Deterrence Without Threat? India’s Nuclear Posture and the Puzzle of Offensive Readiness

Perhaps the most under-examined dimension of India’s nuclear expansion is the record of command-and-control failures and near-miss incidents that have accumulated alongside its arsenal growth. As India transitions from a de-alerted posture to a more operationally ready force, with mated warheads on road-mobile missiles and SSBNs on deterrent patrol, the systemic risks of accidental or unauthorised use multiply in direct proportion to the operational tempo of the force.

·       The 2022 BrahMos Incident: The World’s First Accidental Firing of a Nuclear-Capable Missile Between Nuclear-Armed States

On 9 March 2022, India accidentally fired a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from Ambala, Haryana. The missile travelled 124 kilometres inside Pakistani territory at three times the speed of sound in just under four minutes, crashing near Mian Channu in Punjab province. Pakistan’s Air Defence Operations Centre tracked the object from its launch. No warhead was carried, and no casualties resulted. Both sides ultimately projected calm.

The immediate explanation offered by New Delhi was a technical malfunction during routine maintenance. A court of inquiry subsequently found that the cause was human: deviation from standard operating procedures by three Air Force officers, who were dismissed from service. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in a statement that encapsulated the government’s institutional complacency, simultaneously vowed accountability and insisted that India’s “safety procedures and protocols are of the highest order”.

The BrahMos is a dual-capable system. It can carry a conventional or nuclear warhead. Pakistan did not know which variant had been fired when it entered Pakistani airspace. The Pakistan Air Force tracked a high-speed flying object accelerating toward populated territory for three minutes and forty-four seconds before impact. Reports subsequently emerged that Pakistan was close to launching a retaliatory strike before the nature of the incident was clarified through diplomatic channels. That clarification arrived through back channels that neither government has fully acknowledged. The world avoided a nuclear crisis through a combination of luck and the physical fact that the warhead was not armed, not through the functioning of any designed crisis-management mechanism.

The BrahMos incident was not a minor technical mishap. It was the first accidental firing of a nuclear-capable delivery system between two nuclear-armed states in history. That it did not trigger nuclear escalation owes more to contingency than to the robustness of South Asian crisis management architecture.

The structural vulnerability the incident exposed is directly relevant to India’s posture shift. Research published in a peer-reviewed journal has argued that India’s nuclear command-and-control infrastructure may have a large overlap with conventional systems, raising the risk of entanglement and a greater possibility of unauthorised or accidental use. As India canistersises its missiles and mates’ warheads in peacetime, the procedural gap between a conventional maintenance activity and an accidental nuclear launch narrows. The BrahMos incident occurred in a de-alerted environment; the consequences of an equivalent failure in a ready-alert posture are qualitatively different.

A Daily Times analysis from 2026 concluded that the BrahMos episode highlighted deviations from standard operating procedures, insufficient fail-safes, and inadequate crisis-communication mechanisms. India’s nuclear governance architecture contains the relevant regulatory bodies and safety protocols on paper; the problem lies in inconsistent enforcement and very limited transparency.

Table 4: India’s Accidental Launch, Near-Miss, and Doctrinal Instability Incidents

Source: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; CNN; SIPRI Yearbook 2026; Daily Times; Foreign Policy; Arms Control Association.

· Systemic Vulnerabilities and the SSBN Problem

The sea-based dimension introduces a qualitatively new set of command-and-control challenges. War on the Rocks analysts noted that a sea-based deterrent may entail a ready-to-use arsenal and less restrictive command-and-control procedures, increasing the probability of accidental use. An SSBN on deterrent patrol, operating under communication constraints necessary for survivability, operates in an information-degraded environment where the commanding officer may receive incomplete or delayed national command authority instructions during a crisis. India’s doctrine commits nuclear use authority to the Prime Minister through the Nuclear Command Authority; how that authority chain functions in practice for an SSBN on patrol in contested maritime space remains opaque.

India’s official doctrine states that safety is an absolute requirement and that tamper-proof procedures shall be instituted to ensure that unauthorised or inadvertent use does not occur. The BrahMos incident demonstrated that this aspiration has not been matched by implementation. As India moves toward a larger, more operationally ready nuclear force, the gap between doctrinal safety aspirations and operational reality is a structural risk factor for the entire region.