDIA_MISSILE_TEST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-04-18-06-41-44

NEW DELHI (AP) -- India is planning to test launch a new nuclear missile that for the first time would give it the capability of hitting the major Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

The government has hailed the Agni-V missile, with a range of 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), as a major boost to its efforts to counter China's regional dominance and become an Asia power in its own right. The test launch was expected to come as early as Wednesday evening.

"It will be a quantum leap in India's strategic capability," said Ravi Gupta, spokesman for India's Defense Research and Development Organization, which built the missile.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Oh whoopee

Hopefully they won't try it.

[malaise]

2. Who will stop them?

They will be encouraged - remember my enemy's enemy is my friend.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Someone with at least half a brain hopefully

off topic : search SUPERCAT- My Girl Josephine on Youtube.

[Selatius]

4. No surprise here. China and India have been unhappy neighbors for a while now.

It's very possible for India and China to become locked in an arms race not too different from that between the United States and the Soviet Union.

China has been becoming far more interested in trade with African nations in recent years, and they need access to the Indian Ocean ports in order to better reach the resources. Of course, this will mean China will be a lot closer to India's hemisphere of influence than in the past, much closer, and if China maintains military supremacy, this means that interference or competition in India's commercial affairs with respect to the Indian Ocean can be supported by a stronger military option against India. India sees this as an obvious threat, so of course it's going to respond by upgrading its military to protect whatever commercial interests it has already in the Indian Ocean region.

I would say that if both sides were in a position to invoke Mutually Assured Destruction and both are states run by rational actors, then that would decrease the chance of another major land war between the two biggest nations in the world. They would be forced to treat each other with more respect and to think twice about doing anything aggressive for fear of nuclear annihilation.

Currently, China is the stronger of the two militarily in the area of nuclear weapons. China could wipe out all of India's major cities without difficulty if it came down to a nuclear war. It possesses missiles with the range necessary, and it possesses them in larger amounts compared to India. In a conventional military sense, China is threatening to surpass India. China, too, seeks military dominance on the oceans. They also have an eye on building a naval fleet with aircraft carriers and long-range nuclear-powered submarines to patrol all its trade routes.