NEW DELHI, May 11: India had become a functional nuclear power with a capability to deliver nuclear weapons four years before the May 1998 tests, the Outlook magazine said on Sunday. At that time, aircraft constituted the country’s sole delivery system.

It quoted two unidentified sources “who were in the decision-making process then” as saying: “By 1994, weaponisation was complete for vectors (delivery systems) available as of that day.”

“India’s nuclear weaponisation programme of 1994 entailed identifying the right aircraft as delivery vehicles for nukes, tailoring these weapons to suit the aircraft and or modifying the aircraft itself,” the magazine quoted the sources as saying.

All these were carried out by selected groups of people drawn from different fields.

In a cover story to mark the fifth anniversary of India’s Pokhran II nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, the Outlook said a day had been fixed to carry out those tests in 1995-96. But the then prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, backed out 72 hours before the D-day.

One of the two Outlook sources said: “Since the need-to-know principle was applied, people concerned with the weaponisation programme knew about it. The services arm, which was involved, also knew about it.”

The report said that even the command and control system for strategic nuclear weapons had been functional well before 1999.

“We began to work on it almost 10 years ago, in 1993. Through the mid-’90s the planning and implementation took place. In its present form it has been more or less functional since 1999,” the sources said.

It was on January 4 this year, four-and-a-half years after India declared itself to be a state with nuclear weapons, that the command and control system was formally announced.

In this sense, the sources told Outlook: “Pokhran II of 1998 was only a coming-out party.”

Even before the Narasimha Rao hesitation, in 1983, India had come close to conducting nuclear tests. But, just because the tests were not conducted in 1995-96 and 1983 did not mean that the nuclear weapons programme was put on hold.

By May 1998, the 1974 design had not only been further modified, reliable detonators, triggers, mechanical and electrical fuses, flight trials and other processes — preceding the acceptance of a nuclear delivery system — had been fully developed. These were satisfactorily carried out to military specifications and certified through certain established processes.