Indian Strategic Forces: Nuclear and Missile Facilities

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Mig-29 & MIG-21s of 27th Wing South Western Wing sitting out in the sunshine within Indian Air force Bhuj Base, Gujrat

 

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Trombay, the site of India's first reactor (Aspara) and a plutonium reprocessing facility, as photographed by a KH-7/GAMBIT satellite on February 19, 1966.

 

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U.S. Intelligence and the Indian Bomb Documents Show U.S. Intelligence Failed to Warn of India's Nuclear Tests Despite Tracking Nuclear Weapons Potential Since 1950s National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 187 For more information contact: Jeffrey Richelson, Editor 202/994-7000 Posted - April 13, 2006​

Washington, DC, April 13, 2006 - Long before India detonated a nuclear device in May 1974, the U.S. Intelligence Community was monitoring and analyzing Indian civilian and military nuclear energy activities, according to documents released today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Those activities are at the core of the current controversy over the Bush administration's proposed legislation that would alter U.S. nonproliferation and export control laws and policies so as to allow full nuclear cooperation with India. Today's posting consists of forty documents - whose original classifications range from unclassified to Top Secret Codeword - produced by interagency groups, the CIA, the State and Defense Departments, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The documents cover a forty-year time span, from 1958 to 1998. The records were obtained by Archive Senior Fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson while conducting research for his recently published book, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (W.W. Norton). The documents show that as early as 1958 the CIA was exploring the possibility that India might choose to develop nuclear weapons. The reports focus on a wide range of nuclear related matters - nuclear policy (including policy concerning weapons development), reactor construction and operations, foreign assistance, the tests themselves, and the domestic and international impact of the tests. Documents from 1974-1975 and 1998 provide assessments of the reason why the U.S. Intelligence Community failed to provide warning of the 1974 and 1998 tests - assessments which are strikingly similar. They also include recommendations to address the deficiencies in performance that the assessments identified. U.S. Intelligence and the Indian Bomb National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 187 Edited by Jeffrey Richelson As was the case with France, Israel, and a number of other countries, India's path to a nuclear weapons capability was an incremental and prolonged one. Homi Bhabha, the father of the Indian bomb, moved in the same circles as Frédéric Joliot-Curie and other atomic physicists of the pre-World War II era. Bhabha left India in 1927 to study engineering at Cambridge, but the doctorate he received in 1935 was in physics. After he returned to India in 1939 the Second World War began, and Bhabha found himself stranded. He accepted the position of "reader" in theoretical physics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. In 1941 he was promoted to professor of cosmic ray research. (Note 1) In 1946 Bhabha became chairman of the newly formed Atomic Energy Research Committee. In 1948 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru submitted legislation to create an Atomic Energy Commission - legislation which imposed a veil of secrecy over atomic energy research and development and established government ownership of uranium, thorium, and all other relevant materials. By mid-August India had its own AEC, and Bhabha was named chairman of the three-member group. (Note 2) In the 1950s there were further bureaucratic developments, the creation of plans, and attempts to acquire the resources needed for an atomic energy program. A nuclear cooperation agreement with France was signed in 1951. In 1954 a Department of Atomic Energy was established, with Bhabha as its secretary. In 1955 ground was broken at Trombay for the first Indian reactor, named Aspara. (Note 3) From the beginning of the nuclear age, U.S. leaders were well aware that civilian nuclear research could advance a nation's progress toward a nuclear weapons capability. Over the last five decades the United States has gathered intelligence on Indian nuclear activities, civilian and military, through all the means at its disposal - human intelligence, open source collection, communications intelligence, and overhead reconnaissance. Those activities, as demonstrated by the documents below, allowed U.S. intelligence analysts to provide decision-makers with far more detailed assessments of Indian nuclear activities than would be available from public sources. At the same time, other documents show that the collective efforts of the organizations gathering intelligence on Indian nuclear activities -- including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Intelligence Agency, and State Department -- did not result in U.S. intelligence analysts warning U.S. officials of India's nuclear tests, carried out in May 1974 and May 1998. The documents in this briefing book were, with some exceptions, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act or from the CIA's CREST data base at the National Archives and Records Administration for use in writing Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (W.W. Norton, 2006), by Archive Senior Fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson. (Note 4) Five appeared in a previous National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book: India and Pakistan - On the Nuclear Threshold, which contains other documents of interest concerning Indian and Pakistani nuclear activities. The first 16 documents in this briefing book deal with one or both of two questions: does India have the capability to build a nuclear device? and what is likelihood that it will do so? Answering the first question required analysts to examine and evaluate the data concerning Indian organizations involved in atomic energy activities; the availability of resources (uranium, heavy water); the reactors in operation, under construction, or on the drawing board; the ability to produce plutonium or highly enriched uranium; and possible delivery systems. Addressing the second question required analysts to examine the histories of key political and scientific personnel (for information as to their views on nuclear weapons) as well as the domestic political pressures facing the nation's leaders. In addition, there was a need to assess the external pressures faced by Indian leadership - including security threats from China and Pakistan, and pressures to conform to international norms concerning nuclear proliferation. India's May 18, 1974, test settled conclusively the questions of whether and when, but also required the U.S. to venture into new areas, as demonstrated by Documents 17-27. One new task was to produce an independent assessment of India's technical claims concerning the test (particularly its yield). Intelligence analysts also needed to explain why India chose to test, assess the immediate impact of the test, and look ahead in an effort to answer the question, "what next?" It was also vital to examine not only what had happened and was going to happen in India, but to explore why, despite the Intelligence Community's awareness of Indian nuclear capabilities and the incentives to test, it had not been able to provide senior U.S. officials with advanced warning of the test. By the 1980s, the 1974 test was w ell in the past and there had not been another. The documents from this period (Documents 26-35) thus continued to explore Indian capabilities for building a bomb - particularly the July 1988 CIA assessment, India's Potential to Build A Nuclear Weapon (Document 34), and the factors - both technical and political (domestic and foreign) - that helped shape India's nuclear policies. By the beginning of 1998 India had come close to conducting its second test on several occasions but had pulled back - in 1995 due to American pressure that followed the discovery of test preparations by U.S. spy satellites. That may have helped convince U.S. analysts that despite the pledge by the newly-elected Hindu nationalist BJP-led administration to "induct" nuclear weapons into the Indian arsenal, no nuclear test would actually take place. Thus, an early assessment of BJP policy (Document 36) suggests that a change in Indian nuclear policy was not imminent. Once the test did occur, without warning from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Community was left, as in 1974, to assess the details of the test and explore its implications (Document 37). As in 1974, it was also necessary for the Community to probe the causes of the failure and determine what steps should be taken to reduce the chances of a similar failure in the future (Document 38, Document 39).

U.S. Intelligence and the Indian Bomb

 

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Akash site at Ambala AFS .

Chandigarh AFS

 

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Ammunition and missile storage facility of Indian navy.

An Indian Aerostat at an Airforce Station. Pic and Video are of this Aerostat;;

 

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The footage of Indian Army's Searcher Mk III UAV, geolocated at Indian Army cantonment heliport, Bathinda India.

 

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Overview of srinagar AFS
Legend

Red square: .........HASs
Blue squares:....... Aircraft shelters
Polygons: ..............Storage sites
Green circle: ..........Hangers
Blue circle:............. Radar site
Red Circle: ............SAM site

 

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Nalia AFS is situated roughly 90 km from international border. Base holds 30 HASs and 5 aircraft shelters for fighter sized air crafts as well as 2 large hangers for larger air crafts. Typical brahmos storage (pic2) and barak8 site (pic3) are also visible.

https://twitter.com/SepticOsint

 

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Misa Cantt Home of 3341 Missile Brigade of Indian Army that operates Agni II MRBM & III IRBM.
There are hangers and launch sites hidden in the wooded area.

Barak 8 also known as LR-SAM or as MR-SAM at Bhuj AFS.
Bhuj is part of the South Western Air Command...

 

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Typical Indian SA-3/S-125 SAM site.

 

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The Indian Army recently inducted its first Barak 8 Regiment in Eastern Sector. We geolocated the image to a previously known cantonment housing a Bofors AD Regiment near Nagaon. We previously found the IA's Barak 8 systems under integration at Hyderabad.

 

[Two banks of the River]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1630611465811169280

 

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Satellite Imagery of India's strategically important Naliya Airforce Station (airbase).Naliya AFS is roughly 90 km from Pakistan's Sir Creek.
It houses Indian Airforce's Su-30mki Fighter Aircrafts.S-125 Pechora SAM is also deployed on the airbase.

 

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Satellite Imagery of India's Nal-Bikaner Airforce Station (airbase).Nal-Bikaner AFS is 110 km (approx) from Pakistan Border & almost 200 km from Bhawalpur.S-125 SAM is also deployed on the airbase while Mig-21s (probably retired now) & other aircrafts are also on airbase.