India Reportedly Tests Medium-Range Missile

India today successfully test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile for the first time, news reports said.

The test-firing of the Indian-built missile was conducted at Chandipur on the Bay of Bengal, about 120 miles southwest of Calcutta, United News of India said.

It was the third time that India, the Asian subcontinent’s biggest military and political power, had attempted a missile launch.

The first firing, scheduled for April 20, was postponed by last-minute problems with the ignition system. A second launch, set for May 1, was canceled after an error in one of the rocket’s subsystems.

By successfully firing the missile, India joined the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain in ballistic missile capability.

The Agni missile, whose name means “fire” in the ancient Sanskrit language, has a range of up to 1,550 miles and can carry a one-ton payload, military officials said before the launch.

American researchers, meanwhile, reported Sunday that India and Pakistan are much deeper into a nuclear arms race than previously thought, with India poised to test a hydrogen bomb and Pakistan developing an atomic bomb for use with its U.S.-made F-16 attack aircraft.

Scientists David Albright and Tom Zamora, writing in the June issue of the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said West German investigations into illegal exports of nuclear technology have produced mounting evidence that both India and Pakistan “have even more extensive nuclear weapons research, development and production programs than previously thought.”

The two are affiliated with the Federation of American Scientists, a 5,000-member group concerned with the global arms race and other scientific issues affecting society. They based their article on a combination of U.S. government sources and published reports.

Pakistan will have produced enough weapons-grade uranium to make eight to 16 bombs by the end of 1990, the article said, while India already has enough plutonium for at least 40 to 50 nuclear weapons, with the likely capability to produce 15 new weapons annually during the next few years.

India exploded a 12-kiloton nuclear device in 1974, but “there is no concrete evidence” that either it or Pakistan has actually built and deployed nuclear weapons, the article said.

However, both Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan “appear unwilling or unable to constrain their nuclear weapons programs,” resulting in a nuclear standoff between the two nations, the authors said.

If either country tests or deploys weapons at this point, the other will follow, the article said.

“India probably decided several years ago to acquire the know-how to make a thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb) as a hedge against Pakistan’s growing atomic ability, and to be prepared to test such a device within a few months of a Pakistani nuclear test,” the report said.