In the contemporary nuclear age, dual-capable delivery systems that can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads are widely assumed to be highly destabilizing in crises. In South Asia, dual-use systems can generate significant anxiety—not just for India and Pakistan, but for international stakeholders wary of limited conventional conflicts spiraling into a nuclear exchange. For instance, during the May 2025 crisis between India and Pakistan, Washington reportedly decided to take an active role in ending the conflict after learning that India had launched its dual-capable BrahMos missile, leading U.S. officials to fear the possibility of nuclear escalation.
Interestingly, operational experience in South Asia in some ways contradicts assumptions about the inherent destabilizing effect of dual-use systems: despite multiple incidents over the past five years involving such weapons, inadvertent escalation has not occurred. But India and Pakistan should not learn the wrong lessons from this empirical record—while dual-capable missiles do not inevitably lead to misperception and nuclear escalation, they do introduce ambiguity that could undermine crisis stability in future scenarios with higher intensity and more compressed decision timelines. To address this growing danger, India and Pakistan should pursue risk reduction measures to ensure transparency and predictability in future crises.
Dual-Use Systems: Theory and Practice in South Asia
From a theoretical standpoint, dual-use systems could erode crisis stability in two distinct ways. First, because dual-use missiles introduce payload uncertainty, their use can present a perceived “use it or lose it” dilemma to adversaries, who may interpret an incoming salvo of such missiles as a pre-emptive first strike rather than a conventional attack. Second, because dual-use systems entangle conventional and nuclear forces, an adversary’s conventional strikes on such systems can be misread as an attempt to degrade nuclear forces. As officials face these difficult, high stakes scenarios, the risks of misperception and inadvertent escalation are significant: studies of nuclear brinkmanship demonstrate that even ostensibly rational decisionmakers can escalate under the psychological and emotional pressures of crisis situations.
“But India and Pakistan should not learn the wrong lessons from this empirical record—while dual-capable missiles do not inevitably lead to misperception and nuclear escalation, they do introduce ambiguity that could undermine crisis stability in future scenarios with higher intensity and more compressed decision timelines.”
However, the empirical record in South Asia has seemingly contradicted these expectations. Pakistan has faced the threat of dual-capable missiles landing inside the country on two occasions: once during peace time and once amid crisis. The first incident occurred in March 2022, when India and Pakistan were observing a ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) and the international border. On March 9, an Indian BrahMos missile—allegedly launched accidentally—landed in Pakistani territory. Military officials in Pakistan challenged the “accidental launch” framing, arguing that such a launch could not have taken place without detailed operational and technical planning and political clearance at the highest level. A top spokesperson for the Pakistani military claimed that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) picked up the projectile inside Indian territory, monitored the complete path, and initiated tactical actions. On impact, the missile struck civilian properties and—fortunately—did not lead to any casualties. Following the incident, India ordered an inquiry and terminated three officers of the Indian Air Force. Pakistan, for its part, requested a joint probe but the demand was not accepted by India. Pakistan likely opted against a military response while the missile was in flight because (1) it was a single, isolated projectile (2) headed toward a non-strategic location and was (3) fired during peace time, not an active conflict. After the fact, analysts concluded that Pakistan decided not to pursue counter-measures as the missile was unarmed and caused minimal damage.
The second incident occurred during the May 2025 crisis, which represented the first time India and Pakistan exchanged missile strikes on each other’s sovereign territory since nuclearization in 1998. Indian strikes on Pakistani airbases employed a mix of conventional precision weapons, including the BrahMos. Pakistan did not respond by escalating to their own long-range cruise missile strikes. Instead, conventionally-armed, short-range Fatah-I and Fatah-II ballistic missiles were employed, likely viewed as sufficient to inflict proportional damage but not to escalate the conflict. Of course, in this particular scenario, the intervention of a concerned international stakeholder in the shape of the United States may have shifted Pakistani strategic calculus.
Dual-Use Systems: Enduring Risks
This empirical record demonstrates that, when confronted by dual-use missiles, decision-makers have thus far avoided resorting to catastrophic responses. However, India and Pakistan should not pin their hopes for enduring strategic stability on this limited sample of incidents. After all, theoretical assumptions about the destabilizing effect of dual-use systems still pass muster and ongoing trends in the India-Pakistan rivalry suggest that the conditions for inadvertent escalation could develop sooner rather than later.
Concerningly, the India-Pakistan rivalry appears primed for just such conditions to occur. For one, recent years have seen India-Pakistan security dynamics grow ever more fraught, with conventional conflicts evolving from extremely limited scenarios like the 2019 Balakot strike and aircraft downing to the four-day May crisis with air combat, extensive drone warfare, and standoff missile exchanges. In the next crisis, India and Pakistan are likely to continue incorporating emerging technologies into their combat operations. If the trend to higher intensity conflicts with shorter decision timelines continues, the risk of dual-use systems leading to escalation will only grow. To make matters worse, current doctrinal ambiguities raise the chances of such misperception. A growing sense in Pakistan that India has moved toward a first-strike counterforce doctrine could render dual-use systems particularly threatening. Taken together, these dynamics of growing intensity and ambiguity should raise concerns about future escalation risks from dual-use systems, despite the experiences of 2022 and 2025.
The Way Forward: Separation and Risk Reduction
Just as the Cuban Missile Crisis spurred arms control talks between the United States and the Soviet Union, the May 2025 conflict should push India and Pakistan to pursue risk reduction measures to reduce the chances of future catastrophe. First and foremost, given the inherent destabilizing features of dual-capable systems, India and Pakistan should further separate the command-and-control structures for their conventional and nuclear forces. As a baseline, each side should explore options through which they can ensure that forces and capabilities placed under nuclear commands would not be used for conventional purposes and vice-versa. Although details are yet sparse, Pakistan’s decision to establish an Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC) can be one step in this direction. Early indications allude to the disentanglement logic at play, as a former senior official recently remarked that “the formation of ARFC has separated the operational employment of land based conventional missiles from the land based nuclear delivery systems of the National Command Authority (NCA).” If India were to mimic this move and reciprocate separation signaling, the risk of misperception from dual-use systems could be greatly mitigated.
Short of outright separation, clear communication between the two states during future crises will remain extremely important. The use of a hotline between each country’s Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) during the May 2025 crisis shows that both sides are open to communication even in the heat of conflict. Beyond these military backchannels, India and Pakistan should also activate a similar hotline between the countries’ foreign secretaries to facilitate direct government to government contact for nuclear risk reduction. Undoubtedly, in the current trust-deficient environment, the prospect of either side initiating talks about disentanglement and risk reduction appears difficult to fathom. However, establishing mechanisms for communication, verification, and technical and confidence building dialogue is critical in peace time to lay the foundation for risk reduction in the event of a future conflict.
“Another important—and more concrete—step would be to upgrade the existing pre-launch notification agreement, which currently covers only ballistic missiles.”
Another important—and more concrete—step would be to upgrade the existing pre-launch notification agreement, which currently covers only ballistic missiles. Both cruise missiles and hypersonic systems should be incorporated into this framework, reducing the risk of misperception if scenarios like the 2022 BrahMos accident recur.
India and Pakistan’s two experiences in March 2022 and May 2025 demonstrate that the employment of dual-use systems by the adversary does not necessarily trigger inadvertent escalation and that dual-capable systems are not inherently destabilizing. However, ambiguity due to structural factors such as payload uncertainty and compressed decision timelines present latent risks that could influence decision-makers during prolonged conflicts. Dismantling dual-capable systems full-stop is not a feasible proposition due to operational and financial constraints. Nevertheless, their dangers can be lowered by institutionalizing risk reduction measures that disentangle nuclear and conventional forces, in turn minimizing the probability of inadvertent escalation and strengthening crisis stability between the two nuclear-armed states.
The article was published in the southasianvoices
