Pokhran-II nuclear tests

May 11, 1998: The Pokhran-II tests were a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range in May 1998. It was the second instance of nuclear testing conducted by India; the first test, code-named Smiling Buddha, was conducted in May 1974.

The tests achieved their main objective of giving India the capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields up to 200 kilotons.] The then-Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission described each one of the explosions of Pokhran-II to be “equivalent to several tests carried out by other nuclear weapon states over decades”.Subsequently, India established computer simulation capability to predict the yields of nuclear explosives whose designs are related to the designs of explosives used in this test.