[pjc50]

I think this is being overstated by Indians who would like to think that India is more important to the US than it is; other than H1B discourse, I think the US has largely forgotten India exists.

Invading nuclear-armed India (from where?? Pakistan?) would be a completely insane thing even by Trump standards. It's a plan that disintegrates on contact with a map.

[srean]

Not necessarily with invasion to start with. First would be destabilisation. It's neighbors are not doing too well lately. Many of them imploded within a short time span.

India can do what to the US with its nuke ? It's a deterrent for China.

[JumpCrisscross]

India is weirdly more often forgotten in D.C., and almost never thought of as a threat, that framing is, as another commenter mentioned, a myth that largely propagates in India. It has recently only featured in Washington due to being a potential counterpoint to China, wherever that project is right now.

[bigyabai]

> India can do what to the US with its nuke ?

The same thing that France or Russia could do with their ballistic missile submarines. Just because the ICBMs won't reach the US doesn't mean that the ALCM and SLBMs are harmless.

[srean]

Indian submarines are in general quite noisy.

They bought a few that are more silent, but their acoustic signature got acquired through intelligence/bribery operations. Quite an irreparable loss that the Indian population is not as acutely aware of.

One asset that India can threaten is Diego Garcia.

[bigyabai]

> One asset that India can threaten is Diego Garcia.

Case in point. I wouldn't expect a submarine to occupy the littorals of San Francisco, but an attack on Florida, Hawaii, or a distant base would be difficult to defend against.

Of course, such an attack is basically suicide, but still a possibility. Defensive systems like AEGIS are stretched too thin to deter a coastal attack.

[srean]

You think so ? That is interesting. I am no expert though.

I expect Indian subs to be kept good track of. Threatening Florida seems a stretch. Assets in around Indian Ocean are a distinct possibility. In fact India does not need subs for that.

[pjc50]

Everyone has forgotten ISRO. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to get a nuke into the US on a rocket, if for some reason they were mad enough to do so. But the US nuclear deterrent mostly makes that moot.

[ben_w]

Indeed.

One thing that's an open pair of questions for me is: exactly how dangerous is a high-altitude EMP anyway? And do countries with nuclear weapons actually model this in war games?

I've seen it suggested that even a relatively modest HAEMP would be able to physically damage most transformers in the continental USA, necessitating replacement of all of them at the same time when they're all custom and have month-to-year lead times. No electricity, no fuel pumps, no refrigeration, in the US 90% of the population starves within a year.

The US power grid could have been defended in the decades since the March 1989 geomagnetic storm revealed such weakness, but given various evidence such as the fires in California caused by failure of century-old power lines that were well past due for repair, I doubt they have been.

[srean]

Oh they certainly can if they want to design and develop such a vehicle. Currently India does not have anything with that range in its arsenal.

My original point was that indian nukes and their delivery vehicles as they stand now are a deterrent for China, not for the USA.