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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many academics, think tank analysts, journalists, and government officials came to perceive India as a de facto nuclear weapons power. The consensus among U.S. policymakers was that normative, rather than technical or organizational hurdles, prevented India from transforming its latent nuclear capability into an operational one. New evidence shows, however, that India lacked technical means to deliver nuclear weapons reliably and safely until 1994–95. Further, until the outbreak of the Kargil War in the summer of 1999, political leaders refrained from embedding the weapons within organizational and procedural routines that would have rendered them operational in the military sense of the term. These deficiencies can be traced to a regime of secrecy that prevented information sharing and coordination among the relevant actors. This secrecy stemmed from risk aversion among Indian decisionmakers, who feared international pressures for nuclear rollback, particularly from the United States.

Hypersonic delivery systems are a grave concern because they are potentially fast and maneuverable enough to evade existing defensive systems. As the US military considers upgrading its nuclear arsenal, hypersonic delivery systems are one possible option. Increased research on hypersonic technologies over the past two decades demonstrates there is technical feasibility for hypersonic conventional weapons. The case for nuclear-armed hypersonic weapons (NAHW) is more complicated. This article considers NAHWs from the point of view of deterrence thinking and suggests a NAHW is consistent with current US thinking about deterrence with respect to existing ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile defense systems. However, we conclude that there are few advantages to hypersonic nuclear delivery systems relative to existing nuclear weapon delivery systems.

According to TAWC, this laser system had the potential of improving weapons delivery accuracies by as much as 50 percent. The operation concept included the demonstration of the feasibility of laser semi-active guidance for conventional munitions, the determination if any improvements in the M-117 Circular Error Probability (CEP) could be attained with laser guidance, and the acquisition of information relative to operational capabilities and limitations of a laser guided bomb modification. Two contracts were let, one to Texas Instruments (TI, effective November 16, 1965), and one to North American Aviation's Autonetics (effective June 3, 1966), respectively Project 1559Y1 and 1559Y2, to fabricate guidance and control kits to attach to the M-117 bomb to give it the capability to home on the radiation from a target marked with a ground-based or airborne laser illuminator. According to TAWC such use of the bomb would work better in South Vietnam, but there would be a problem without the FAC to illuminate the target.

High Power Electromagnetic Pulse generation techniques and High Power Microwave technology have led to the development of the concept of E-bombs (Electromagnetic bombs) which are becoming technically feasible, with new applications in both Strategic and Tactical Information Warfare. The development of conventional E-bomb devices allows their use in non-nuclear confrontations. This paper discusses aspects of the technology base, weapon delivery techniques and proposes a foundation for the use of such devices in military applications.