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The Military

India Accidentally Fired a Missile Into Pakistan Due to 'Technical Malfunction' (cnn.com) 79

Posted by EditorDavid from the mistakes-were-made dept.
From CNN: India said on Friday it had accidentally fired a missile into Pakistan this week because of a "technical malfunction" during routine maintenance, giving its version of events after Pakistan summoned India's envoy to protest.

Military experts have in the past warned of the risk of accidents or miscalculations by the nuclear-armed neighbors, which have fought three wars and engaged in numerous smaller armed clashes, usually over the disputed territory of Kashmir... Tensions have eased in recent months, and the incident — which may have been the first of its kind — immediately raised questions about safety mechanisms.

"On 9 March 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile," the Indian Ministry of Defence said in a three-paragraph statement. "It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident." The ministry said the government had "taken a serious view and ordered a high-level Court of Enquiry."

Pakistani officials said the missile was unarmed and had crashed near the country's eastern city of Mian Channu, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital, Islamabad.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader ami.one for sharing the news...
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India Accidentally Fired a Missile Into Pakistan Due to 'Technical Malfunction' More

India Accidentally Fired a Missile Into Pakistan Due to 'Technical Malfunction'

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  • take the men out of the loop!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alexhs ( 877055 )

      How about a nice game of chess?

      • Wrong Movie: Colossus: In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love. Dr. Forbin: Never!
    • Russia lost control of a huge 6 ton UAV and it flew at 1000 km/h through Romania and Hungary and crashed in Croatia, destroying a large number of cars in a parking lot.

      • I read about the drone... and it's definitel a Soviet era drone, but from what I read there was still an open question as to whose drone it was (Russia or Ukraine obviously being by far the most likely). I forget whose article it was, BBC or AJ probably, but also mentioned Ukraine was the only country known to still have that model in its inventory - everyone else upgraded to far newer equipment.

        Hell, I didn't even realize the Soviets had a working recon drone 30+ years ago. I'm kind of impressed, really.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          The latter is more likely..
          The Ukrainians would have launched it eastwards towards Russian positions if they were using it for its intended purpose of recon. If they were going to lose control of it, that would be most likely to happen while it was over hostile territory.
          If it had completed its mission and was returning back westwards, it would have been flying over Ukrainian held territory for quite some time giving them chance to regain control of it and land it for reuse.

          All the information online sugges

          • The first report I read said that it hadn't even been detected until it crashed. Later reports said it was detected, but nothing was done about it. Maybe they recognized it as an un-armed recon drone, or maybe they weren't coordinated to do anything about it. Seems like they would have at least notified the countries it was headed toward, though.

            I'm not suggesting anyone should just shoot at anything that flies coming out a conflict zone, it just seemed odd that it caught everyone so off-guard when it cr

        • Seems unlikely it was deliberately "lost" by Russia to test European defences, it's a transonic imaging drone so it's (a) not a weapon and (b) would have been in and out of the countries it flew through before you knew it, with barely any time to react let alone launch countermeasures. Seems an odd sort of thing to be using by either side.

          • If testing defenses of a country not yet in the war, a non-weapon would be ideal. If they happen to be able to trace it back to Russia, Russia just says "sorry, our bad, it got away from us. oops." What I read said it was in the air outside of Ukraine for something like 15-20 minutes total, so still plenty of time for systems to pick it up, and for Russia to observe if the recipient country could, say, scramble a fighter that quickly or something to identify the object.

            If they were testing with an actual

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Aubz ( 7986666 )
      For gods sake don't push the big red button!

  • Kudos to Pakistan for not assuming an intentional attack and responding in kind - this could have ended *very* badly for everyone in the region. I'm not at all certain that things would have ended so well if Russia had a similar accident launching a missile into the US, even before the current elevated tensions. (or vice-versa)

    I mean, I would *hope* not - a nuclear first-strike scenario usually assumes far more than a single missile is fired. And presumably they'd be on the phone with us explaining the ac

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      We are not going to get out of 2022 are we? We survived the plague of 2021 only to be killed off by our own stupidity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

      Truth is, they probably didn't know about it at all until India call them and told them.

      • It landed in a desert area, so probably.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edis ( 266347 )

        Until it's nuclear, then probability of human race been done is rather high.

      • If that's the case, then their nukes are worthless. MAD is only a deterrent if you can detect and track incoming missiles soon enough to have time to confirm they're real and launch a counter-strike before a first strike can destroy your launch facilities.

        Being right on each other's doorstep as they are, that almost certainly means they have suitable radar facilities covering not only their own borders, but as far into each other's airspace as they can reasonably reach. Radar is cheap compared to nukes -

        • Pakistan does not really have nuclear weapons. They begged China for a couple of devices to detonate and claim to have nuclear weapons as a sort of deterrent.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

          One failure of MAD as a deterrence is that it's one thing to test a nuclear weapon to prove that you *CAN* build one, but it's another thing entirely to have a viable nuclear program. Nuclear weapons can't just be warehoused for decades and pulled out when they are needed. They actually decay pretty quickly, not the uranium or plutonium, but other parts that are necessary make the bomb go boom, like the neutron sources that have half lives in years or even months.

          The biggest Putin has made in his Ukraine in

          • Not just the air fleet, it's everything. The US military pays $3,000 for a spanner and gets a $3,000 spanner. The Russian military pays $3,000 for a spanner and gets a $1.95 spanner with the remaining $2,998.05 going into the hands of various corrupt officials all the way up to Putin.

            For once we can be thankful of Russia's massive corruption, and in particular its effect on their military equipment which has never really had to face any real-world testing until now so it wasn't obvious how much corruption-

    • Pakistan rather famously looked the other way while some of their nationals did a terrorist attack on a major building in India's capital. Not 9/11 grade but still pretty bad. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't started a war, but the multi-nationals stepped in and said "no".

      The upshot to having a global aristocracy (which, let's face it, we have) is that there's never going to be another WWIII. The downside is, well, like George Carlin used to say "it's a big club, and you ain't in it".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Ah yes, the "There's a Global Cabal in Charge of Everything". Give it a rest, the only bozos who believe that are the right wingnuts.

        • Please, I'm pretty Left, and you have to be willfully ignorant to not recognize that a relatively small group of very powerful people controls the majority of national and international politics. You could probably narrow it down to only several thousand people whose opinions decide the majority of significant nation-level actions in the world. There've even been numerous studies in the US showing that even overwhelming popular support or opposition to legislation has negligible impact on the likelihood o

          • Or, to summarise with an old Indian proverb: "When the elephants fight, it is the grass under their feet that loses" (BTW I do agree re western aristocracy and fascism)

      • >The upshot to having a global aristocracy (which, let's face it, we have) is that there's never going to be another WWIII

        That's optimistic. You're assuming a *unified* aristocracy - what we actually seem to have is a whole lot of very powerful people with various competing interests, all competing to increase their own stake in the game. Much like aristocracy has ever been. They're mostly loosely allied against us - but that's rather like us being loosely allied against rat infestations. Sucks to b

    • It is missing in the summary too for some reason, the important part - the missile had no payload. It was found like a burning pile of metal.

      That may have effected the assuming part. No kudos to American media that is all about shepherding their readers into propaganda.

      • Yeah, but you don't know that until the missile hits the target. And in any reasonable nuclear first strike scenario, at that point it's already much too late to launch a counter-strike.

        • Yes. This is of course incredibly stupid shit that has happened.

          But there is a big difference between finding a burning can of tin inside your territory that travelled for less than 1 second before hitting an empty ground... ... and "kudos for not retaliating for agression from nuclear power". One is truth the other is clear omission and propaganda.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          A single missile, even nuclear, would not be sufficient to take out any retaliatory capability. Especially if the missile appears to be headed to an area with no strategic value. The only time you'd want to launch a retaliatory strike before the enemy missiles exploded is if there's so many of them in the air it looks like an all out strike intended to cripple your ability to respond.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Not that they'd have had much time to react. This thing is designed to travel at mach 4, and if the ramjet ignited it would have taken less than four minutes to travel the entire distance from its launch point to where it crashed.

      The missile is an Indian/Russian collaboration, with Russian propulsion and Indian guidance systems. The propulsion system is a ramjet with a solid rocket booster to bring the missile up to the ramjet's operational speed. It's conceivable that the "technical fault" was the SRB b

      • >Not that they'd have had much time to react.

        Which is the same problem as with hypersonic missiles: the faster they move, the less time you have to positively ID them before launching a counter-strike. And you have to assume that the counter-strike must be launched before the strike lands, since taking out your ability to do so is going to be a high priority.

        Basically - more speed doesn't actually buy you a significant tactical advantage, but *does* greatly increase the chance that your opponent will l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          Yeah, it takes some advanced, multi-level thinking to realize that making your enemy more scared doesn't automatically make you more secure. I actually did a search for resources in multi-level thinking, and virtually *all* the hits were about poker strategy. It kind of makes sense; poker is an imperfect information game; what your opponent thinks you are doing is important to what you should do.

        • Things like this are why we have submarine based nuclear missiles.

          You could first strike the continent of north america into a solid glassy crater and still expect an unavoidable retaliatory strike that will kill everyone.

          The principle of Mutually Assured Destruction does not require an instant response -only a final one.

          Hypersonic missiles do not change that calculation.

          • True - however a response delayed is a response that may never exist. Once you're talking about conflicts between superpowers you also have to assume that, despite your best efforts, your opponent knows where all/most of your nuclear-armed subs and satellites are, and that measures are already being taken to neutralize them as well. War is a game fought at least as much with information as with guns.

            Then there's the missile defense systems to consider - if you don't manage to launch enough nukes at once t

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > Kudos to Pakistan for not assuming an intentional attack

      Maybe they're familiar with Indian IT.

      • :)

        Meme going around is that the CO was from west bengal and he dismissed his men with "Let's have Lunch" and this happens....

        *Some (not all) people from the Indian state of West Bengal tend to pronounce LUNCH as LAUNCH

        (and coke as cock, hall as hole and so on... lots of O sounds. No offence meant to Bengalis, they're great people)

    • Exactly! ... everyone reacted well!

  • At least that was how the call center operator described it when Pakistan called on the international hot line to report the incident.

  • Pakistan should do the needful and revert with their own missile.

  • India tried to do an Israel and hit some terrorists in Pakistan. However the missile malfunctioned and fell short. Thats what they mean by the "Technical malfunction"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      With an unarmed missile? That'd be some right fancy shootin', partner. Got any other stupid theories you'd like to tell the world?

    • You are 100% correct Pakistan is the refuge for terrorists. And probably right about India wanting to do pin-point surgical strike.

      But even they are not dumb enough to fire a missile without warhead.

  • great to know that any and all of their failsafe measures can be bypassed with an "Oops".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Apparently they were doing a training exercise, and the missile launch was supposed to be disabled.

      Can you imagine being the guy who actually pushed that button, which was *supposed* to be disconnected? You just punched in the exercise target coordinates, which are in Pakistan, then you push the button and the damned thing actually *takes off*.

      • Rust, Alec Baldwin, filming gun safety. Chernobyl was the worst safety test accident. Safety 1st at worksites is like a golden rule for good reason. Yet when I drive there are still a few bad apples, even safe drivers can get into a blind spot situation, so defensive driving they might not see me also important.

  • Sorry (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    We were just cleaning it and it went off.

  • India and Pakistan behave better that US Congress. That would be news of the bar was higher.

  • Surprisingly, twitter seems to think the incompetence was forgetting the nuclear warhead !

    And here I was worried why they were even testing the brahmos missile a week back when Putin & Xi have some unpredictable shit going on

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