By Rory Medcalf
Amid naval jostling in the East China Sea and nuclear rumbles on the Korean Peninsula, it is easy to miss a missile making a splash in the Indian Ocean.
Security watchers are understandably focused on North Asia at the moment, where it is hard to tell if the next headline won't be about a North Korean nuclear test or, even worse, an exchange of fire between Chinese and Japanese ships. Yet India has recently sent a signal that it cannot be ignored as part of the increasingly complicated strategic equation across Indo-Pacific Asia.
The widely-known facts are few and simple. On January 27, the day after Indian Republic Day, India conducted a test flight for a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).
Most reports suggest the missile had a range of 700 to 750 km.
But what is important is that India is working towards the ability to launch a nuclear weapon from a submarine. In theory, this would give New Delhi a second-strike capability — the confidence in being able to shoot back effectively after sustaining a nuclear attack. Submarines are often considered the ultimate second-strike platform because they're hard to find and hard to target, notwithstanding the potential for rail- and road-mobile launchers to achieve something similar.
Read the full story at The Diplomat