Pakistan Warns India Over Shifting Nuclear Balance in South Asia

Pakistan has warned that it could reconsider its strategic deployment options if India’s expanding nuclear capabilities create an imbalance in South Asia. Retired Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, an adviser to the National Command Authority, delivered the warning during the Islamabad Non-Proliferation Conference on Tuesday.

Kidwai argued that India was moving towards a more operationally prepared nuclear posture that could potentially support a first strike with little warning. He said Pakistan would evaluate the measures available to preserve regional deterrence while maintaining strategic ambiguity over the precise nature and placement of its capabilities.

The concern centres partly on assessments that India has begun deploying nuclear weapons aboard a ballistic-missile submarine for deterrence patrols. Kidwai and retired Lieutenant General Sarfraz Sattar, another former head of the Strategic Plans Division, cited publicly available research indicating that approximately 12 warheads may have been assigned to an Indian submarine.

The Pakistani advisers maintained that combining warheads with submarine-launched ballistic missiles would represent a significant transition from a recessed deterrence posture towards a more immediately usable capability. They argued that such deployments, alongside missile modernisation and canisterised weapons, could weaken confidence in India’s declared policy of not using nuclear weapons first.

India has been developing a sea-based component of its nuclear forces as part of a broader effort to establish land, air and maritime delivery options. A submarine-based capability can strengthen survivability because vessels operating at sea are harder to locate, but it also introduces command, communication and crisis-management challenges between nuclear-armed rivals.

Kidwai additionally questioned the absence of advance notifications for some submarine-launched ballistic missile tests. He warned that insufficient communication surrounding strategic weapons could increase the danger of misunderstanding or unintended escalation during periods of military tension.

Sattar referred to the confrontations between Pakistan and India in 2019 and May 2025 to illustrate how rapidly conventional fighting could intensify. He said the later conflict involved a broader range of capabilities, including drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, cyber operations and electronic warfare, creating more pathways through which a crisis could approach the nuclear threshold.

The officials also highlighted India’s work on multiple-warhead missiles, ballistic-missile defences, hypersonic systems and autonomous military platforms. Their assessment was that these programmes, combined with conventional military doctrines designed for rapid operations, could place additional pressure on Pakistan’s deterrence planning.

Independent research released in 2026 found that all nine nuclear-armed states continued modernising their arsenals during the previous year, with several deploying new nuclear or nuclear-capable systems. That wider international trend has intensified concerns about arms-control erosion and the growing risk of miscalculation during regional conflicts.

For Pakistan, any adjustment to deployment policy would carry substantial security and diplomatic consequences. Greater readiness could be intended to reinforce deterrence, but it could also shorten decision-making time during a crisis and accelerate competition between the two neighbours. The warning therefore underlines the need for reliable communication, advance-notification arrangements and sustained risk-reduction talks between Islamabad and New Delhi.