If true, the guarantee against a Taliban armed with a nuclear weapon is NOT a comprehensive one!

This is a note from B Raman, an ex-spook in the Indian external intelligence service. If this is indeed the case, then the sole guarantee against the country turning taliban and using the nuclear weapons and missiles, the Pakistani Army, has worms inside. I would be afraid, very afraid not.

It is not that far fetched, quite a lot of the tens of assassination attempts on General Musharraf were actually generated inside and by the army corps. So the rumour that it was an Pushtoon Army officer itself is quite possible and probable.

The fact that all that stands between us and nuclear armed fundamentalists is a rather decrepit, corrupt and dictatorial army is deeply worrying. I had a message "never have only option" dinned into me. The fact that the only other option to protect the Pakistani nuclear missile/bombs is Nawaz Sharif/Benazir Bhutto or physically go in to own the country is too troublesome to even consider.

But this is spook talk, be wary of taking this for granted.

Pakistan's newest threat: Army officer turns suicide bomber

B Raman | September 14, 2007 | 12:17 IST

According to reliable sources in the local police, a Pashtun army officer belonging to the elite Special Services Group, whose younger sister was reportedly among the 300 girls killed during the Pakistan Army's commando raid on the Lal Masjid in Islamabad between July 10 and 13, blew himself up during dinner at the SSG's headquarters mess at Tarbela Ghazi, 100 km south of Islamabad, on the night of September 13, killing 19 other officers.

The incident coincided with United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte's visit to Kabul and Islamabad for talks with leaders and officials of the two governments.

According to the same sources, the Pashtun army officer belonged to South Waziristan, but Tarbela Ghazi is not located in the tribal belt. The SSG, to which General Pervez Musharraf belonged, was specially trained by the US Special Forces for covert operations and for counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency duties.

The usually well-informed News of Pakistan reported as follows on September 14: 'The area where the incident occurred is the headquarters of the Special Services Group also known as SSG and Special Operation Task Force of the Pakistan Army. Sources said the blast was so powerful that it destroyed the Officers Mess. There are also reports that a company known as Karar of the SSG based in the area had taken part in the operation on Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad where hundreds of religious students, including religious school administrator, Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, were killed. ...There were rumours that CIA personnel were also present in the area where the blast occurred.'

According to the police sources, a training team of the Central Intelligence Agency and a team of technical intelligence personnel of the US National Security Agency were also stationed at Tarbela Ghazi. The NSA personnel were reportedly running a monitoring station to intercept communications of Al Qaeda and the neo-Taliban.

While there are no reports of any American casualties, there have been rumours that the NSA's monitoring station was badly damaged. It is not clear whether it was damaged by the impact of the explosion inside the officers' mess or by a separate explosion.

Pakistani army sources initially projected the incident as due to the explosion of a cooking gas cylinder. Subsequently, they said it was caused by a remote-controlled improvised explosive device and then that it was caused by an unidentified suicide bomber, who drove a vehicle filled with explosives into the mess at dinner time.

They have not so far admitted that it was actually caused by a Pashtun officer of the SSG itself and not an outsider. No other details are available so far.

The daring attack came two days after another attack of suicide terrorism in which at least 17 people, including three security forces personnel, were killed and 16 others injured when a 15-year-old Mehsud suicide bomber blew himself up in a passenger van at Bannu Adda in Dera Ismail Khan district of the North-West Frontier Province on September 11.

The Pakistan army has not been able to re-establish its writ over South and North Waziristan, where the Mehsuds and the Uzbeks supporting them have been holding in custody 240 members of the security forces captured by them and have been repeatedly attacking posts of the army and the Frontier Corps. Repeated use of helicopter gunships by the army has not had any impact on the various sub-tribes of Pashtuns, who have been attacking the security forces almost daily.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Anniversary of V2

This Monday evening, I was rushing to catch my flight to Amsterdam in London as I was getting late. As usual, once I reached the airport, huffing, puffing, panting and having ulcers the size and numbers of a bunch of Loire grapes, I find that the flight has been delayed.

So I was bumbling around the airport shop and was flipping through Flight International or one of those magazines which showed a plane on top. I whistled involuntarily when I saw a picture of a Raptor with all its ironmongery, ammunition and missiles laid out in front, and this chap with a strong German - Swiss accent looked over and said,"difficult to believe that it has been almost 70 years since that the V2 missile hit London and we have steadily improved our methods of killing."

I said to him, well, we are doing a bit better on the killing front by laser guided missiles, reduced payload, better target selection... He looked at the picture and said something totally bizarre, "I wonder what would have happened if my father had shot those bastards instead of worrying about girls", then turned to me and said, "he was a guard at Peenemunde " and then he walked off to go to catch the Zurich flight.

I forgot about it totally but typically, I remembered it on Wednesday late night at 2 AM when I crawled into the hotel bed. I call it the BD Bed Law. You will remember something to do outside the bed as soon as you have pulled the duvet/blanket over you and settled down to sleep. Well, went back to the laptop and went to check on it. As it so happens, September 8, 1944 was the first date on which a German V2 missile hit London. The first ballistic missile launch in anger.

Did you know more people (20,000) were killed in the making of the rockets than at the receiving end (7,000)? These were the slaves, workers etc. etc. who built the pens, the factory, the launch site, etc. This does NOT include the number of German and other workers and PoW's killed by the Allied bombing of Peenemunde. More than 3100 V2's were fired.

Did you know that the main clincher for the Allies to know that Peenemunde was important was when a petrol coupon report showed that Peenemunde was rated as a high priority military station over and above many stations which were previously known to be important?

So how does it feel to be protected by missiles in the UK, USA, China, Iran, India, USSR, and all countries which have ballistic missiles, all which can be traced back to these V2 missiles, their scientists and knowledge? These fascist Nazi history behind our protection? What would have happened if that German soldier had turned his sub-machine gun on some of the big chaps like Werner van Braun ? It wouldn't have stopped the development of ballistic missiles but it could have delayed it. But it would have definitely impacted space exploration. Curious counter-factual rumination there.

Well, Happy Birthday, V2.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

China's Anti Satellite Test and what the world needs to think about it

China tested an Anti Satellite Kinetic Missile early part of this year. This was quite a serious step for many reasons. (1) It was the first time that there was an ASAT test, directly 1-2-1. Even the USA has problems in achieving this. In other words, the kinetic kill missile impacted directly on the target rather than exploding in the vicinity and hoping the shrapnel will riddle the target satellite. Witness the many failures of the Star Wars missile defence system. (2) It came as a total surprise to all the world and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, many of the Chinese diplomats and other government bodies did not know either. So this intelligence failure is at par with the Indian Nuclear Tests (both sets of them) and the collapse of the USSR.

You see, if this is quite possible (and we have no reason to believe that it is not), then the USA has suddenly lost its crucial satellite strategic reconnaissance ability. Given that the USA is still building up its HUMINT ability, it is crucially dependent upon ELINT. So in case of a conflict, the threat levels can rise very dramatically. See the current American satellite footprint and the potential Chinese responses here from a recent research paper that I came across.




This situation explains a bit as to why the Pentagon is in a bit of tizzy about the Chinese buildup. Oh!, by the way, the Chinese ASAT test singlehandedly increased the space pollution footprint by 10%. Read the intro of the article, it is very interesting

In the predawn darkness of 11 January 2007, a Chinese medium-range ballistic missile lifted off from a launch site at the Xichang space facility in Sichuan province. Fired from a mobile transporter-erector-launcher, the new two-stage, solid-fuelled missile - designated the SC-19 by the US intelligence community - carried a kinetic kill vehicle that slammed several minutes later into an ageing Chinese weather satellite deployed in low Earth orbit at an altitude of some 864 kilometres. Since the satellite, the Fengyun-1C (FY-1C), was heading south at the time of its intercept, and since the azimuth from the interceptor launch point to the target was approximately 346?, the attack involved a virtual head-on collision at extremely high velocity with thousands of blast fragments ejected at speeds of up to some 2,253km per hour into various orbits ranging from 3,800km to 200km in altitude.1 As of 30 May 2007, over 1,736 objects of trackable debris, each at least 10cm in diameter, had been catalogued and monitored. And NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office has estimated that the explosion produced more than 35,000 shards larger than 1cm, justifying the judgement that this test was undoubtedly the 'worst single debris event ever'2 since it instantaneously produced a 10% increase in the 50-year total of space artefacts capable of threatening spacecraft flying in low Earth orbits.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!