These circumstances should necessarily compel us to examine our security requirements from at least three perspectives. The first and still most important one is in terms of power to neutralise the conventional military capabilities of our two major regional adversaries, Pakistan and China. The second would be to meet the challenges posed by internal low intensity conflicts with a greatly enhanced special warfare capability. The third would be the capability to project credible power well beyond our geographical horizon and to deter extra-regional interference in the region. The implies the open deployment of weapons of great precision and power.
Nuclear weapons are a clear option.
Absence of Doctrine Our strengths and weaknesses with regard to our conventional requirements are well documented and widely known. But the benchmark for these has invariably been Pakistan, So if Pakistan gets a new warplane, we must also have one and often anything will do. If Pakistan gets new submarines, logic would demand that we counter it with antisubmarine ships and aircraft. But the Navy would seek to match this with more submarines, as if defence were just a game of numbers. Likewise the Army would like to mirror match Pakistani hardware.