Pokhran II not fully successful: Scientist - Part-3

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 02 Oct 2009 22:08

Austin wrote:
Arun_S wrote:If Santhanam's expose had not occurred, ElBaradei who received the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, would instead be commending India for agreeing to CTBT.
Arun , Well for argument sake

Lets say what Santhanam say is true and we do not have a weaponised TN , the GOI along with its principle opposition party BJP agree to sign the CTBT , and BARC/DAE sticks to its usual stance that TN is sucessful and that they can weaponise it and armed forces tend to toe the GOI line.

So if GOI , BARC , and Oppositon claim and agree that all the 5 test were spectacular success and agree on India joining CTBT with no further test possible , what can anybody do about it ?

The GOI decision is the final word Truth or Lies , isnt it ?

Government is of the people no just INC and BJP top brass. As long as truth is known to people, and people see it is right for country to sign CTBT or NPT, and Government does not see itself going against people's wished, the Govt can sign any treaty.

OTOH if Indian Government is of the Oligarchy, and people can be be-fooled with orchestrated myth cast by BARC, INC and BJP, for the benefit of Oligarchy, then it is time for "Sankarnti-Kaal" and for truth to prevail.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 02 Oct 2009 22:12

Arun_S wrote:The 20 kT NoKo nuclear test on 25 May 2009 was join testing by NoKo and TSPakistan, where Pu came from TSPakistan, and it was a boosted fission device. That joint test erodes any semblence of Boosted fission advantage that India might have had w.r.t. TSP (what to speak of China).

India thus must formally announce its position that:
"Any further North Korean test will be considered a Pakistani test, and if Pakistan tests, India will test.".

It is believed by some that NoKo will test again in 3-6 month time. Thus now is the time start a campaign in Pakistan to create fissure between "People who got rich Baksheesh" and the Ummaa of true believers. Quetta and Peshawar is capital of true believers.

Here are two pdfs on NoKo's first test. Please read them both to understand the leap in technology with the second test. My instinct tells me that Noko and TSP are in a path to pursue TN not just TN capability. And all these are under PRC tutoring with lessons learned while preparing for CTBT. The reason is PRC has figured out that it needs more challengers to the US to keep them busy and fission is not enough to dissuade.

1) Noko test success or failure?

2) Revisiting the North Korean Test

Both pdfs are by Zhang Hui a PRC scholar.

I don't know what he thinks of the Second NoKo test.

3) Response to Revisiting Noko Test Quincy Castro

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 02 Oct 2009 22:14

Thx Arun_s. My praises to Santhanam. Lord Krishna is kind.

Shivji, Is China our only enemy with nukes?

koti · Post by **koti** » 02 Oct 2009 22:17

vera_k wrote:True. What made sense to me was the argument that Indian nukes have to be able to reach into any hardened shelters that may exist in Beijing to protect the Chinese leadership. It seemed that would require yields greater than the 25KT.

AFAIK the TN be it 25KT or 45KT is purposefully designed to yield low.
This means that even if the yield was truly 25KT, we still can have a 100KT(around) design.
Am I right?

And our first TN design is a successes in principle. Now that our scientists already have a proof of concept, in these 11 years we could have come far ahead in terms of our yield capability.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 02 Oct 2009 22:35

Koti saar: I have capability to read books on my shelf and become a doctor. Would you hire me as your physician to do a biopsy and take care of cancer if it turns out to be malignant?

India has 1.2 billion people and is capable of raising an Army. Does that mean India can defend itself?

The time to turn TN capability (even if it exist today on the words of RC that S1 was 100% successful) to weapon will not be available when war starts, India needa a ready proven arsenal before you enter war.

Indian LCA is a proof of concept that has been flying IIRC for ~8 years now, in these 8 years have our scientists come far ahead in terms of making a MRCA or FGFA?

Useful to be pragmatic.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 02 Oct 2009 23:19

For most of us this report is old news that there is very high possibility that TSP and NoKo conducted a joint test in 1998 (Kharan).

DPRK Nuclear Weapons Testing

Here is a CRS report to the US Congress stating the same:
Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North Korea and Pakistan, March 11, 2004

The fact that this alleged joint test is consigned to a mere footnote is for obvious reasons.

There is a history of strategic reciprocity between TSP and NoKo wrt WMD's and delivery systems.

ss_roy · Post by **ss_roy** » 02 Oct 2009 23:40

The real issue, IMHO, is not whether Indian scientists can design a good TN warhead. More tests can be conducted to validate improved designs.

The real issue is: How did we end up with such pathetic political leadership? How can these "leaders" make so many bad and suicidal decisions on so many fronts at once, and with such consistency.

Whether it is screwing up infrastructure development (ongoing), discouraging business (till the 1990s), inadequate funding of our armed forces, not funding useful rural development (like FDR did in USA-1930s) and making every strategic mistake in the book (going to UN- Kashmir 1947, returning TSP territory 1965) and more (supporting PRC for the security council)- how do they do that? Even a drunk monkey could have made more right decisions (by pure chance).

karthik · Post by **karthik** » 03 Oct 2009 00:02

Should we always be this apprehensive in securing our national interests? I think we should just go in for a series of tests and sign the CTBT to cool people of later.

It is nice to see some skepticism in BR, its is quite healthy to be skeptic and test your doubts to the fullest, so you may not regret in the battle field. Just to stroke our fragile egos and claim success for mere pride does not help anyone, least of all us.

Either way it is better we announce that we are going to test our weapons and see who is still sticking around in the MRCA race, that would finally tel us where we should place our money, i bet it would be the either French or Russians that would stick around!

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 03 Oct 2009 00:42

Is there any open source information on actual efficiency of western weapons, fully verified independently ?

The one post by shiv on the joint us-russia test is interesting. Had not heard of it before.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Oct 2009 00:44

Its a well known fact about the variance in seismic measurements. Its not on the yield!

koti · Post by **koti** » 03 Oct 2009 00:49

Arun_S wrote: The time to turn TN capability (even if it exist today on the words of RC that S1 was 100% successful) to weapon will not be available when war starts, India needa a ready proven arsenal before you enter war.

Very true.
I mostly agree that we need to conduct more tests to refine our technology. And I assumed we already have TN weapons(whatever yield) in disassembled(??) state, and I still am assuming so.

Koti saar: I have capability to read books on my shelf and become a doctor. Would you hire me as your physician to do a biopsy and take care of cancer if it turns out to be malignant?

It is a complicated comparison sir. I could hardly correlate.
We don't have a better option(the TN weapon) for the time being.
Our strategy calls for a TN warhead and we have to build it with whatever yield it could offer. Form the initial tests there can definitely be a great improvement in design and performance. We achieved (worst case in discussion) 25KT yield with a design that has been tested for the first time. It is very wise to go ahead and build few warheads with the theoretically improved design and not waste precious time in delaying this by hoping the right time would come to conduct one more round of tests. I'm not sure when there would be the ripe time to conduct the tests again, but we can't afford to loose the strategic edge TN weapons could give us in the mean time.
Your point "The time to turn TN capability (even if it exist today on the words of RC that S1 was 100% successful) to weapon will not be available when war starts" also says we should have the weapon in the hand as early as possible. When a soldier is injured, he is given whatever medical assistance possible before he could be taken to the field Hospital.

AFAIK the TN be it 25KT or 45KT is purposefully designed to yield low.
This means that even if the yield was truly 25KT, we still can have a 100KT(around) design

Can anyone comment on this?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Oct 2009 00:52

amit wrote:
ramana wrote:El-Baradei was in New Delhi getting an award from GOI for the NSG waiver etc.
.....
So see the recent outbursts from this POV. There is pressure on the CTBT. A guest getting an award from GOI is saying this!

If GOI says the POKII were enough then the corollary is why do you need to keep option open?
Ramana,

Can GoI afford to say POKII was not enough? Let's forget all this discussion on fizzle ya sizzle for the moment and accept it was a fizzle.

Now even if GoI knows it's a fizzle do you think it will publicly disgrace RC and hand him a public whipping as one former stalwart has thundered here?

I don't think that how real politic works. What GoI will do IMO is keep the pretense of POKII being a success, stick with RC et al and make sure that the option to test in future is not given away.

In fact I get a sense that Gol does not/will not give up the test option even if POKII was a resounding success. There will be another round of tests for sure. At a point of time when the Indian economy will be too big for anyone to sanction it and remain relatively unscathed by doing so. I personally reckon sometime after 2016-2017 or so (provided Munna on the western border is not goaded to start a war to hit the Indian economy before that).

Hence in all this confusion what needs to be looked at carefully is the noises that come out from GoI regarding CTBT. Note Krishna's comments and also note MMS comment that India will adhere to voluntary moratorium. Voluntary moratorium only comes to play if India does not sign CTBT - once you sign up there's nothing voluntary about not testing.

It would be naive to expect El-Baradei to say anything (about CTBT) other than what he said in New Delhi, that's his job actually. I think what is far more significant is the fact that he let it slip that the international committee has resigned itself to the fact that India will not sign NPT. That means India will have to be accepted into P5 - by making it P6 - before NPT talks can start. And NPT loses its teeth as long as India stays outside the tent. I think that's a tremendous plus.

So bottomline, don't listen to what international experts (we seem to adore them, right from the former AEC boss down to the hoi polli on BRF) say India should do or is about to do regarding CTBT.

Instead look at the noise bytes that come out from Naya Dilli regarding the shitty bitty. IMHO I haven't yet seen anything which shows that India's position has changed from what that fantastic lady A Ghosh outlined all those years ago.

JMT

Thanks for the long considered reply. I think by saying capability the press conf has implicitly retained the option to test. That is the plus in my eyes. As to El Baradei he thinks India wont sign the NPT but is asking for CTBT try to understand. If the official line is no need for further tests they will ask for dejure conversion from defacto position. Lets see.

By the way try to read the Karsten Frey book I posted the title above. the author has captured the spirit of our debate but has his own solutions to get around.
Its published by Routledge.
-----
koti you are asking for kosher info. In the end it will be divisive.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Oct 2009 00:57

How about folks try to see the time line for progressing from a fission to fusion weapon to advanced fusion weapon for known possessors?

putnanja · Post by **putnanja** » 03 Oct 2009 01:17

Not sure if this was posted earlier ...

S.K. Sikka, a scientist involved in Pokhran-II, shows how the U.S. calculations of yield of the thermonuclear device were way off the mark.

...
The observed effects would depend on the properties of the surrounding strata and the emplacement of the device. According to S.K. Sikka, formerly of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and one of the key scientists involved in the tests, the geology of the Pokhran test site is such that at depths corresponding to that of the Pokhran-I device of 1974, the surrounding material is more like alluvium, comprising sandstone and shale. But as one goes deeper the geology changes, and at depths corresponding to that of the 1998 thermonuclear device and lower the material is pink granite.
...
The Pokhran-I explosion actually resulted in a shallow crater (where the crater radius and cavity radius are roughly equal) following a raised mound with a crater radius of 47 m and a cavity radius of 30 m. Without knowing the geology of Pokhran, Western analysts have assumed the Pokhran-I test to have resulted in what is known as a subsidence crater and an equation for scaled depths (122 x Y0.295) that is not applicable to Pokhran. They also used a known value of a U.S. test which resulted in a subsidence crater, and estimated a low value for the Pokhran-I yield. For estimating Pokhran-II, they have used this low Pokhran-I yield to calibrate the Pokhran geology and estimated the thermonuclear yield to be lower.

Now, according to studies at BARC for the design yield of the Pokhran-II thermonuclear device, the DOB was exactly in the region where the crater size falls at the minimum of the scaling curve. And this is exactly what was observed. In fact, according to Sikka, exact simulations were done to eliminate completely the venting of radioactivity and the DOB was chosen accordingly. He further points out that the little mound that is seen in the picture of the cratering by the thermonuclear weapon is actually owing to the strong reflection of the shock waves from the granite stratum below the DOB.
...
In a paper published soon after the tests (in the September 10, 1998, issue of Current Science), Sikka and others pointed out that owing to the simultaneity of the Pokhran-II (fission and thermonuclear) explosions in shafts that were a kilometre apart, the network-averaged m(B) values would be lower than the true values because of the significant interference effects in the direction of the line joining the two shafts (east-west). They showed that if interference effects are corrected for, the averaged m(B) value was 5.39, compared with 5.0 of the Arlington-based International Data Centre (IDC) network and 5.2 of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) network.

They also pointed out that the constants ‘a’ and ‘b’, in the m(B)-Y relation, that were appropriate for Pokhran were those pertaining to the hard rock conditions of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and not those of the Shagan River Test Site (SRTS) at Semplatinsk of the former Soviet Union, which were used by Western analysts. Sikka and co. reiterated this fact by a detailed analysis of 64 NTS observations and 74 SRTS observations, which was published in Current Science in 2002 (Frontline, September 25).
...
Specifically, applying the constants ‘a’= 3.93 and ‘b’= 0.89, corresponding to the HTS and NTS granites, for Pokhran-II m(B) gives a yield of about 47 kt. The actual values of ‘a’ and ‘b’ for Pokhran, as determined by the BARC scientists, are 4.04 and 0.77 respectively and this gives a yield of 58 + 5 kt. The original estimate of combined yield of the May 11, 1998, tests was about 60 kt, with 45 kt for the thermonuclear weapon and 15 kt for the fission weapon that were set off simultaneously.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 01:25

RaviBG,

Yes and beyond.

Thx tho'.

Sridhar · Post by **Sridhar** » 03 Oct 2009 02:01

While the Ramachandran article in Frontline has been discussed before and was even mentioned by RC/AK in their press conference (giving it some official legitimacy), I noticed something I had not before. See this quote from the article:

IN response to an article in Frontline (September 25, 2009) on the revival of the controversy over the yields of the May 11, 1998, Pokhran-II nuclear tests, one of the issues raised in informal discussions is the fact that while the fission device (of 12-13 kiloton) in the Pokhran-I test of 1974 produced a prominent crater, the Pokhran-II thermonuclear device of a much greater yield did not produce a distinctly larger crater morphology. An explanation for this is, therefore, in order.

The article seems to be implying that there was a crater produced at the site of the thermonuclear test, only that it was not distinctly larger than that of the 1974 test. By contrast, Santhanam seems to be saying that there was no crater at all and that even the structures above were not damaged. Is this just DDM error? Or is this official speak? Would the absence of any crater invalidate the arguments in the rest of the article in any way? Or is the data presented consistent with the absence of a subsidence crater?

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 02:12

Sridhar,

According to that article:

Now, according to studies at BARC for the design yield of the Pokhran-II thermonuclear device, the DOB was exactly in the region where the crater size falls at the minimum of the scaling curve. And this is exactly what was observed. In fact, according to Sikka, exact simulations were done to eliminate completely the venting of radioactivity and the DOB was chosen accordingly. He further points out that the little mound that is seen in the picture of the cratering by the thermonuclear weapon is actually owing to the strong reflection of the shock waves from the granite stratum below the DOB.

At that depth (DOB) it should not have crated a crater at all. IF at all, it should have created a retarc: it was also referred to in the BR article by V Sunder.

Which is why what Santhanam expected - around a 70/72 meter radius crater - is befuddling.

We will have to wait and see what he has to say in two weeks. But, I doubt if he will solve this riddle about a crater.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 02:16

With what confidence can we state that that Venn diagram is right, as of now?

Someone else posted that it is possible that some exchange could have taken place between any scicom at some conf anywhere.

Arihant anyone?

ss_roy · Post by **ss_roy** » 03 Oct 2009 02:57

A question worth considering:

If we conducted more tests (let's assume

), what kind of nuclear arsenal would be desirable? and what would the various warheads be mated to?

Ex- 25kt Fission, 100 kt BF, 100-400 kt TN.

25kt F (less than 200 kg) could be mated to any missile (ballistic or cruise)

100kt BF is more tricky- If we got the weight down to less than 300kg (not unrealistic) a pack of 3-5 on Agni-2s could hit important targets in China.

100-400 kt TN is also tricky. If we pushed it, 150 kg for a 100kt TN is not unrealistic. A 400 kg -400kt TN is also quite reasonable. A pack of 4-8 on SLBMs?

IMHO, most (over 70%) of indian nukes should be strategic (over 100kt), as opposed to tactical. Taking out cities, towns, important infrastructure beats hitting a few thousand troops- and we can always keep a few dozen 25kts (on cruise missiles) for that task.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Oct 2009 03:00

NRao is correct. We dont understand why he thought it would create a 72m radius crater? Was that the discussion before the test or what?

---
ss-roy, Indi aweapons are always strategic. Its only a question of high or low yield.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 05:37

Has anyone noticed any traction, on this story, in any foreign news outlet?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 03 Oct 2009 05:39

NRao wrote: Per your earlier post, I understood it to mean that the Chinese really do not care for how many people die in a nuclear attack (perhaps in any event). True or not let us assume that for the sake of discussion. Is that right?

You mention that their leaders have some "goal" that is mor eimportant to them, important enough that they do not care for millions dieing. Correct?
India would be FAR better of to build an instrument that knocks the "goal" (that you mention - whatever that is) out in the event of a nuclear war.

These are the kind of goals the Chinese have in their mind when they talk about nuclear weapons
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World By Margaret MacMillan
http://books.google.com/books?id=xJ3YR- ... ck&f=false

NRao wrote:
A deterrence would be a deterrence ONLY if in every game they enact they come to the decisive conclusion that it is not worth starting a nuclear war. Even if there is a slight loop hole the deterrence can cease to be one.

So, in the case of the Chinese, from what you are saying, that is very good. I do not know what the "goal" you are referring to is, but for sure (based on your post) the Indian deterrence cannot be a Mt to kill millions of people. So, in theory perhaps a TN is not required for this purpose.

Manish_Sharma wrote:
Now by TN capability I don't say we need Megaton or even 500kt warheads. No just sadaa 200kt TN very very well tested warhead will do. Thus saving on the fissile material plus lighter warheads in much much greater numbers. More numbers + More dispersed = More survivablity.

We cannot base the national security on the guess of how much threat of losing how many million people may deter PRC. No they should be sure of going back at least by 100 years only that will deter them.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 03 Oct 2009 05:58

shyamd wrote: Shivji, Is China our only enemy with nukes?

The USA is our biggest enemy with nukes. It has been the prime mover for stopping India from acquiring tech while it allowed Pakistan to get nukes from China and proliferate to others. And Pakistan is now being paid by the US to develop it delivery systems.

But we do not want to acknowledge the US as a huge problem. The US is our friend. It is a democracy. It is a source of education and employment for our family. Does China meet any of these criteria? No.

Some people say "Oppose the US over nuclear deal" Other folks say - "China and Pakistan are our enemies" For any Nationalist Bharatiya it is important to understand that he whole world is our enemy and we need huge nukes to take out the whole world. Apart from a few African and South American countries the entire world has played a role in opposing us.

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 03 Oct 2009 06:02

This I posted in Deterrence thread also:
I feel the three things that worry China most are:
1. Respect India is earning in the world for its democracy and human rights record. Plus the west & ru does not sees india as threat or having the dream of taking over the world.
2. While China is growing old fast with its one child policy, india is having such a big population of young people. So when the CCP looks about 30 years ahead, it does see indians taking over the production work done by China now and providing it much better qualitywise. Already they see India taking over China in exporting small cars, also the reliability and quality people are appreciating of these cars compared to China. While China exported 1.60 lakh cars, India has exported 2.65 lakh. Not to mention the super prowess in softwares.
3. India easily blocking the oil tankers passing through indian ocean to China. Imagine during the war India stopping or blowing up 3-4 oil tankers going to China.

But inspite of all this China has bigger enemies or competitors in US and Russia.

Now if China gets into nuclear exchange with India and destroys 20 indian cities while losing 8 of its own industrial cities plus some mega projects like tibet rail, 3g dam, 3 oil tankers, 2 ports and few refineries. It will be considerably weakened. Its dream of surging ahead of US will be delayed at least by 100 years and even after that who knows.

Not only that it will be at the mercy of US + NATO + Rus taking advantage of its weakened position. This time it is a far cry from a closed country of Mao's past. In the age of internet and globalisation its citizens are fully connected and aware of the world.

So what it does is use the porki whore to wage war on India in two stages:
Stage 1: Proxy war or thousand cut war by islamic jehad.
Stage 2: Preparing the porki whore for the nuclear exchange.

Now when the nuke exchange happens with porkis. We will be inclined to use the nukes first against porkis thus spending part of our "anyway not so big minimum credible deterrent".

This gives Chinese three advantages, first is part of our arsenel is already spent on porkis. Secondly it gives them a small but crucial time window to take out rest of our missile bases etc. Whatever rest is thrown at them will have to go through their ABM defence. So some may fail on its own some may be tackled by ABM and some 20kts reach. Thirdly they can say to the west that they were only preventing india to escalate and launch more, so no sanctions from west.

This is the reason for Bharatvarsh to have more reason for fully tested reliable "Daada Banaye, Pota Barte" TN warhead. Not a claim that "India has the capability to make 200kt warhead".

Now by TN capability I don't say we need Megaton or even 500kt warheads. No just sadaa 200kt TN very very well tested warhead will do. Thus saving on the fissile material plus lighter warheads in much much greater numbers. More numbers + More dispersed = More survivablity.

We cannot base the national security on the guess of how much threat of losing how many million people may deter PRC. No they should be sure of going back at least by 100 years only that will deter them.

With this capability we can let it be known clearly to the world and prc that any nuke attack by the world renouned porki whore on the motherland and we will see it as attack by prc too. Thus retaliating at the both of them. This is the only way I see prc holding porkis back in any misadventure.

Like Santhanam said this India can't do with two 20kt warheads over Beijing. Who know in 10 years somebody more ruthless takes over from Hu Jintao. Or some economic calamity befalls PRC and to divert the attention of antirevolutioneries CCP launches attack against India. No there are millions of possibilities happening in which India may be caught with piddly warheads in tiny numbers.

Do the test of 200kt. TN warheads 6 times in three different designs. Each design should be tested at least twice each for the reliability.

Sanctions < destruction of 10 cities
Sanctions < destruction of 2 cities
Sanctions < destruction of 1 city
Sanctions < destruction of 1/4th of the city.
Sanctions < losing AP.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 03 Oct 2009 06:11

koti wrote:
AFAIK the TN be it 25KT or 45KT is purposefully designed to yield low.
This means that even if the yield was truly 25KT, we still can have a 100KT(around) design.
Am I right?

And our first TN design is a successes in principle. Now that our scientists already have a proof of concept, in these 11 years we could have come far ahead in terms of our yield capability.

koti jee - don't get led up the garden path by florid imagination of people who are neither nuclear scientists nor missile men. There is no public reference to India actually having weaponised anything other than 20-25 kt weapons as stated by Santhanam.

The reference to K Subramanyam and Arun Prakash are both bogeys. If you re read their words they do not in any way state that India has weaponised 60-80 kt fission designs or 200 to 500 kt FBF designs. Unless you are wiling to delude yourself India's arsenal today consists of reliable 25 kt warheads.

Everyone only speaks of "capability to make". Hey I have capability to transplant a brain - but it won't work any better in its new recipient no matter how deserving he may be. At least I admit that and am not being ambiguous in that regard.

I think too many people look at fancy pictures of India weapons on the internet, including BR and imagine that India has huge TN weapons. Good psy ops - but there is no evidence to back up those dreams.

25 kt fission bombs, Period. If you want your country to have huge TN weapons better to become a US citizen. Faster and surer method.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 06:12

Acharya wrote: These are the kind of goals the Chinese have in their mind when they talk about nuclear weapons
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World By Margaret MacMillan
http://books.google.com/books?id=xJ3YR- ... ck&f=false

IF you actually believe that such thinking, today, exists in China - as a major stream - than I give up.

I am willing to accept that there are pockets that think fairly closely to something like this. BUT, notice that Mao himself was more interested in spreading communism, etc. I doubt if he would recognize the current China or even approve of it in an economic sense.

Let me put it this way. China, IMHO, would use ALL other means to subdue India (she has already started), failing which she may go to war in a much smaller way (I doubt that too). But a nuked India is of no use to anyone, forget India herself. Mt class nukes on critical parts of India would make the land mass useless for a decade or more. By then the geopolitics will kick-in in earnest and others would fight each other to prevent the other from taking over the Indian land mass.

A Mt on Calcutta would more than likely carry radio active stuff into china, certainly BD will be wasted. Same with Chenai.

Do you honestly believe that a US or a RU would keep quite and allow China to take over the Indian peninsula?

Chernobyl in 1986, from wiki:

Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.[2]

The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Northern Europe, with some nuclear rain falling as far away as Ireland. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. According to official post-Soviet data,[3] about 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.

It is my understanding that even today only old people with memories of the area are moving in area that were evacuated.

I would never consider a Mao story to be a rational one WRT deterrence.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 06:35

I think we need to take a break and check out what happened PRIOR to the use of nukes in Japan. The US fire bombed some 67 cities, only then did they decide on nukes. The US lost tons of bombers during these campaigns, which lasted a year or more.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 03 Oct 2009 06:46

ss_roy wrote:A question worth considering:

If we conducted more tests (let's assume ), what kind of nuclear arsenal would be desirable? and what would the various warheads be mated to?

Ex- 25kt Fission, 100 kt BF, 100-400 kt TN.

25kt F (less than 200 kg) could be mated to any missile (ballistic or cruise)

100kt BF is more tricky- If we got the weight down to less than 300kg (not unrealistic) a pack of 3-5 on Agni-2s could hit important targets in China.

100-400 kt TN is also tricky. If we pushed it, 150 kg for a 100kt TN is not unrealistic. A 400 kg -400kt TN is also quite reasonable. A pack of 4-8 on SLBMs?

IMHO, most (over 70%) of indian nukes should be strategic (over 100kt), as opposed to tactical. Taking out cities, towns, important infrastructure beats hitting a few thousand troops- and we can always keep a few dozen 25kts (on cruise missiles) for that task.

A standard 100 to 400 kt TN warhead weighing 300-500 kg and not more than 70 cm in diameter would be great. I don't even know why I am saying 70 cm diameter - I have no knowledge to support that figure - it seems like a good figure to me.

I think there are many hurdles in developing such a goal - and impossible without testing - unless you want to have ishara of "capability" forever. Lots of nations can pack a nearly critical mass of Pu and get an supremely inefficient bomb.

1 kg Pu is supposed to be able to give 20 kt if it fissions 100 %. It is apparently relatively easy for any nation to take 10 kg of Pu and implode it to get 10 kt (@ 5% efficiency)

But can we get 3 kg of Pu to implode and produce 45kt? That would be an excellent 75% efficiency which could serve as a small primary for a ten times more powerful (400 kt) TN warhead. Ten times more power would be some fusion and some more fission. That means that the TN part should be at least 100 kt (my guesstimate - taking 25% yield from fusion) That means at least 2 kg of LiD needs to be consumed fully. If you can get that to happen at 25% efficiency you will need 8 kg LiD. Add fissionable tamper to that.

What would India use for fissionable tamper?
U 238 spent fuel? India may not have much. Don't know
U 235 Oralloy? India does not have much and is begging the world
Thorium? No public information about who uses it for tamper and how.

And test and test and test till it works.

Again a double veil of secrecy and ignorance. The ignorance is mine and it is potentiated by secrecy.

The easiest way of getting a workable TN bum for India is to change the Venn diagram. That is after all the traditional but asatyameva jayate method used by most.

IMO no need for tactical nukes other than our existing 20kts

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 03 Oct 2009 07:55

ramana wrote:El-Baradei was in New Delhi getting an award from GOI for the NSG waiver etc.

dhu wrote:
So now the "debate" is being framed as CTBT versus NPT!!!

Do not expect India to sign NPT in present form: ElBaradei

So see the recent outbursts from this POV. There is pressure on the CTBT. A guest getting an award from GOI is saying this!

If GOI says the POKII were enough then the corollary is why do you need to keep option open?

When has there not/never been pressure for CTBT?

Just googled and found that India has been saying the same damned stuff in 2009: 'Link CTBT with disarmament'!!

Neither side has changed their verbiage.

On the civilian front, in fact, the UK and Canada have come on board - in addition to France and Russia!!!!

U. S. still sings the 'Indo-US deal is stand-alone' song.

No NPA is sitting up and gabbing - granted, yet.

Added on first edit:

The point I wanted to make is the neither Santhanam nor the IAEA whatever made any difference to Indian position. Why would it at this point in time I know not.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 03 Oct 2009 08:00

Bade wrote:Is there any open source information on actual efficiency of western weapons, fully verified independently ?

The one post by shiv on the joint us-russia test is interesting. Had not heard of it before.

Bade the overall impression I get is that a Western nuke that is stated to yield 200 kt will reliably yield something close to that figure most of the time - maybe +/- 20 % which is still very good.

I am reminded of the recent news that one in three (or some such figure) of Indian grenades does not explode. But even if you take similar weapons from any other country - I suspect that the best guarantee anyone can get after storage etc would be over 90% and not 100%. I see no reason why anyone's nuclear warheads would be guaranteed to work reliably 100 percent of the time. But 95% would be a great figure IMO.

Now when it comes to warheads and reliability the last nuclear tests for US/Russia were in 1992 (IIRC) that is nearly 18 years ago. Only China and France tested in 1996 and they hardly tested all their designs. They tested (as far as I can tell) only what they needed to get enough data to carry on maintaining and improving their existing arsenals).

If you were to go to a nuclear scientist in France and ask him if he can give a cast iron guarantee if the weapons will work what can he say?

Every country in the world hat started testing in the 40s or 50s has regularly tested and updated until 1992. But after that the testing has been virtually zero. OK it is possible to say that a country that tested a design in 1975 could have tested a stored warhead of the same design in 1990 proving that it still works after 15 years. But what about 15 years later? Materials and methods have changed in 30 years. What sorts of guarantees are possible. Obviously - in order to maintain reliability the materials and purity must remain exactly the same after 30 years and not be changed, even if old time sensitive bomb components are changed for new ones (such as the conventional explosive).

If anything is changed - what does that say about reliability guarantees in the absence of testing? The problem for the scientists in every country is the same - and my own LCA-F 16 analogy is a straw man because aircraft can be tested, but not nukes.

When I think about things in this way it appears to me that the biggest burden regarding nukes and their ability to work falls on the scientists.

To use an analogy imagine asking a medical researcher to refine and produce new antibiotics and give him the following conditions

1) You may research anything, but test on animals only. No testing on humans
2) I may or may not use the antibiotic. I need the antibiotic to reassure some people that I have an antibiotic. But your job is to make it available for me to brandish or use as I please.
3) I want a 100 percent guarantee that it will work safely and well on humans despite not testing on them for the last 15 years or more

Under the circumstances all that the researcher can do is to maintain stocks of whatever had been proven earlier. Anything new that he comes up with cannot be accompanied by any guarantees.

A nuclear scientist faces these same dilemmas and cannot ROTFL them off and say "go fck yourself" as any medical researcher facing such conditions would do. Under the circumstances changing some Venn diagrams would seem a good idea for people facing the same dilemmas. That is happening with NoKo/Iran etc. Don't know about India

JMT

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 03 Oct 2009 08:56

Under the circumstances all that the researcher can do is to maintain stocks of whatever had been proven earlier. Anything new that he comes up with cannot be accompanied by any guarantees.

A wiki search on half-life reveals that of some of the critical ingredient isotopes are close to 10 years or so. It implies not only what you say about time constraints in churning out new designs with complete reliability tests on how it holds up in time in cold storage but also the need to maintain current stock levels of the ingredients due to the decaying materials with limited shelf time. The ultimate constraint to what you can build in weapon yields and total numbers of each is hence your fuel reprocessing capability and turnaround time to maintaining the stock levels to specs.

This is critical to ensuring that your overall efficiency of the weapons in hand does not go down from even as high as 90% to 50% or so over a decade or two.

Wonder if the tested S1 was an aged one and the untested one was hot of the press.

Since the aged one performed as expected with lesser efficiency there was no need to test the new one. In the process you would have also validated the aging of materials the ingredients and the casings and whatever else that gets affected by sitting in a radioactive environment. This hypothesis can also accommodate the fizzle crowd's

arguments on the S1.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 03 Oct 2009 09:16

Bade wrote: This is critical to ensuring that your overall efficiency of the weapons in hand does not go down from even as high as 90% to 50% or so over a decade or two.

These may be the _REAL_ nuclear secrets.

Wonder if the tested S1 was an aged one and the untested one was hot of the press. Since the aged one performed as expected with lesser efficiency there was no need to test the new one. In the process you would have also validated the aging of materials the ingredients and the casings and whatever else that gets affected by sitting in a radioactive environment. This hypothesis can also accommodate the fizzle crowd's arguments on the S1.

These hypotheses might hold true provided you can get over the initial hurdle that might make you think that people within the nuclear establishment are too stupid to think in such a complex way.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 03 Oct 2009 11:16

North Korea and Pakistan: a joint nuclear test? Old debate rekindled by Khan revelations
"David E. Sanger and William J. Broad
International Herald Tribune , 02-28-2004

The revelations about the international nuclear trading of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan have rekindled a debate in the American intelligence community over an unresolved but key strategic question from the last decade: Did Pakistan conduct a secret nuclear weapons test in partnership with North Korea? Startling clues were detected after underground tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998, when it proved to the world that its own efforts to build nuclear weapons had succeeded. According to former and current American intelligence officials, an American military jet sent to sample the air after the ...

dinesha · Post by **dinesha** » 03 Oct 2009 11:24

The real Pokhran story
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/stor ... wcg==&SEO=

V SudarshanFirst Published : 03 Oct 2009 11:27:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 03 Oct 2009 01:06:54 AM IST

The father of the dud thermonuclear bomb Dr R Chidambaram is on record describing how a real atomic explosion works. This description is recounted in Raj Chengappa’s engrossing book Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be a Nuclear Power (Harper Collins, 2000) which provides a broad-brush overview of the development of both India’s nuclear and missile programmes. The author obviously had access to all the main players, the laboratories, which kind of makes it an almost official narrative. Chengappa who interviewed Chidambaram on June 10, 1998, writes (page 187): “Chidambaram’s eyes always light up when he describes what happens when an atom bomb is exploded deep underground. He says that under the intense heat of over a million degrees centigrade (emphasis mine) a mini-mountain of rock vaporises underground. And an equal amount melts… Meanwhile the shock waves of the blast strike the surface and cause a mini-mountain of sand to rise from the ground. The mound formed is called a retarc, the word crater spelt backwards. As the force of the explosion weakens in intensity the mound collapses inwards forming a giant crater.”

What basically happens is that the explosion vaporises material around it and then the vapours expand rapidly and push outwards in all directions creating shock waves that crushes more rock. “At the ‘Taj Mahal’ site (S1 where the fission device, weaponised for delivery through a missile exploded) the shockwaves from the blast lifted a giant mound of sand (page 430), the size of a hockey field (emphasis mine). DRDO’s colonel Umang Kapur who was flying high above in a helicopter to monitor the radioactivity and video film the event saw a plume of dust. As he neared he saw that the bunkers around the side had toppled like a pack of cards. Then, in awe, he watched a giant crater form as the sand poured down through a cylindrical chimney to fill up the cavity deep below the ground. …. On the ground the scientists suddenly felt the earth under their feet quake violently…. (They) ran out in time to see a giant wall of sand akin to a tidal wave rise and fall.”

At the White House site (S2 where the dud thermonuclear device was placed), if we are to go by what the scientists led Chengappa to believe, it was placed at a depth of 200 metres (page 427) in contrast to S1 which was about 50 metres less deep (at “over 150 metres”, page 422). This dud device was rated at 45 kt yield, three times the yield of the fission device in Taj Mahal shaft and was buried about 50 metres deeper, in a shaft a kilometre away. There is, however, good reason to believe that the shafts were not as deep as this since they had been in existence since 1981 and going by the accounts in the book were not deepened when readied for the 1998 tests; scientists familiar with the work say that the deeper shaft did not go as deep as 200 metres. A yield of one kiloton is the explosive energy equivalent of a thousand tons of TNT. The bomb that US dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, only a third of the explosive energy the dud thermonuclear bomb allegedly set off.

At the bottom of the second shaft, a kilometre away, was the thermonuclear weapon. It had a fission-based trigger. The second stage was the fusion weapon. The shaft ran more than a 120 metres into the ground. At the bottom it veered slightly to the left, making an ‘L’. After the turn it ran for a further five metres, called an adit. The small tunnel was about six feet high, high enough for a person to stand. The width was about three metres. To get the men and materials into the shaft there was a winch that was suspended from an A Frame run by a diesel motor. The entire shaft was cased and shielded by a thin steel casing of .3 mm. This was to prevent or reduce seepage from subterranean streams that could mess up the wiring, among other things. Both S1 and S2 were old shafts, dug in 1981 when Rammana was adviser to defence minister. But they had been wired up from 1995 when Narasimha Rao was weighing the option of conducting nuclear tests. The three-year-old wiring had been in good working condition and the test team did not have to relay the cables, both for giving the command and for instrumentation, which was the responsibility of the DRDO, and not the BARC. For the 1998 tests, the shafts weren’t deepened or modified further.

The Control Room was about 2.5 km from ground zero. It was a tin shed with air conditioning and had all the instruments both for command cables and cables for instrumentation and recording. It was manned by working scientists and engineers of DRDO; the engineers were directly involved in instrumentation and recording process. Instrumentation within Pokhran was 100 per cent DRDO. Aviation Research Centre seismic instruments were outside Pokhran. The DAE had instrumentation in the shaft for Cortex which was a prototype. (It later transpired that the prototype Cortex failed to work). There were television cameras looking at ground zero, accelerometers, ground motion sensors, and a central recording place where the data stream was slipped. Instrumentation in 1998 was of a much higher order than 1974. This is undisputed.

After the explosion once the helicopter indicated there was no radioactivity in the air, the two teams Bravo (scientists from Bombay) and Delta (those from DRDO) went to inspect their work. According to Raj Chengappa, “The Taj Mahal site had a giant newly formed crater. But the Hydrogen bomb site wasn’t as impressive. A mound of several metres had risen and the sheds all around it had collapsed in a crazy heap. Some of the scientists looked worried. There was concern whether the secondary fusion device had properly detonated… That afternoon, however, Chidambaram and Sikka were confident. They told the rest that because the shaft was a very deep one and located on granite strata the impact on the surface was minimal. Reassured, the team headed back to break the news to the Prime Minister in Delhi.” (pages 431-432). The reconstruction of the final Pokhran moments in the book is based on author’s interviews with Chidambaram, S K Sikka, Anil Kakodkar, K Santhanam and Abdul Kalam.

According to one source who visited the site immediately after the test, apparently Chidambaram and the Bravo team stared in silent disbelief at the failure of the experiment. The blast had failed to even dislodge the winch and the A frame which stood in mute eloquent testimony to the failure. In the distance the scientists could see the yawning hole of the shaft grin mockingly at them. It had been a Gandhi bomb, totally non-violent.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 03 Oct 2009 11:26

Grand Ayothulla Tibor Toth, speakth thus:

Global Network Detects Sign Of Atomic Bomb Testing

Iran, Israel, 5 Nuclear Powers Are Part Of Global Network To Detect Signs Of Atomic Testing

UNITED NATIONS, Sep. 19, 2009

(AP) Iran, Israel and the five nuclear powers that are permanent Security Council members are part of a global network to detect signs of testing of a new atomic bomb, a positive sign of cooperation in the bid to halt the spread of such weapons, the head of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty organization said Friday.

The monitoring network has not been widely reported nor have its participants, including Iran, which the West believes is pursuing nuclear weapons, and Israel, which is widely believed to possess a nuclear arsenal but won't say as much.

Tibor Toth said at a news conference that a system to detect and verify atomic blasts that was started in 2000 now has 270 monitoring facilities and expects to increase the number to 340.

The stations rely on four technologies: seismic, sensing the shock waves of an underground blast; hydroacoustic, listening for underwater explosions; infrasound, picking up the low-frequency sound of an atmospheric test; and radionuclide detection, sampling the air for a test's radioactive byproducts.

The data is transmitted to the Vienna headquarters of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization and relayed to its signatory nations, including the U.S., which signed the pact in 1996, only for the Senate to reject it three years later.

Toth called the verification system an important step to address concerns of nuclear and non-nuclear states, and noted that it monitored North Korea's nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 "very well."

Toth spoke to reporters ahead of a high-level meeting on Sept. 24-25 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting to press North Korea, India and Pakistan to first sign and then ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and to press the other six countries who have signed it to ratify it.

Major nuclear powers, including the United States, have observed moratoriums on testing since the 1990s, but India, Pakistan and North Korea all have tested bombs since the treaty was negotiated and opened for signatures in 1996.

The treaty has been signed by 181 countries and ratified by 149, but it cannot take effect until it is ratified by nine key holdouts _ the U.S., China, North Korea, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt.

"I am very much optimistic because during the last 2-2 1/2 years we see a momentum building," he said. "We need action, action, action and leadership, leadership, leadership."

Toth praised President Barack Obama's April 5 speech in Prague in which he vowed to "immediately and aggressively" pursue treaty ratification by the Senate and to work with allies and other countries needed for ratification.

He said he was also encouraged that Indonesia's foreign minister indicated the country would ratify the treaty and China's foreign minister said the government was "working on the entry into force of the treaty."

"The ratification by the U.S. will play a leadership role and that leadership role is important," Toth said.

"I would like to emphasize, if you set aside the United States, the other outstanding ratifications are missing from Asia and the Middle East," he said. "It's an important reminder that the security of these regions can be enhanced, in my judgment, by this treaty, which is capping any potential arms races ... through taking the oxygen from the development of new weapons."

Toth said the five confirmed nuclear powers on the Security Council _ Russia, France, China, Britain and the United States _ are providing one-third of the monitoring stations and for the first time "they are undertaking legally binding obligations to be exposed to verification."

The U.S. is expected to put in place 42 stations, and during the last 8 years has already started operating 39 of them, he added.

"Iran is contributing with monitoring stations which are installed," Toth said, adding that his organization was working with Iran on gettig the stations operational.

Annika Thunborg, spokeswoman for the test ban treaty organization, said Iran has "three or four" monitoring stations.

Toth said "ratification of the treaty is a clear indication that countries have no intention to use nuclear energy in any other way than the peaceful use of nuclear energy ... so from that point of view it's important that Iran ratifies the treaty."

He said Israel "did not say no" to ratifying the treaty and is "positively contributing with monitoring stations to our work and scientific and technical involvement in our work."

"It would be an extremely important step_ and the right step in the right direction in my judgment _ if Israel ratified the treaty," Toth said.

India, Pakistan and North Korea have not even signed the treaty and Toth urged them to consider whether the test ban was in their national interests.

He welcomed the "positive soul-searching" in India and stressed that even if a country ratifies the treaty before the United States, "it is not risking any strategic security interest" because the test ban doesn't come into force until all nine key holdout countries sign it.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 03 Oct 2009 11:28

dinesha wrote:The real Pokhran story
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/stor ... wcg==&SEO=

V SudarshanFirst Published : 03 Oct 2009 11:27:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 03 Oct 2009 01:06:54 AM IST

... . . . . . According to one source who visited the site immediately after the test, apparently Chidambaram and the Bravo team stared in silent disbelief at the failure of the experiment. The blast had failed to even dislodge the winch and the A frame which stood in mute eloquent testimony to the failure. In the distance the scientists could see the yawning hole of the shaft grin mockingly at them. It had been a Gandhi bomb, totally non-violent.

Arun_S · Post by **Arun_S** » 03 Oct 2009 11:34

NoKo test is Paki and Paki test NoKo.
I am almost certain that the next NoKo test will be TN.

North Korea's nuclear tests in Pakistan

Korea WebWeekly
4/30/2004

On June 10, 1998, an Air Koryo chartered plane took off the runway of the Islamabad International Airport of Pakistan. No one had anticipated the significance of this Pyongyang-bound flight in the affairs of the Korean peninsula. On board the plane were the 20 North Korean nuclear scientists who had conducted an underground nuclear test at Pakistan's Balochistan nuclear test site. In addition, the plane was loaded with the nuclear test equipment and test data.

Pakistan has conducted six nuclear tests. On May 28, 1998, Pakistan exploded 5 nuclear devices simultaneously at the Chagal Hills (Ras Koh range) nuclear test site. One of the devices was a boosted fission device. Two days later, a 14 KT nuclear device was tested at the Balochistan test site. This device is believed to be a plutonium bomb flown in from North Korea.

The people of Pakistan were relieved and overjoyed at the news of Pakistani nuclear tests in the aftermath of India's nuclear tests of the same scale (including a boosted bomb) a few days earlier. In stark contrast to the festive mood prevailing in Pakistan, the dark cloud of American spy planes and satellites shadowed the Pakistani nuclear facilities, and a horde of US CIA and DIA agents swarmed to Pakistan's capital.

Pyongyang had no time to celebrate its Balochistan nuclear test success because it had the daunting task of extracting its nuclear scientists, test equipment and test data safely from Pakistan. Hundreds of American spies and agents were out to grab North Korean scientists and nuclear materials. Even if the plane took off safely, it might have been shot down or forced to land by American planes.

North Korea had anticipated dirty plays by the Americans and worked out detailed counter measures for the safe return of its nuclear assets. Little has been published about this super secret operation. Several American news articles have revealed certain aspects of the operation, however.

The Los Angeles Times has published two articles (1999.8.23 and 2004.3.1) related to the operation. On June 7, 1998, one week after the Balohsitan test, a gunshot rang out in the darkness of the night in the exclusive residential district of Islamabad. The district referred to as "E-7" is for high-ranking military officers and nuclear scientists, and as such, it is highly secured. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb, lives in the district. In fact, the gun was fired only a few meters from Dr. Khan's residence. The victim was Kim Sa-nae, a North Korean woman. There was no eyewitness and Pakistani plainclothes men investigated the incidence. Kim Sa-nae was reportedly well-known for her cold-noodles, a famed North Korean dish.

Kim's death was duly reported on Pakistani newspapers but few paid attention at the time, when the news of the nuclear tests dominated the news at the time. The Pakistanis said that Kim Sa-nae was a North Korean diplomat. Her mysterious murder was forgotten until the Los Angeles Times picked it up one year later. The Los Angeles Times story went far beyond what was reported by the Pakistanis. It had some sinister twists added to the unsolved 'murder'.

1). The Pakistani police refused to disclose the true identity of Kim Sa-nae. The US intelligence claims that Kim was the wife of Kang Thae-yun, a mid-level staff member at the North Korean Embassy in Pakistan, and that Kang was in fact an agent of North Korea's Chang-kwang Trading Company, which sells weapons overseas. The Americans claim that Kang was no diplomat - he was a weapons salesman. Kang left Pakistan one month after Kim's death. On the other hand, the Pakistanis claim that Kim Sa-nae was one of the twenty North Korean nuclear scientists, who were staying at the guest house of Dr. Khan's residence when Kim was shot.

2). The Pakistani police has not disclosed the murderer of Kim Sa-nae. There have been three different speculations. One says that a cook working next door to Dr. Khan borrowed a gun from a guard and fired it by accident. The second story says that one of Dr. Khan's neighbors fired his gun accidentally while cleaning it. Dr. Khan has stated that Kim's death was accidental. In contrast, the American intelligence claims that Kim Sa-nae was an American spy and provided information on North Korea's nuclear tests to the Western intelligence agents, and that she was killed while trying to defect.

3). The Los Angeles Times article claims no autopsy was done on Kim's body and that the Pakistani police was told to close the book on her case. The American intelligence claims that her body was returned to Pyongyang on June 10th, four days after her murder on a Pakistani cargo plane, and that her coffin contained two centrifuge machines for enriching uranium and associated manuals. In those days, Air Koryo had two flights per month to Islamabad. In fact, an Air Koryo plane was at Islamabad at the time of Kim's murder. Then, why would Kim's body be on a Pakistani plane?

The truth is most likely that there was no Kim Sa-nae. She was made up by North Korea to create confusion to cover up the extraction of its nuclear assets. On the other hand, the Americans went along to hammer in their claim that Pakistan provided enriched uranium technology to North Korea (and therefore, North Korea 'has' an enriched uranium nuclear program).

The Kim Sa-nae 'murder' was a fabrication to draw away American spies in Pakistan from the imminent departure of the Air Koryo plane carrying North Korean nuclear scientists, test equipment and test data. It was a cat and mouse game, in which North Korea won.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 03 Oct 2009 11:35

edited.

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 03 Oct 2009 12:19

Interesting bits of news that Paki-NokO nexus.
Was Santhanam triggered by the the above or the CTBT?
Wasn't Santhanam the person who spotted AQ Khan's corner shop?

geeth · Post by **geeth** » 03 Oct 2009 12:57

>>>North Korea's nuclear tests in Pakistan

IMO, it was Chinese tests both in Pakistan and N.Korea