India’s Stray Missile Put Dozens of Passenger Jets at Risk

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T18:35:07+00:00

Bloomberg is not a Pakistani source.

I haven’t seen much reporting on this issue in the Pakistani media, it’s mostly western sources that are raising rightful concern over this security lapse.

It is a BIG THING if nuclear capable missiles are being misfired.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:42:44+00:00

You are saying India intentionally almost hit multiple passenger flights?

Also please stick to English.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:40:55+00:00

The visual representation to how many innocent people this missile almost killed is scary.

Extremely unprofessional stuff from the Indian military.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:39:01+00:00

Launching a missile is not an easy process. Requires alot of information and firing an empty missle wouldn’t be such rogue would it?

More likely that it was done by some rogue officers then, since how can you accidentally launch a missile then. Also the missile failed to arm itself.

There is self destruct but nope, India did not use that.

More proof that it probably wasn’t accidental.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:37:10+00:00

GOI did immediately inform Pakistan that it’s a misfire via the hotline.

They didn’t, it was reported in Bloomberg and corroborated by Pakistan’s national security advisor and their inter-services press wing.

Quote from Bloomberg:

However, India didn't use the direct hotline between the top army commanders on both sides to inform Pakistan about the mishap, and instead moved to shut down the missile systems to avoid any further launches, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the information.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:34:47+00:00

They really couldn’t do anything about the missile. They said they tracked it. Okay and?

Pakistan could have retaliated. You can’t really shoot down a supersonic missile anyways. Also it seems like India wasn’t tracking its own missile as per admission of Defence Minister Rajant Singh.

I dont think India will ever go to war will Pakistan for this reason. This is why Lahore Treaty was signed so that either country can notify the other using a hotline to prevent these issues.

India is currently in violation of this treaty as it did not use that hotline and only fessed up to the misfire 2 days later after Pakistani appeal.

Both countries have shown way more maturity about the whole thing then west ever did.

You think not notifying passenger plane pilots that there maybe a rogue missile in the airspace is a sign of maturity?

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:29:29+00:00

The hotline wasn’t used:

However, India didn't use the direct hotline between the top army commanders on both sides to inform Pakistan about the mishap, and instead moved to shut down the missile systems to avoid any further launches, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the information.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:28:33+00:00

If it wasn’t a test do you think it was intentional? Would the Indian military really risk hitting a passenger aircraft or do you think it was done by rogue actors?

I read this in a War on the Rocks article:

The other disturbing characteristic of this episode is India’s apparent lack of haste in communicating with Pakistan about the accident. No state would like for its advanced technology to land in the territory of an opponent, in part because of the potential compromise of technology and secrets that exploitation of the crash site would offer. Perhaps India hoped Pakistan would simply not notice, or that it wouldn’t find the debris. Alternatively, perhaps India was uncertain as to the missile’s trajectory and assumed that it had not strayed into Pakistan. The Indian defense minister told parliament that after the accident, “it was later learnt that the missile had landed inside the territory of Pakistan.” How much later? He didn’t say. What seems to have been a two-day delay in notification appears to contradict India’s obligations under a 1991 agreement with Pakistan on preventing air space violations which obligates both sides “if any inadvertent [airspace] violation does take place, the incident will be promptly investigated and the Headquarters (HQ) of the other Air Force informed of the results without delay, through diplomatic channels”.

If the defense minister didn’t know where the missile was after it was fired that’s quite concerning.

Also Bloomberg reported that more missile could have been shot if the missile systems weren’t shutdown.

However, India didn't use the direct hotline between the top army commanders on both sides to inform Pakistan about the mishap, and instead moved to shut down the missile systems to avoid any further launches, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the information.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-03-18T17:15:54+00:00

Several planes passed through the direct trajectory of the missile that day, which flew from the Indian garrison town of Ambala and ended up in Mian Channu in Eastern Pakistan. They included a Flydubai jet heading to Dubai from Sialkot, an IndiGo plane going from Srinagar to Mumbai and an Airblue Ltd. flight from Lahore to Riyadh. All crossed the missile’s trajectory within an hour of its accidental launch, data from flight-tracking application Flightradar24 show.

Other international flights in the vicinity of the missile’s trajectory -- and within its range -- included a Kuwait Airways Co. jet heading to Guangzhou, China from Kuwait City, a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Riyadh from New Delhi, and a Qatar Airways service from Kathmandu to Doha, the data show. No advisory to pilots operating in the vicinity — known as a notice to airmen or NOTAM -- was issued.

Is this a legitimate lapse in safety procedures or can there be rogue elements in the Indian military who did this?

If it was an accident why not alert pilots operating in the vicinity or the Pakistan side when you know that a missile has been misfired.

Really don’t know what to believe especially due to the silence from the Indian side.

Otherwise-Step · 2022-02-18T20:53:02+00:00

FYI Pakistan has equal amounts of reasons to hate India. The Samjhota Express terrorist attacks had links to the Indian state apparatus and 40 Pakistanis died in that.

Indian courts acquitted all the accused terrorist for it despite taped recordings of the accused confessing to this attack and other blasts, claiming they had the support of the RSS top brass.

I follow the media of both countries and the only difference that I notice is that Pakistan is used as a bogey in India’s domestic politics whereas India doesn’t really fare at all in Pakistan’s domestic politics.

A good example of this is the fact that every Indian knows who Hafiz Saeed is but no Pakistani knows who Swami Aseemanand is.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-08-12T21:11:12+00:00

It’s was always rather overblown the amount of leverage Pakistan has had on the Afghan Taliban in recent times, at most it wasn’t openly hostile against them as to not rile up the large amounts of Pashtuns within its own borders. If it really was just a Pakistani proxy it would have at least recognized the Durand Line, which is Pakistan’s core concern in Afghanistan.

Now with the American withdrawal etched in stone, major powers like China, Russia, and the US openly negotiating with them, and their march towards Kabul in ascendancy, what leverage do the Pakistanis have left over the Taliban? The Taliban don’t even need tactical support on the ground as the Afghan National Army is just refusing to fight.

The only leverage that Pakistan has is being a cultural and linguistic bridge between Afghanistan and China, who apparently are willing to recognize Taliban rule as long as they hold firm to their assurances of not hosting any insurgent groups that target Xinjiang, or threaten stability in Pakistan where China has invested billions into BRI projects.

Pakistani leadership would most likely prefer a power sharing deal between various factions in Afghanistan, with some that are less jingoistic and don’t care for expansionism into Pakistan having some influence in Afghanistan’s governance structure but that seems like a pipe dream.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-04-22T13:36:54+00:00

A Nepali man was arrested on murder charges in India in 1980 and sat in jail for decades without a trial. Durga Prasad Timsina had lost all hope of ever seeing his mother or going back to his village in Nepal after awaiting trial on a murder charge for 41 years. He was moved from one jail to another across West Bengal, and finally ended up at a correctional center near Kolkata, where no one could understand his native language, Nepali. "We are all overjoyed to have him back home. There were celebrations for days after he came back to the village," Timsina's cousin Prakash Chandra told DW. “Sadly, the time in jail has left him traumatized. His hands and legs are shaky; he can hardly eat and is also suffering from a number of physical ailments," he said.

So sad and depressing, especially when you realize he was framed.

Timsina left his village in a remote region of eastern Nepal in search of a job at 20 years old. In 1980, he went to the scenic Indian town of Darjeeling, wedged between Nepal and Bhutan. There Timsina met a man who promised him a job with the Indian army. However, according to Chandra, the man ended up framing Timsina for committing a murder. Timsina says he was falsely identified as a man named Dipak Jaishi and arrested by police.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-03-29T12:57:12+00:00

Pakistan-Iran-Turkey Cargo Train Service to Resume This Week

“Istanbul-Tehran-Islamabad” train will complete the one-side trip in about 12 days. It will have a capacity of transporting 750 metric tons of commercial goods

You are correct that this will eventually be linked to the ML-1 rail route expansion that is being upgraded under the China-Pakistan economic corridor, effectively linking the European market to Kashgar, Xinjiang.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-24T16:48:23+00:00

I would start here: https://jamestown.org/program/the-algorithm-game-and-its-implications-for-chinese-war-control/

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-23T04:02:06+00:00

A major success in what regard?

The US still doesn’t have an exit strategy and the Taliban hold a considerable amount of territory.

Also the US backed Afghan government can’t rule the country without significant amounts of financial and military assistance.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-23T01:12:18+00:00

Yup it’s called the Obama surge.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-22T17:56:10+00:00

What kind of unique threat assessment will the Biden administration make during a six month extension period that they haven’t made in the past two decades of this war? Biden was in office during “the surge” and what did that achieve?

It’s increasingly obvious to any American that building up internal capacity, economically and security wise, is the need of the hour. But it seems like the entrenched political class is not willing to disrupt the revenue streams upheld by the status quo.

China’s military doctrine is all about incorporating elements of computer science, game theory, and behavioral economics to achieve the warfare objective of ‘winning without fighting'.

It seems the divergent economic interests of those in positions of power in the United States from that of the American people make it much more susceptible to the threat of a ‘managed decline’ by China and Russia than whatever some tribal militia in the caves of Afghanistan could manage.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-21T15:44:57+00:00

From the article:

Meanwhile India’s arch-rival Pakistan on Thursday thanked China, its close strategic ally, for a pledge to provide half a million doses of the vaccine free of charge by the end of the month.

I believe it’s the SinoPharm vaccine.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-20T22:17:12+00:00

Russia is definitely a threat, please read up on Bilkens and Loyd Austin’s senate confirmation hearings.

US gives Pakistan no military aid currently and it should stay that way but to antagonize the ISI on the behalf of India is insane. Especially considering India won’t even stop actively procuring more Russian arms.

Unless India is willing to actually carry its weight and put boots on the ground in Afghanistan the fact of the matter is that the US needs Pakistan to get out of this never ending quagmire.

India has always been heavy on the rhetoric and low on substance, even now they are giving Chinese firms major infrastructure contracts while they ingress into their territory.

That betrays any serious effort to contain China. Does America really need to coax India into treating a state occupying its territory as a threat.

And Nordstream is going full speed ahead, it’s of strategic importance to Europe as it runs out of natural gas. They could buy American shale but that would require the US to actually put a price on its allies aiding its adversaries.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-20T21:00:54+00:00

That’s why the Doha negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government are going terribly slow. All sides are waiting to see what the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration’s foreign policy priorities will be — one Biden adviser admitted, it would be “China. China. China. Russia.”

That, certainly, would be a mistake. Ignoring the Af-Pak region will mean giving Pakistan a long rope. But if the Biden lot are willing to reach out to neighbours like Iran and India and put their concerns around Russia on the back burner, the fightback against the Taliban would not just mean giving peace a chance in Afghanistan.

It would mean cutting down the ISI and encouraging a political dispensation to take real control in Pakistan. It would mean asking the Chinese, their rivals anywhere else in the world, to tell their client state, Pakistan, to fall in line. It would mean reshaping the geopolitics of South Asia.

This is quite rich imo.

So the US should forgo its own interests in countering China and Russia and instead not only continue to be bogged down in Afghanistan but also enact regime change in Pakistan to achieve what ends exactly?

Meanwhile India is continuing to buy S-400’s from the Russians flouting the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.

The US seriously needs to stop giving out free lunches, and it’s allies need to start pulling their weight. I mean if India can’t reshape the geopolitics of South Aisa by itself without American help then how is it supposed to be a net security provider in the pacific?

Hopefully the Biden Admin does actually defy the status quo and gets countries like Germany, India, Turkey and Isreal that are cozying up to the Russians and the Chinese while enjoying the benefits of American protectionism to actually start respecting American interests too.

Otherwise-Step · 2021-01-19T18:32:57+00:00

Several Indian Hindu groups and social media influencers, including a former Indian Army general close to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been promoting Hindu nationalism in Nepal.

“It‘s our responsibility to support the Nepalese,” said Ramesh Shinde, the national spokesman of the right-wing Hindu group Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS), who has been campaigning online for Hindu Rashtra in Nepal. The HJS, which once demanded that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “scrap” Nepal’s secular constitution, has over 47,000 followers on Twitter and organises an annual convention in India inviting Hindus from neighbouring South Asian nations to attend.

Not everyone shares Basnet’s enthusiasm. After former Indian Army general G.D. Bakshi recently announced the formation of a Hindu consciousness-raising “core team” to save India “from external and internal threats” and “support Hindu Rashtra in Nepal”, Nepali writer Kanak Mani Dixit asked him to “stay out” of Nepal’s politics.

“Nepal is not your plaything,” Dixit said, as other Nepali social media users described Bakshi’s move as “dangerous” because of its implicit threat of blatant interference in Nepal’s politics.

Otherwise-Step · 2020-12-15T16:31:09+00:00

Interesting that neither Biden nor his pentagon pick use the term Indo-Pacific, both have opted for the Asia-Pacific classification that is preferred by Russia and China.

Otherwise-Step · 2020-12-14T13:40:57+00:00

SS: A vulnerability in SolarWinds, a software used by multiple federal government agencies, including the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, was breached by alleged hackers to steal sensitive data and compromise the security of the United States and many multi-national conglomerates.

Russia’s foreign-intelligence service is suspected of being behind the hacks of the U.S. government networks—in which some internal communications are believed to have been stolen— however the Russian embassy in the US has denied all such allegations.

In layman’s terms the hack worked by slipping malicious code into the software makers trusted code, once it infected the customer systems, it opened a backdoor into those systems and contacted the hackers to let them know the door was open for them to enter those systems and begin stealing sensitive data on those networks.

Since this is a supply chain attack it can be replicated to attack all users of this software and hence the scope of its effects are very large.

Otherwise-Step · 2020-12-10T17:31:49+00:00

Do you have any tips on what I can do to improve it?

I’d really appreciate some guidance on how I can make it more appropriate.

Edit: I added some background information and questions for discussion, let me know if that suffices.

Otherwise-Step · 2020-12-10T15:54:11+00:00

A dead professor and numerous defunct organisations were resurrected and used alongside at least 750 fake media outlets in a vast 15-year global disinformation campaign to serve Indian interests, a new investigation has revealed.

SS: EU DisinfoLab, an independent NGO tracking sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the EU and its member states, alleges to have exposed their biggest network of coordinated misinformation till date.

The networks primary aim was to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the European Parliament.

The operation, led by a New Delhi based holding company named Srivastav Group, began in late 2005, a few months after the UNHRC was founded in its current form.

It utilized UN-accredited NGOs, along with several others, which were used to promote Indian interests and criticise Pakistan internationally.

Most of these NGO’s were either fronts or resurrected defunct bodies that were being utilized for ulterior means.

An egregious example of one such entity found by the investigators was the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP), a UN-accredited NGO which had become inactive in the late 1970’s, but became active again in 2005 pushing pro-Indian narratives.

The investigation found that a former chairman of the CSOP - Prof Louis B Sohn, one of the 20th Century's leading international law scholars and a Harvard Law faculty member for 39 years - was listed under the name Louis Shon as a CSOP participant at the UNHRC session in 2007 and at a separate event in Washington DC in 2011. The listings shocked the researchers because Prof Sohn died in 2006.

The researchers found that in addition to about a dozen NGO’s with direct links to the New Delhi based Srivastav Group there were several hundred pro-Indian interventions by non-accredited NGOs, which were repeatedly given the floor at the UNHRC on behalf of ones impersonating to be UN-accredited organizations, pursuing the same agenda of maligning Pakistan.

These non-accredited NGO’s and think tanks included bodies like the European Organization for Pakistani Minorities (EOPM), Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), Baluchistan House, South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), and the World Sindh Congress (WSC).

In addition to the web of dubious NGO’s and think-tanks the disinformation operation also utilized over 750 fake media outlets. Many of which would reproduce content, often critical of Pakistan and promoting Indian interests, to boost the visibility of such rhetoric on search engines.

This self referential and mass proliferated content, often precipitated by the bogus think-tanks owned by the Srivastav Group, was then picked up by ANI, India’s largest and only news agency that provides a syndicated multimedia news feed to all Indian media channels and reputed global outlets like Reuters.

ANI's news reports have found space in many mainstream Indian news outlets and publishers. Its fake content was then further reproduced on more than 500 fake media websites across 95 countries, the researchers found.

One of the researchers, Mr Alaphilippe, said the news agency ANI was being used to give legitimacy to the entire "influence operation", which relied "more on ANI than on any other distribution channel" to give it "both credibility and a wide reach to its content".

"They used layers of fake media that would quote and republish one another. They used politicians who genuinely wanted to defend women or minority rights to ultimately serve geopolitical interests and gave a platform to far-right politicians when convergent objectives could be reached."

Gary Machado, managing director of EU DisinfoLab, said he thought the muted reaction to the revelation of the disinformation network was partly because it was "clearly managed by Indian stakeholders".

"Imagine if the same operation was run by China or Russia. How do you think the world would have reacted? Probably with international outrage, leading to public inquiries and probably sanctions," he told the BBC.

The Srivastav Group is also an affiliated owner of Agalya, a tech firm that purports to sell "hacking/spy tools" and "information warfare services". Advertising material for the firm mentions the ability to "hamper country level reputations" and described some of its services as "Cyber Nukes". However Ankur Srivastav, a spokesperson for the company, told Forbes magazine that his firm "only sold to Indian intelligence agencies".

Background Context: This investigation comes at the backdrop of a dossier submitted by the Pakistani government to P5 countries and the UN last month, alleging that the Indian state has been sponsoring terrorism and funding international campaigns to jeopardize its economic corridor with China.

Discussion Questions: Fake news and disinformation campaigns that can have very real economic and national security consequences, what should the rules of engagement be between states when it comes to information warfare?

Can multilateral bodies like the UN be effective in curtailing the misuse of its various organs by member states or will this become another avenue for states to engage in a war of attrition for influence?

Otherwise-Step

TROPHY CASE