“Who rules the skies, rules the universe…”
A FM radio jingle
The American Spies in the sky were thought to be infallible until Pokhran exploded this myth. The satellites, some of which cost more than $1 billion, take pictures with high-resolution cameras and eavesdrop on telecommunication with electronic ears. But they do what their human masters tell them, and they failed to focus on what was really occurring in the Indian desert. In fact, it takes decision by policy-makers and millions of dollars a day to adjust the satellites’ orbits, so that they can focus intently 24 hours a day on a target.
India had kept the nuclear bombshell so close to its chest that it caught the world napping. This was in direct contrast to the situation in December 1995, when preparations to conduct a nuclear test had been picked up by US satellites and leaked to influential American dailies. The move, then, had its desired and immediate effect: former Prime Minister P.V. Narshimha Rao’s foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee unequivocally announced that India was not, and had no intention, to go nuclear.
The Spy Satellite
The two $1 billion-apiece KH-12 satellites the Pentagon has in orbit the like Hubble space telescope pointed back to earth. Form 264 km. up, their optical sensors can snap clear photographs of objects no larger than a paperback novel on the ground. The two Lacrosse satellites, same price tag, with solar-power panels that stretch 45 m, have radar imaging cameras that can see through clouds and even the dust storms that swirl around India’s Pokhran test site. In a crisis, at least one of the four birds can be positioned over a taret 24 hours a day, sending photos that can be on President Clinton’s desk within an hour.
“American spy satellites such as the ‘Big Bird’ have existed since a very long time. In fact, all their spy satellites are derivatives of this”, U. R. Rao member of the Space Commission, told in an interview to the media. According to him, the gap between spy satellites and civilian satellites is fast closing, thanks to improved resolution and technology. “For instance, the Indian civilian satellites match the American spy satellites and can capture imageries at a resolution of six meters. In another few years will be able to improve our satellites; resolution to around one metre.”
Indian gameplan
With the U.S. Administration convinced that India had no plans to explode a nuclear device, the satellites were snapping photos of Pokhran only once every six to twenty-four hours. Indian scientists, who knew the satellites’ schedule, concealed their preparations so the photos CIA analysis scanned in the weeks before the blasd showed what appeared to e routine maintenance. When on of the satellite did make it pass over India, Washington was asleep; and so the images were of little use to experts there. And when the images were actually scanned it was already too late for Washington to do anything. The three devices and the triggering mechanism were in place; cables ready to grasp every microcosm of data likely to be generated.
Beating the spy satellites was a competition between technology development and the ingenuity of the scientists. India made a solid game plan for concealing these operations, which are:
a) The Chandipur disguise
International aviation notices were issued, major engineering movements under taken, and the presence of important scientists not kept under warps; but this was the strategic deception created by India on the eastern coast at the missile testing range near chandipur in Orissa, so as to keep the prying eyes away from Pokhran. In the build-up to the 37th test of the Trishul surface-to-air missile, DRDO moved more equipment than was required for the firing. It is believed that the apparatus put up at Chandipur resembled that of the Agni intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM). While the Chinese signals surveillance facility at Coco Islands was activated in anticipation of an Agni launch, it was the same build-up that led the US satellites to focus their cameras at Chandipur rather than Pokhran. It is likely, believe the specialists, that continued monitoring of the images which came of the activities at the Chandipur missile testing range led to a complacency in the US National Security Agency, which is responsible for deciphering satellite surveillance images. “They were probably seeing the images over days and ultimately came to the conclusion that not much was happening at Chandipur and by the time the cameras were switched back to cover north-western India, it was too late for them”, said a military satellite imaging specialist.
b) The Indian Space Programme
With the planetary configuration on May 11 exactly as it was on May 18, 1974 when India tested its first atomic device, it was the national penchant for study the skies that finally proved to be the nemesis for the prying satellites.
India’s expertise in remote-sensing technologies through its IRS series satellites paid dividends when it came to preparing the testing site in the Alpha Range near Pokhran. Having placed its satellites in space, “there is considerable information with us regarding which satellite is where and the timing of its pass”, said a defence scientist. “The fundamental thing in avoiding the probing eyes of a spy satellite in the case of a nuclear experiment like ours was to maintain utmost secrecy and ensure minimal activity in the explosion site”, said U. R. Rao.
While keeping track of the two US satellites, that are generally responsible for surveillance over India, the KH-11 and Lacrosse, the Army Engineers, scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) calibrated their movements with those of the satellites. “It was classical cover-and-move tactics”, said a MOD Official.
“Using our knowledge of the space environment, and a basic common sense, we have been able to beat the best technology money can buy”, said a senior MoD official.
c) The Weather
The fact that India has always tested in May is of enormous significance. Since the secrecy phobia has denied every inquisite foreign agency any human intelligence inputs, the reliance has been on satellite imagery and the month of May denies the satellites that clarity because the prevailing winds at this time of the year create serious sand storms. The dust haze lasts for days on end, denying the satellites a clear view, so to say. Every tyre track, usually a great signature for activity, get obliterated very soon.
Further, infrared sensors, one of the more potent weapons in the surveillance game, have a problem picking out such activity, particularly in daytime when desert temperature soar up to 50 degrees Celsius if not more. In winter, the desert cools off, particularly at night, and even a relatively small bit of activity generates enough heat to register a distinctive infrared signature. It is probably because of this that the US satellites were able to sniff out whatever activity was there at Pokhran in December 1995 when US newspaper leaks talked of India preparing for a nuclear test.
I know what you did last summer!
In 1984, the US State Department described satellite imagery sent by key Hole ferret satellites as sky pictures of a spa complex being built near Moscow: Two weeks later, American negotiators at arms limitation talks were regretting having discarded invaluable photos of top secret SS X-25 missile sites.
Blast leaves seismologists puzzled
While the 1974 blast produced a seismic signal of 5 on the Richter, the latest blasts, which were five times more powerful, produced a signal of 4.7 in the same scale as recorded by the British Geological Survey and the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad. The tests with a reported yield of 55 KT of TNT, should have produced a seismic signal higher than 5.0, feel the scientists. They also feel that lower seismic magnitude could be explained if the energy released by the thermonuclear device was mostly in the form of heat and radiation than elastic shock waves.
Another puzzling factor is that only one of the five blasts was detected by seismometers around the world although the global system created for monitoring nuclear blasts is capable of detecting any nuclear explosion larger than 1 KT anywhere in the world.
So, the system might be expected to catch three of India’s five blasts, the other two being smaller than 1KT and hence undetectable. However, defence scientist connected with this week’s nuclear tests said the explosives were set off simultaneously. They said the signals can be resolved to show separate peaks.
It is believed that two of the three devices were emplaced in the same shaft at two levels and the thermonuclear device was exploded at a depth of 300 meters about one and half km away form the first hold. The explosions were carried out simultaneously apparently to avoid the effect of one interfering with another. According to scientists, proper instrumentation took care of interference.
What did they detect? One of the US $ 25 billion constellations of satellites did spot preparation for India’s nuclear tests on 11th May, 98, six hours before the event. They were beamed back to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) in Fairfax, Virginia, but the CIA did not issue and alert. The reason for the failure was that the analyst responsible for alerting their superiors, who, inturn, would have told President Clinton, did not expect the tests and were asleep at the time, for it was night time. The result was that US policy makers had to learn about the test from CNN-TV, which broadcast, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s remarkably factual and low-key statement.
The explanations
The classified report by retired Admiral David Jeremiah, who probed US intelligence agencies’ failure to foresee India’s May 11 nuclear test, has called for top to bottom “scrubbing”, from spies to analysts to bureaucratic managers. According to a report in the New York Times, the debacle revealed chronic failures of imagination and personnel, flaws in information gathering and analysis, and faulty leadership and training. The investigation had been requested by CIA Director George Tenet, who was quick to accept Jeremiah’s recommendation for reform.
According to Admiral Jeremiah, the CIA had no spies worthy of the name in India, and its ability to pry information out of people was very weak all over the world.
From the Jeremiah report, however, it is clear that the CIA did have sufficient electronic intelligence data about India’s intelligence program, probably fed in by the highly classified shuttle-launched Aquacade satellites. The admiral also said that the spy satellites produced far too much information for overworked and undertrained intelligence analysts to handle. According to Jeremiah panel, there was only one analyst dedicated to studying satellite pictures of important India nuclear and missile sites. Jeremiah said there were not enough personnel to study the data on India and a lot of imagery was felt on the “Cutting floor”. It required his panel 13 analysts to piece together the evidence showing a potential nuclear test. “Before most of the staff is relatively new and have little experience. India has been a forgotten case for long”, a former CIA analyst told.
Veteran intelligence officers agreed with Jeremiah’s judgements. Gordon Oehler, who retired last year as director of the CIA’s non-proliferation centre, said the group of intelligence analysis responsible for interpreting spy satellite photos is far less skilled than it was at the end of cold war.
New spy satellite
The US has launched a new six-tonne satellite to spy more effectively on India and Pakistan. “The satellite will be able to spy better than earlier satellites on India, Pakistan and other countries from the middle east to China and North Korea,” the aviation and space technology has reported. The satellite code-named ‘Orion’ was launched on May 8 from Cape Canveral in Florida. tc “The US has launched a new six-tonne satellite to spy more effectively on India and Pakistan. “The satellite will be able to spy better than earlier satellites on India, Pakistan and other countries from the middle east to China and North Korea,” the aviation and space technology has reported. The satellite code-named ‘Orion’ was launched on May 8 from Cape Canveral in Florida.”
I know what you did last summer!
In 1984, the US State Department described satellite imagery sent by Key Hole ferret satellites as sky pictures of a spa complex being built near Moscow: Two weeks later, American negotiators at arms limitation talks were regretting having discarded invaluable photos of top secret SS X-25 missile sites. tc “In 1984, the US State Department described satellite imagery sent by Key Hole ferret satellites as sky pictures of a spa complex being built near Moscow: Two weeks later, American negotiators at arms limitation talks were regretting having discarded invaluable photos of top secret SS X-25 missile sites.”
Blast leaves seismologists puzzled
While the 1974 blast produced a seismic signal of 5 on the Richter, the latest blasts, which were five times more powerful, produced a signal of 4.7 in the same scale as recorded by the British Geological Survey and the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad. The tests with a reported yield of 55 KT of TNT, should have produced a seismic signal higher than 5.0, feel the scientists. They also feel that lower seismic magnitude could be explained if the energy released by the thermonuclear device was mostly in the form of heat and radiation than elastic shock waves. tc “While the 1974 blast produced a seismic signal of 5 on the Richter, the latest blasts, which were five times more powerful, produced a signal of 4.7 in the same scale as recorded by the British Geological Survey and the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) in Hyderabad. The tests with a reported yield of 55 KT of TNT, should have produced a seismic signal higher than 5.0, feel the scientists. They also feel that lower seismic magnitude could be explained if the energy released by the thermonuclear device was mostly in the form of heat and radiation than elastic shock waves.
Another puzzling factor is that only one of the five blasts was detected by seismometers around the world although the global system created for monitoring nuclear blasts is capable of detecting any nuclear explosion larger than 1KT anywhere in the world. tc “Another puzzling factor is that only one of the five blasts was detected by seismometers around the world although the global system created for monitoring nuclear blasts is capable of detecting any nuclear explosion larger than 1KT anywhere in the world.”
So, the system might be expected to catch three of India’s five blasts, the other two being smaller than 1 KT and hence undetectable. However, defence scientist connected with this week’s nuclear tests said the explosives were set off simultaneously. They said the signals can be resolved to show separate peaks. tc “So, the system might be expected to catch three of India’s five blasts, the other two being smaller than 1 KT and hence undetectable. However, defence scientist connected with this week’s nuclear tests said the explosives were set off simultaneously. They said the signals can be resolved to show separate peaks.”
It is believed that two of the three devices were emplaced in the same shaft at two levels and the thermonuclear device was exploded at a depth of 300 meters about one and half km away from the first hole. The explosions were carried out simultaneously apparently to avoid the effect of one interfering with another. According to scientists, proper instrumentation took care of interference. tc “It is believed that two of the three devices were emplaced in the same shaft at two levels and the thermonuclear device was exploded at a depth of 300 meters about one and half km away from the first hole. The explosions were carried out simultaneously apparently to avoid the effect of one interfering with another. According to scientists, proper instrumentation took care of interference.”
