A Good Kill

On the east coast of India  it was a clear morning on Friday, 10^th of February. Just after 10.10 AM, the Long Range Tracking Radars near Puri city on Orissa coast, picked up a warning of a hostile missile, coming in to attack. The Missile was at an altitude of about 100 KM and was rapidly descending down. Multi Functional Radar at Paradip also started tracking the hostile missile and passed on the information to a guidance computer, which after computing the target's flight data, immediately issued a command to launch an Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile from the Wheeler Island base on east coast of India. Within minutes, the interceptor missile was launched. The interceptor missile, equipped with inertial navigation system, an on board hi-tech computer and a radio-frequency seeker, locked on to the target hostile missile. Travelling at supersonic speed, the AAD homed on to the target and blasted it to smithereens, around 10.15AM. at a height of about 15-km in the endo-atmosphere.

This is neither a fragment of imagination from me, nor a scene from some action flic. The action scenario actually took place. Only the attacker missile was not from some foreign country, but a modified surface-to-surface Prithvi missile launched from Launch Complex-3 at Chandipur, again on east coast of India and was sent to validate the new Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) capability for India. 

The launches, that of the attacker missile and of the interceptor took place independently and both missiles were controlled by Radars in different places in the country, one by the Mission Control center and another by Launch control center. Fifteen computers stationed at Hyderabad, Balasore, Chandipur, Konark, Puri, Wheeler Island and so on, worked in unison and saw that the mission was a complete success. Defense research and development organization engineers, saw the tracks formed by the fragments of the destroyed attacker missile on their radar screens. The attacker missile belonged to 600 km range class, the interceptor missile is capable of defending against on missiles which have a range up to 2,000 km.

DRDO's Chief Controller for missiles and strategic systems certifies that it was an excellent interception and says that “the entire interception was automated with radars tracking the incoming target missile.” While the Launch Control Centre was situated in the Wheeler Island, the Mission Control Centre was situated a few “thousands of kilometers away from the launch point” of the attacker missile.

Director General of DRDO now confirms that India’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) programme in the endo-atmosphere (that is, below an altitude of 50 km) is now ready for deployment and the country is in a position to take it to the next phase of production and induction.. A user team from the Army, which was present in the Wheeler Island, watched the entire operation.

So far so good. We must congratulate the scientists and engineers of the DRDO for a sucessful missions. A nagging doubt however remains in my mind. We, Indians are good at creating new things. We build state of the art airports. Yet, after few years, we find that these are in a dire state, because of negligence and extremely poor maintenance. In a ballistic missile defense system, the defender missile has to be launched within minutes as the window available for defense can not exceed more that few minutes. This means that the defense system must be always maintained and kept in perfect condition so as to be ready for launch at any given instant. To build in, such high degree of readiness, is indeed a tall order and unless it can be achieved, just providing a Ballistic Missile Defense may not achieve much.

11^th February 2012

Harnessing the wind

The Government of India appears again to have renewed it's efforts,  to rein in the Social Networking sites on the internet. This time however, the method adopted seems to approach the problem,  though medium of courts of justice. 

A person named as Vinay Rai had made sometime back,  a petition with the Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate,  that these social networking sites may be prevented from publishing content, which is offensive to national integration and religious harmony. While considering this petition, the Honourable Magistrate had said that such a petition could be considered only if the Government approves this. The Government perhaps was only waiting for this,  because within a short period, the department of information technology has submitted it's report on the matter, to the court. This report says that besides above mentioned offensive content, these web sites also publish content which could be said to have committed offenses because of promoting criminal conspiracy, publishing vulgar or pornographic content or and trying to sell pornographic books to children. As a proof, the Government report also has given examples of such contents on the web sites. The court has admitted this report and has asked the Government to file charges against such web sites even located outside India. 

Two Indian subsidiaries of International social networking giants, namely Face book India and Google India had filed a petition with Delhi high court to give stay on the decision given by the Metropolitan Magistrate. However this has been rejected by the High court with a ruling,  that Responsibility of not allowing such content to get published on their web sites,  is entirely of the web site managing company. If these do not effectively prevent publication of such offensive content, these may face a ban just like China.

Late Dr. Annasaheb Karve, his associates and his family in a 1937 film clip

A rare and historically important  film clip showing Late Dr. Annasaheb Karve, his associates, his family and his students. The film was shot in 1937.