A Chinese nationalist arguing that India's nuclear triad is so degraded in its capabilities that it doesn't deserve to be compared to the other major powers.
Don't have a strong opinion on this matter, but it was an interesting thread.
This is a bit silly. The "five nuclear weapons states" has nothing to do with spurning India owing to a judgment about its relative nuclear capabilities, it is that these are the five declared nuclear powers under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are outside that formal structure.
India's limited testing regime owes to its adherence to contemporary treaties and norms which have created a de facto moratorium on testing for the last several decades. One can reasonably argue that this disadvantages India and Pakistan more than the more established nuclear powers that had decades to refine their designs through real-world testing, but today all the nuclear powers (with the exception of North Korea) are in the same boat of using computer simulations to substitute for real-world testing. If India were to start testing again, Pakistan would follow suit, as would North Korea. China could well be tempted itself given the no doubt very significant advancements since its last real-world tests in 1996, and in a short space of time we could find ourselves back in the 1960s with nuclear tests being conducted on a regular basis all over the world. India arguably has more reason to be dissatisfied with the current testing moratorium than most and we should be thankful that they have not sought to break it.
The limitations of India's nuclear launch platforms are also well known.
Arihant and K-4 may be very limited systems, but a decade ago there was no
Arihant and no K-4. The direction is one of progress. It is entirely correct to note that India's nuclear deterrent is not in the same category as that of USA, Russia, China, or even France or the United Kingdom, but who ever claimed that it was? This is not exactly some shock revelation.
