Cold Start Doctrine and the NASR

What is Cold Start Doctrine: 

Cold start doctrine is rapid mobilization of India's unified battle groups in case of a possible war with Pakistan. This doctrine calls for rapid armored thrusts across the Pakistani territory as a conventional riposte against mass terror attacks in India by Pakistan. One of the main criterion of the CSD that is often overlooked is the air interdiction to gain air superiority that preceeds the actual ground movement and a naval blockade and maritime operations to cut fuel supplies and limit the war fighting capability of Pakistan. Integrated Battle Groups (IBG) incursion mandates, air interdiction as precursor to any ground activity, and pre cursor to air interdiction is cruise missile attacks on c4I assets of Pakistan damage it's command and control architecture. 

CSD's and the concept of highly mobile IBG's (light and heavy ) are actually derived from armored brigades of the ww2 africa conquest where, the light brigades would link up and separate to control certain areas. The idea is to divide the big rolling armor in multiple pronged tentacles which would threaten different assets of PA, 

NASR Missile:

Hatf IX NASR missile is a solid fueled battlefield range ballistic missile derived from the WS-2 Weishi Rockets system developed by China's Sichuan Aerospace Corporation used in the A100 Multiple launch rocket sytem. It uses the same 8 x 8 transporter erector launch system as the A100 MLRS imported from china. It can carry sub kiloton nuclear warhead or a HE conventional warhead and fire in salvo mode to survive air defence systems. 

Pakistan's NASR BRBM tactical nuclear missile was introduced as a counter to the armored thrusts conceived in the cold start environment. The focus being if India's crosses a certain threshold, pakistan will use tactical nukes on advancing Indian armor. Whatever a Nasr missle baterry can achieve, same can be achieved via a small tactical nuke dropped from a mirage 3 in battle conditions, hence the concept of tactical nukes on forwarding troops is not a new one, and thus not a game changer that suddenly PA has fielded that Indian planners have not accounted for. The heavy IBG's will only roll with proper air interdiction, plus they will have adequate CAS cover from IAF to trace 50-80 kms ahead for PA assets. So putting a NASR battery 60 klicks of an IBG might be quite challenging and there is much better chance of achieving a nuclear strike using a babur or a Raad cruise missile. 

What deployment of Nasr does ensure is a similar strike by India on Pakistan, and with introduction of a NBC threat, India's response could be quite severe by it's trifecta of delivery mechanism. This might present a situation where pakistan may not have the ability left to respond to such a strike thus essentially giving a free hand to India to go fully nuclear in the scenario.

Planning of the conflict holds the major key here, Unless India has more strike platforms, and area defense fighters like LCA mk2 developed it wont have enough platforms to ensure air superiority over Pakistan which is a key to defend the IBG's, IAF will not want to get into a high attrition conflict with Pakistan which might leave it open to intimidation from Chinese border. 

In the end whichever side has better planning and better redundancies built into their command and control to absorb the initial damage sustained will have the edge. India still lacks the assets needed to successfully pull off any high intensity air/ground operations for next 5 years, with most of it's Mig 27 and Mig 21 fleet facing obsolescence, and critical delays in LCA and MMRCA platforms. With the dwindled strength of the IAF squadron strength and lack of Artillery and SAM's in army. The tri services do not have the numbers to project an offensive of such scale and precision in the next 5-8 years. Thus the ground offensive mode of Cold Start may be at around 85% of required numbers and Air mode at around 60%, it still seems a long way for India to be able to deploy the strategy as a feasible doctrine with the given inventory.

With introduction of Awacs platforms , New DRDO - AEW&C and Additional Phalcon Awacs, Two Squadrons of Rafales, 6 Squadrons of MKI's, Mirage 2000-05 I upgrade, the Mig29 UPG program, BAE Hawk CAS approach along with the renewed vigor in the LCA program, the Airforce assets will be in good shape in the next 5-8 years to deal with the Air Operations needed for the Cold start or any other mass Air Interdiction operation to gain Air Superiority. On the Ground mode of operations always has had adequate armor strength, with upgraded T90 and T72 night fighting capability supplemented by Arjun MBT, IA is in a comfortable position to rapidly ingress into the Pakistani territory. The only area of concern is the low numbers of Artillery systems and Surface to Air systems. Naval operations are where India enjoys unprecedented advantage over Pakistan, with the current fleet strength, Indian navy can not only sustain a naval blockade, but completely decimate Karachi and Gawadar ports and more at will.