Kottayam district reported 14 deaths and Idukki district eight. A child also drowned in Kozhikode.
New Delhi: Twenty-five people have died and several more are feared missing in Kerala after torrential rain lashed the southern and central parts of the state on Saturday and Sunday.
Kottayam district reported 14 deaths and Idukki district eight. A child also drowned in Kozhikode, News18 reported.
#WATCH Indian Navy drops relief material at landslide-affected Koottickal in Kottayam district, Kerala
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan asked people of the state to exercise extreme caution while leaving the house.
The Army, NDRF, police and the Fire Force along with the locals began rescue operations on Sunday morning at Koottickal and Kokkayar panchayats. A total of 33 people, including eight women and seven children, have been rescued so far, according to the National Disaster Response Force.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued a yellow alert for heavy rain in 11 districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Idukki, Thrissur, Palakkad, Malappuram and Kozhikode.
On Saturday evening, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan chaired a meeting to review the situation. He promised that the government would put in every bit of effort to rescue those who have been stranded. The CM also said that a 105 relief camps have been set up, and that arrangement to set up more have been kickstarted.
People are requested to take all precautions against the rain. 105 relief camps have been set up across the State and arrangements have been made to start more camps: Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan on heavy rains in the state pic.twitter.com/ysJVgFRZwf
He added that according to the Central Water Commission, water levels are rising in the Madamon, Kalluppara, Thumpaman, Pullakayar, Manikkal, Vellaikadavu and Aruvipuram dams, located in the districts of Pathanamthitta, Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly spoke to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the matter. “Spoke to Kerala CM Shri @vijayanpinarayi and discussed the situation in the wake of heavy rains and landslides in Kerala. Authorities are working on the ground to assist the injured and affected. I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being,” Modi said in a tweet.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Sunday that the government is continuously monitoring the situation in Kerala.
We are continuously monitoring the situation in parts of Kerala in the wake of heavy rainfall and flooding. The central govt will provide all possible support to help people in need. NDRF teams have already been sent to assist the rescue operations. Praying for everyone’s safety.
An elderly woman could be seen running from one person to another screaming through the rain swept roads in this high range hamlet, located at the foothills of Western Ghats mountain ranges, on Sunday morning.
“I have lost everything…everything in my life…where should I go?…who will give me a shelter?” the woman, clad in a tattered saree, asked aloud crying and running here and there.
The unexpected torrential rain, which pounded the village on Saturday, washed away every penny of her life time earnings and made her homeless all of a sudden.
“I begged our Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan sir to give me two cents of land to construct a ‘koora‘ (hut). I have nowhere to go. My daughters’ houses are also submerged. Now I am going to the church to see whether I will get a place there,” she told the journalists gathered at the place.
When the extreme rains showed a slight dip this morning, a large number of people in this village could be seen as displaced and became the inmates of rehabilitation campus.
Many elderly villagers said it was for the first time in their decades-old life that they were seeing and experiencing such severe rainfall.
A local shop owner here pointed to his new car, which can be seen as destroyed and partially hanging with its back wheels stuck on a broken wall in his house compound.
“It was my new car parked in front of the house. I was not at home when the flood water suddenly gushed inside the house compound Saturday afternoon. My wife and children some how managed to run to the neighbour’s house,” the middle aged man said.
He turned a bit emotional showing the ‘mundu‘ (dhoti) which he was wearing, saying that it was borrowed from the neighbour. Only life was saved and everything else was lost, he said adding that not even in the 2018 floods had he faced such a terrible situation.
The situation was not different in Kokkayar, a hilly hamlet in Idukki district as well, which also witnessed a series of landslips and human casualty on Saturday in incessant rains.
A shocked Rajamma, a woman villager, was yet to believe that a four-member family including children, who was seen engaged in some construction activities near her home on the foothills of hill, swept away by flood waters in front of her eyes.
The elderly woman said she advised the family to move away from the place when water was seen coming down from the hill tops in a small scale.
“But, they continued their work. Suddenly a portion of the hill, where they were standing, caved in… huge boulders started rolling down accompanied by a massive flood of water… I do not remember anything else,” the teary-eyed woman said.
George, a middle-aged man engaged in rescue operations, said it was everything fine and calm in the village till 11 PM on Saturday.
“But, the situation worsened after that. Around 10 big bridges and the same number of wooden bridges were washed away and the village became isolated soon,” he added.
Red alert has been sounded for the dams under Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), including Kakki dam in Pathanamthitta, Sholayar in Thrissur, Kundala and Kallarkutti in Idukki.
Kochi: The Kerala government has sought the assistance of the Indian Air Force (IAF) for rescue operations in the state, where landslides have occurred following heavy rains.
The Chief Minister’s Office has informed that help from the Air Force has been sought for rescue in Koottikal at Kottayam district where landslides have been reported isolating a few families.
Minister for cooperation and registration V.N. Vasavan told PTI that at least three houses have been washed away in Kottayam district and 10 people feared missing.
“At least four landslips have been reported from various parts of Kottayam district. We have sought the assistance of the Airforce to rescue people who are stranded in Koottikal area. We have received information about some people missing and over 60 waiting to be rescued as water entered their homes,” the minister said.
Kottayam and Pathanamthitta are the most affected districts in the state as of now due to heavy rains since Friday night.
Visuals have emerged on social media from various parts of Kottayam district, including a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) bus stuck in flood water and locals rescuing passengers from it.
A CMO release said, “six teams of NDRF have been deployed in six districts–Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Kottayam and Idukki. Two teams of Army have been directed to be deployed in Thiruvananthapuram and Kottayam districts. Airforce has been requested to be on standby in case of any emergencies.”
The CM also said a Red alert has been sounded for the dams under Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), including Kakki dam in Pathanamthitta, Sholayar in Thrissur, Kundala and Kallarkutti in Idukki.
A red alert has also been issued for Chulliyar dam in Palakkad and Peechi dam in Thrissur, which are under the irrigation department.
Revenue minister K. Rajan said a meeting will chaired by the chief minister this evening in which all district collectors and other concerned officials will take part.
“All necessary precautions have been taken. We have asked the district collectors to issue warnings to people residing along the river banks,” Rajan told PTI.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has warned of widespread heavy rains in the state due to the Low Pressure area formed over the Arabian Sea and issued a Red Alert for five districts in the state.
Destruction of roads was reported in many places including in Kollam and Kottayam districts while severe waterlogging made life miserable in Kuttanad region, popularly known as the ‘rice bowl’ of the state spread in Alappuzha and Kottayam districts.
The water level is rising steadily in many rivers including Meenachal and Manimala in the district.
Senior military analysts say a more ‘robust’ response to the standoff between India and China could involve fast-tracking the long-promised transfer of missile systems to Hanoi.
The recent banning of 59 Chinese smartphone apps by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP government is, at best, a feeble riposte to Beijing’s continuing military adventurism along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Senior military analysts in New Delhi said a more ‘robust’ response to the standoff between the Indian Army and the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in eastern Ladakh since early May was needed, and could involve fast-tracking the long-promised transfer of indigenous BrahMos and Akash missile systems to China’s neighbouring rival Vietnam.
“Little or nothing with regard to providing both missile systems to Hanoi has so far been done despite extended talks,” said a former two-star Indian Army officer, requesting not to be named.
Regardless of its bluster, the Indian government appears unwilling to further upset or rile the Chinese Dragon by making any untoward flanking moves towards Beijing’s adversaries, he lamented.
Since 2014, the BJP government has been in discussions with Vietnam to supply it the BrahMos anti-ship cruise missile with a 292 km range, as part of New Delhi’s proliferating bilateral strategic and military ties with Hanoi and to counter an increasingly militarist China.
Former defence minister Manohar Parrikar with Vietnamese defence minister Gen Ngo Xuan Lich in June, 2016. Photo: manoharparrikar/Twitter
The late defence minister Manohar Parrikar held extensive consultations with his Vietnamese counterpart, General Ngo Xuan Lich, in Hanoi in June 2016 on transferring BrahMos to its long-standing ally in south-east Asia.
These talks included the option of stationing a team of Indian technicians in Hanoi to provide the Vietnamese military instruction on the BrahMos whose transfer, official sources at the time in New Delhi four years ago maintained was imminent.
They also claimed that procedures on transferring BrahMos to Vietnam-and to other potential clients-had been resolved with Russia that had partnered India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in designing and series building the world’s most lethal cruise missile in its class, which was also competitively priced.
Alongside, India’s Ministry of Defence is believed at the time to have instructed BrahMos Aerospace, which manufactures the cruise missile in Hyderabad to increase its production to meet potential orders from Vietnam. Other countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand had also expressed interest in acquiring BrahMos, but little had progressed.
Configured on Russia’s 3M55 Oniks/Yakhont system (NATO designation: SS-NZX-26) and named after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers in India and Russia, the 8.4 m long, air-breathing BrahMos is a two-stage vehicle with a solid propellant booster and a liquid propellant ram-jet system. It is capable of being launched from ships and its variants from mobile, land-based platforms.
The DRDO has also successfully mated the BrahMos-A air-launched cruise missile with Indian Air Force (IAF) multi-role Russian Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighters. In June the Bangalore-based Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification (CEMILAC) formally granted the BrahMos-A fleet release clearance to operate combat missions. The DRDO is also in advanced stages of arming and Indian Navy (IN) submarine with the BrahMos.
“Providing Vietnam with the BrahMos and the Akash would not only be a major strategic move by India in countering China, but also a boost for the government’s material export policy projected to hit $5 billion by 2025,” said former Air Marshal V.K. Bhatia. It’s time India shed its diffidence and inhibitions by taking on China, added the highly decorated IAF fighter pilot who has served extended tours of duty along the LAC.
Pushing its advantage, India also opened talks with Vietnam in late 2016 over the possible sale to Hanoi of its indigenously developed Akash surface-to-air (SAM) missile with a 25km strike range against aerial targets like fighters, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.
India’s “Akash” missiles, mounted on a truck, are displayed during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi January 26, 2007. Photo: Reuters/B Mathur
But Chinese belligerence in response to both Indian missile offers to Vietnam spooked the BJP into ineptitude.
In November 2017, the Global Times, China’s Communist Party newspaper, tactlessly declared that any moves by India to step-up military ties with Vietnam to counter China will create “disturbance” in the region and Beijing will not “sit with its arms crossed.
“When India and Vietnam are in talks about possible (weapon) sales, New Delhi seems to keep taking a sneak peak at Beijing, as if the deal is aimed stealthily at China” raved the Communist Party mouthpiece. The paper also waned Delhi against ‘turning hostile’ by picking sides ‘at the cost of suffering enormous losses of development opportunities’, a euphemism for Beijing launching economic embargoes and impediments against India.
Thereafter, little or nothing has been heard from Delhi regarding the supply of either the BrahMos, the Akash or both missile systems to Vietnam, in what many recall to be a tiresome flashback to promises by former prime minister Narasimha Rao of transferring the tactical Prithvi surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missile to Hanoi in the early 1990’s.
As part of his ‘Look East’ policy, Rao is believed to have discussed the ‘possibility’ of transferring Prithvi to Vietnam, not only to further long-standing bilateral ties, but also as a counter to China that continued supplying assorted missile systems to its strategic, military and nuclear ally Pakistan for employment against India.
Two decades later Modi, in his initial flush of political ascendency and foreign policy initiatives after assuming office in 2014, upped the ante by promising Vietnam the bigger and better BrahMos missile system under his ‘Act East’ policy alongside Akash. Woefully, six years later Vietnam remains a semantical victim of contending catchy mantras, but without a credible missile system to deter China.
As for India, little has changed. Beijing continues its missile and military co-operation with Islamabad under the even greater stranglehold of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that is linked to the current crisis along the LAC. The narrative is simple: If China can effectively use Pakistan as its surrogate to strategically immobilise India, why can Delhi not do the same with Hanoi?
Perhaps now is the time, as many serving and retired Indian military-men believe, to kickstart talks with Vietnam which too is locked in conflict with Beijing over continuing tensions in the South China Sea. These spiked recently in April after a Chinese Coast Guard vessel deliberately rammed into and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat.
Possibly, the newly appointed chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat, the singe-point conduit between the military and the government has an answer. Or not.
The drill checked the IAF’s capability to hit targets with “pin-point” accuracy at targets close to 300 km.
New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has carried out successful firing of BrahMos surface-to-surface missiles from a mobile platform at Trak Island in Andaman Nicobar islands, officials said on Tuesday.
The drill to check the IAF’s capability to hit targets with “pin-point” accuracy at targets close to 300 km was conducted on Monday and Tuesday, they said.
“Surface-to-surface missiles were fired by IAF at Trak Island in the Andaman Nicobar group of islands,” said an official, adding the missile engaged the designated mock targets close to 300 km away.
“A direct hit on the target was achieved in both cases. Firing of the missile has enhanced IAF’s capability to engage the grounds targets with pin point accuracy from a mobile platform,” he said.
The 2.5-tonne surface-to-surface missile has a range of around 300 km.
BrahMos Aerospace, an India-Russian joint venture, produces the missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, or from land platforms.
Top military brass of France will also be present at the handing over ceremony, likely to be held on September 20.
New Delhi: Defence minister Rajnath Singh and Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa are set to travel to Paris next month to receive the first of 36 Rafale fighter jets for the Indian Air Force, government sources said Wednesday.
They said top military brass of France as well as senior officials of the Dassault Aviation, the makers of Rafale, will also be present at the handing over ceremony which is likely to be held on September 20.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leaving for France on Thursday on a bilateral visit during which further boosting of defence cooperation between the two countries will be discussed. Sources said that a high-level team of the Indian Air Force is already in Paris to coordinate with the French officials on the handing over ceremony.
India had inked an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore. The aircraft is capable of carrying a range of potent weapons and missiles.
The IAF has already completed preparations, including readying required infrastructure and training of pilots, to welcome the fighter aircraft. Sources said the first squadron of the aircraft will be deployed at Ambala air force station, considered one of the most strategically located bases of the IAF. The Indo-Pak border is around 220 km from there. The second squadron of Rafale will be stationed at Hasimara base in West Bengal.
A number of IAF teams have already visited France to help Dassault Aviation, the manufacturer of Rafale, incorporate India-specific enhancements on-board the fighter aircraft. The Rafale jets will come with various India-specific modifications, including Israeli helmet-mounted displays, radar warning receivers, low band jammers, 10-hour flight data recording, infra-red search and tracking systems among others.
The Congress raised several questions about the deal, including on rates of the aircraft, and alleged corruption but the government has rejected the charges.
The IAF spent around Rs 400 crore to develop the required infrastructure like shelters, hangers and maintenance facilities at the two bases.
In July 2017, Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa, during his visit to France, flew a Rafale jet at the Saint-Dizier airbase to gain first-hand experience of the aircraft.
According to the deal, the delivery of the jets was to be completed in 67 months from the date the contract was inked.
The challenge is to correlate the limited damage visible in satellite imagery with the effects of different kinds of explosives on a structure like the madrasa building.
Did the Indian Air Force strike the various structures at the madrasa in Balakot with lethality sufficient to have caused “heavy casualties”, as foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters on February 26?
Sections of the Indian media and of course BJP politicians believe it did and have even put a figure on the number of dead terrorists that ranges from 250 to 400. Pakistan has denied any damage or casualties and said the Indian payload landed on a nearby forest. On their part, international analysts have raised doubts about the Indian version based on their reading of pre- and post-airstrike satellite imagery of the madrasa.
While the truth is known to both the Indian and Pakistani governments, neither side appears keen to allow independent verification of its claims. The Pakistani military has prevented reporters from visiting the madrasa while the Indian government has also been circumspect about sharing imagery of the sort the US, Israeli and western air forces routinely release into the public domain.
In this vacuum, different people are resorting to different ways to settle the matter for themselves – including chest-thumping. In this clamour, there is now a debate among ammunition and aviation experts, who are trying to piece together what they know about the bombs the IAF dropped to figure out what might have happened on the ground.
Since World War II, missiles and their warheads have been designed to do things other than just be dropped and blow up. In the Balakot case, virtually the entire Indian media has reported that the IAF dropped 2,ooo-pound (lb ) bombs over the madrassa. This claim, which has never been properly sourced, seems extremely unlikely based on post-airstrike satellite imagery.
It also reinforces the need for authentic, verifiable information about what happened in Balakot. However, with the governments’ silence and campaigns for the national elections gaining momentum in India, it is important to understand what is possible and why, and to keep from getting carried away.
A general view of a building, which according to residents was a madrasa (religious school), is seen near the site where Indian military aircrafts struck on February 26, according to Pakistani officials, in Jaba village, near Balakot, Pakistan, March 7, 2019. Credit: Reuters/Akhtar Soomro
According to media reports, the bombs were delivered using a guidance kit called SPICE, which can convert unguided bombs into guided ones. It is manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, an Israeli company, and is used by the Israeli and Indian air forces.
The SPICE 2000, which can carry 2,000 lbs of bombs, is one of India’s most powerful (non-nuclear) air-to-surface weapons, depending on its configuration. And thanks to its precision guidance and long range, such weapons are often used as ‘bunker busters’: devices that can penetrate heavily fortified structures to blow them up from the inside.
At the same time, a bomb weighing 2,000 lbs (907 kg) can effect different kinds of damage on the ground, depending on its own specifications as well as those of the targets.
This forms the crux of the current debate, which takes off from sections of the media sharing higher resolution satellite images than were previously available of the Balakot madrasa after the IAF strike. The images show a clump of small buildings surrounded by a forest. Small dark smudges are visible on the roof of the main structure.
The confusion and uncertainty assailing the wider debate are relevant here. An official Indian statement claimed – before the images were released – that these buildings were a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) training camp. Journalists who spoke to people living nearby say it is a madrasa and a school linked to the Jaish. Al Jazeera reported that the madrasa was run by the JeM and, according to Reuters, a signboard attesting to this was subsequently removed.
A cropped version of a satellite image shows a close-up of a madrasa near Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, March 4, 2019. Credit: Planet Labs Inc./Handout via Reuters
Whatever the purpose of the structure, it looks like a regular brick-and-mortar building. And many have claimed that the dark smudges are evidence of a SPICE bomb (or perhaps four SPICE bombs, since there are four smudges or holes) penetrating the roof’s outer shell to burrow in and kill everyone inside using explosives.
In the face of initial satellite images showing limited damage to the buildings, senior government officials had told reporters that the Pakistani army had been able to go back and put the roofs back on in two days, thus fooling the world that India hit nothing. But with the latest satellite imagery with its smudges on the roof, the briefing given to defence reports has changed. Now, the claim is not that the roofs were replaced but that the smudges/holes still visible on it are actually evidence of India having successfully struck its target.
The latest account of Indian “sources”, however, has been challenged by Western analysts.
George William Herbert, an expert on missile systems, tweeted on March 6 that a 2,000-lb non-penetrator warhead comprises 945 lbs of explosive filling and 1,055 lbs of metal casing. Assuming the filling is made either of tritonal (TNT + aluminium powder) or Composition B (TNT + RDX), the Gurney equation for a cylindrical casing indicates the explosion will set the metal – assumed to weigh 478.5 kg – off at 1.83-2.13 km/s. So if it went off inside a madrasa, the shrapnel would have obliterated the building.
Herbert continued on Twitter, “The thousand pounds of explosive becomes hot gas at over a thousand degrees kelvin, and that’s about 1,000 cubic meters of air equivalent. [This] will approximately double the pressure inside a typical three-story building around 25 meters [wide]” – further contributing to explosive damage.
As a result, the most popular claims that the SPICE 2000 dealt damage on the inside but not on the outside don’t hold up. Forget about Pakistani forces replacing the roof in two days. If a SPICE 2000 with a 2,000-lb bomb had hit the madrasa, they would have had to refill the crater, re-lay the foundation and rebuild the whole structure in two days.
However, Herbert told The Wire he wanted to make it clear that he does not know what actually happened, that he wasn’t proposing any particular theory and was simply clarifying the technical aspects.
Satellite imagery of the target area before and after the attack. Source: @DFRLab via Planet Labs
Now, this analysis did assume that the warhead on the SPICE 2000 was a non-penetrator Mk 84 (which uses tritonal, Composition H6 or minol for the explosive filling). If it had been a penetrative weapon, most of the weapon’s mass would’ve been contained in the casing so that the weapon can smash through a strong outer layer first.
For example, the BLU-109 is another 2,000-lb bomb that can be used with SPICE guidance kits. As a bunker buster, it can penetrate up to six feet of reinforced concrete with a casing that weighs 634 kg, to deliver a 240-kg payload of tritonal. A BLU-116 weighs the same 874 kg but carries only 109 kg of tritonal filling to be able to penetrate over 10 feet of reinforced concrete.
As Angad Singh, an aviations expert, commented on Twitter, “Depending on effects required at the target (for example, fragmentation) the explosive filling in the bomb could be even less. So there is no hard and fast rule that a 2000-lb class bomb will wipe out half a hillside.”
He also noted that if India’s defence procurement was anything to go by, the SPICE units were likelier to be all-up rounds, where the bomb is already configured and attached to the guidance kit at the time of purchase. However, he told The Wire, “We have no good information on the exact bomb mated to the Indian SPICE munitions,” although it was “not an Mk 84”.
As a result, he said on Twitter, India’s “Spice 2000 [could all be] earmarked for high-value targets” and “that all but guarantees they have low-mass warheads”.
On March 8, the Indian Expressquoted an unnamed “top” military officer as saying, “Each warhead used by the IAF to target buildings on the campus of the JeM madrasa at Balakot … had a net explosive quantity (NEQ) of only 70-80 kg of TNT.” This is further indication that a low-mass warhead was used – and it also indicates the kind of warhead that might have been used.
This is because, if the filling was made of a high explosive like tritonal, the Gurney equation poses a problem. The shrapnel from a BLU-109 would still be released at 1.3 km/s and from a BLU-116 at 0.8 km/s. If, say, an NEQ of 80 kg of TNT was used in the BLU-116 configuration, it would still release shrapnel at nearly 1 km/s, and have a range of 14 metres. The madrasa is likely to have received significant damage any which way.
These numbers also hold for all conventional explosives of other kinds – not just bunker busters – as long as they use tritonal, which has a relatively lower Gurney constant of 2.3, similar to TNT, and which have a similar casing-to-filling mass ratio.
The red star marks Balakot, where Pakistan has said the bomb fell
Second: considering neither the IAF nor the Government of India have released any official statements about which warhead was used, the radius of possibilities becomes longer.
A second military officer reportedly told the Indian Express:
It is a precision weapon meant to hit specific targets but without any collateral damage. … This time the target was Balakot. If the target was Muzaffarabad instead, which is heavily inhabited and where no collateral damage would be acceptable, we would need to take out the people staying in a particular room without causing any damage to the adjacent room. We have the capacity to do that with this weapon.
Why the IAF wanted to use expensive ordnance that minimised the damage to buildings that were located far away from any population is not clear.
That said, one option that fits the bill is a fuel-air explosive (FAE), which – according to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) – is “highly effective against soft targets like light vehicles, drop tank, trenches, bunkers and antitank mines”. They use fuels to consume oxygen from the air and burn at over 1,500º C for a long time. They are effective against targets enclosed in inaccessible niches like caves and tunnels.
As a result, the dark smudges in the images could be burn marks from the use of an FAE flown with a SPICE 250 kit – which means the total weight of the weapon was only 113 kg (250 lbs). This mass is close to an FAE developed by the DRDO that can carry 38 kg of propylene oxide and deal damage in a circle of radius 8 metres. If an NEQ of 70 kg of TNT was used, then each FAE could have carried 18-19 kg of propylene oxide, adjusted for the amount of physical damage dealt at 7-9 metres.
This is sufficient to have killed people inside a madrasa-sized structure, and the multiple dark smudges on the roof of the main structure could simply be signs of fire damage. However, there is the overpressure to deal with.
Herbert explained to The Wire that FAEs have a reaction detonation pressure determined by the materials used and how they mix with the air. This is called the Chapman-Jouget detonation pressure (PCJ). And if the FAE is detonated inside a structure, the fuel “tends to fill” large parts of the structure and pressurise it from the inside.
For a typical FAE, the PCJ can be hundreds of pound-force per sq. inch (PSI). A hundred PSI is equal to 6.8-times the atmospheric pressure (atm). This kind of pressure, Herbert said, “tends to break every wall apart very effectively” but does not throw the walls “very hard or throw fragments very far.”
For its part, the DRDO has estimated that the blast pressure of a rocket-delivered FAE is 0.8 kg-force/cm2 at 16 metres. This is a little less than the atmospheric pressure that regular buildings can withstand. Extrapolating the findings of one DRDO study, 18.5 kg of propylene oxide has a blast peak overpressure of 2.1-3.4 atm at about 8 metres from the canister. Even if multiple units were not fired, structural damage seems likely.
The satellite images also show burn marks of varying sizes, as well as a few craters. Col. Vinayak Bhat (retd.) reasoned in The Print that the smaller burn marks, found on the landscape surrounding the building, could have been human-made whereas the larger ones could have been the result of FAEs. Assuming they are contemporary, this suggests FAEs with a larger impact range could also have been used.
One possible way out, as Col. Bhat suggested, is that there were two waves of IAF fighters. The first carried FAEs used on the madrasa and against fleeing people. Then, a second wave carried high-explosive weapons to bomb the surroundings.
But while this seems to be able to explain some of the features of the satellite images, the theory does not square with the detailed briefings that reputed defence reporters like Indian Express‘s Sushant Singh received from the government, which spoke of only one group of four Mirage-2000s firing their precision-guided munitions from the Indian side of the Line of Control.
Angad Singh also told The Wire that he does not think an FAE was used – “certainly not the DRDO one, which as far as I am aware, is not in wide service yet.” He added that “the attack direction and profile seems to suggest SPICE 2000, not 1000 or 250.”
An FAE mated to a SPICE 2000 seems excessive: while it could explain the burn marks on the ground, it doesn’t explain what appears to be an erect, intact structure. If the kit had been mated with a high-explosive, then the unnamed military officer’s comment implies that the casing on the weapon was really heavy.
This in turn could mean one of two things. First, that the madrasa had a roof full of holes/smudges to begin with, and that they are not signs of damage.
The issue is, these roofs are holey. This, pre-strike imagery from, i believe, last november shows similar looking holes in the roof, and the adjacent building, which i would consider attributing to an airstrike if i was looking for one. 5/ pic.twitter.com/0IxDR4ADaF
Second, the madrasa was – or presumed to be – very heavily fortified. If the madrasa wasn’t fortified, it wouldn’t be standing. But if it was, there is no way to confirm.
So there we have it: multiple intersecting theories, led by a SPICE kit and low-mass warheads that may or may not have been FAEs, Mk 84s or something else – something the Government of India is keeping mum about. At the centre of all this stands the Ship of Theseus: a madrasa that journalists are being kept away from, a building that may or may not be fortified, which even may or may not be the same building it was before.
Note: In an earlier version of this article, credit for the annotated satellite image, now deleted, was inadvertently omitted. We apologise for the oversight. The image is now available on our site via an embedded tweet.
This article was updated on March 11, 2019, at 9.25 am to include the possibility that the dark smudges on the post-strike satellite images were not signs of damage and to include Nathan Ruser’s tweet.
A civilian was also injured in the mishap just outside Yelahanka air base near Bengaluru.
Bengaluru: A pilot was killed and two others ejected to safety when two aircraft of IAF’s aerobatic team Surya Kiran crashed near the Yelahanka air base here Tuesday, a day before the opening of the Aero India show, a top police official said.
The mishap occurred during a sortie as part of the rehearsal for the five-day Asia’s premier Air show here.
“There were three pilots, one has died, two are safe with injuries,” DGP fire services M.N. Reddi who rushed to the spot told PTI.
India had raised a strong diplomatic protest with Pakistan over the Pulwama terror attack.
Islamabad: Pakistan has called back its High Commissioner from India for “consultations” amid heightened bilateral tensions after the Pulwama terror attack, officials here said Monday.
Pakistan high commissioner to India Sohail Mahmood was on Friday summoned in New Delhi by foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale who lodged strong protest over the killing of more than 40 Central Reserve Police Force soldiers in Pulwama.
Senior officials here said that Pakistan on Monday called back its envoy from India for consultations.
Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria was also called to New Delhi for consultations in the wake of the attack.
Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group claimed responsibility for the Pulwama terror attack on Thursday.
The new strategy is also meant to enhance security measures for regular operations.
New Delhi: The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has decided to tweak the standard operating procedures (SOPs) framed to secure its convoys, in the wake of a ‘new threat’ where an explosives-laden vehicle was detonated by a terrorist alongside the force’s bus in Pulwama, killing 40 personnel, the chief of the paramilitary force said Sunday.
“We have decided to add new features to our convoy movement to and from Kashmir,” CRPF Director General (DG) R.R. Bhatnagar told PTI after undertaking a two-day tour of the Valley in the wake of the February 14 attack, the worst against security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in three decades.
“Apart from traffic control, there will be changes in the timings of the convoy, their halt locations and movement in coordination with other security forces like the army and the J-K police,” he told the news agency.
He said two convoys have been run after the attack at Latoomode in Pulwama and these new measures are being tested and implemented as part of the SOPs.
Home minister Rajnath Singh, after his tour to the Valley post the blast, had said it has been decided that movement of civilian vehicles will be restricted when convoys of security forces move in J&K.
The DG said that over the last two days, he and his commanders in Kashmir have ‘discussed and laid down a new strategy’ to not only secure the movement of convoys but also to enhance security measures for regular operations.
“I would not like to go into the specifics but we are formulating some strategies. This is something that we have done in the past and these things are dynamic.”
“In view of this new threat, where a suicide bomber is suspected to have come close to our vehicle and detonated explosives, strategies are being worked upon,” Bhatnagar said.
The CRPF chief said there was no ambush on any CRPF convoy in the last two years and the effort is to neutralise such threats as much as possible.
Asked if there was an intelligence input suggesting that a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (IED) could be used by terrorists in Kashmir to hit the forces, Bhatnagar said that he would not talk about things related to operations and intelligence.
A senior official, however, said there was no ‘specific input’ and such an attack was completely new for the security forces in the Valley.
The DG, when asked about sending all troops from Jammu to Srinagar on aircraft to avoid the vulnerability of road movement, said there is ‘no alternative’ to convoys.
Air courier service for the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) has been increased by adding flights from Delhi to Srinagar via Jammu and back in 2018, he said.
Many times the helicopters and planes of the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Indian Air Force (IAF) are also used to airlift CAPF troops to the Kashmir Valley, the DG said.
“As the Jammu-Srinagar highway was closed due to landslides, the convoy operated on February 14 after a gap of ten days and there was a large backlog of personnel who were to be transported to Srinagar from the transit camp of the CRPF in Jammu,” a CRPF official based in Srinagar said.
“Thus, running of the convoy has very little to do with the availability of air effort, which can only supplement the convoys and not replace them,” Bhatnagar said.
The proposal for introducing Delhi-Srinagar-Delhi flight (seven days a week) and a separate Jammu-Srinagar-Jammu flight (four days a week) has also been sanctioned by the home ministry and would soon be operational, the DG said.
This would more than double the present capacity to 1,892 seats per week for the forces deployed in the Kashmir Valley, he said.
During his visit to the Valley, the CRPF chief also met his troops at various units in and around Srinagar and also went to the blast site, about 20 km from Srinagar.
The CRPF is the lead counter-terrorism force in the state and has deployed about 65,000 troops as part of 61 battalions there.
