India Test Fires Long-Range, Nuke-Capable Missile

An anonymous reader writes "India has successfully test fired a long-range, nuke-capable missile. Named after Hindu God of fire 'Agni', the ICBM is capable of hitting targets in China, East Africa and parts of Europe. With a successful launch of the missile, India joins an elite group of nations with long-range weapons. 'The BBC's Andrew North in Delhi says Indian officials deny it, but everyone believes the missile is mainly aimed at deterring China. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Liu Weimin, said his country was not threatened by the test. ... It was only launched once officials were sure they had the best weather conditions — so this was as much a demonstration as a real test, to show India's rivals that it has this kind of capability.'"

Re:Wait, hang on

[afidel]

Dictatorial style governance HAHAHA

Corruption high nope [transparency.org], try again.

Re:Wait, hang on

[Digicaf]

Replying instead of moderating

You make great points except for "used nukes in anger". There were a lot of considerations that went into the decision to use nukes, but anger definitely wasn't one of them. The debate over the US' decision to use them has been going on for quite some time, but a few things are pretty clear:

1. The casualty estimates for an invasion without the use of nukes ranged between half a million to 1.5 million.
2. The Japanese had a standing order to execute allied POW's in the event of such an invasion, of which there were about 100 thousand.
3. The conventional wisdom at the time (which was probably true) indicated that Japanese leaders would be unlikely to surrender until well into the invasion of the Japanese homeland.

Re:Wait, hang on

[roman_mir]

But seriously, how long do you think Obama will remain in office?

- there is your mistake. You think dictatorship requires that one person stays in power and does whatever he wants. What you fail to understand is that that is not true.

What you have now is a HYDRA type of government, and you don't need to 'cut' a head off, you vote one out, another one is lifted to light, etc.etc.

Starting back from the times of Theodore Roosevelt, it's been the same people in power with rare exceptions (Harding maybe).

Re:Can't feed nor provide clean water for populati

[cplusplus]

No, I meant trillions. It was over two billion British pounds of raw wealth goods before the 1920's, cumulative over 150+ years, with a lot of the wealth drain coming early on, which works out to well over a trillion dollars if you normalize over that period and adjust for inflation. And that's just for trade deficit to Britain for raw goods and precious metals. It does not include the fact that up to 40% of India's entire budget was spent on their military, which was under British control at the time, and was "the backbone of the power of the British empire". Yes, Britain did some good things in India, but it was a huge net loss for them. You can start reading about it here [nationalarchives.gov.uk], and work your way out from there. An AC using a term like "utter rubbish".. heh... I don't know many people outside the UK who use terms like that ;-)

Agni vs Agni

[bayankaran]

AGNI means fire in many Indian languages. The word also refers to the god of fire "Agni". Slashdot description "Named after Hindu God of fire Agni" - is misleading and insinuates some type of religious weaponry. It is like saying Saree is a Hindu dress...Saree is an Indian dress.
Hinduism is more of a way of life than a religion. And India has the largest number of Muslims after Indonesia. The 2% of Christians will be more than 20 million - much more than many European nations. This plurality one should not forget.
In fact the chief scientist of AGNI mission - Tessy Thomas - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessy_Thomas [wikipedia.org] - is from my state Kerala. She is a Christian and she named her son Tejas - a Hindu name. I am a Christian, but my name is Hindu.
Try to understand the complexity...generalizing a complex country is the basic mistake Western journalists make about India.

Re:Wait, hang on

[cyberchondriac]

Maybe not that unprecedented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_U.S._involvement_in_the_Vietnam_War [wikipedia.org]

By that war's end, 72% of the country were opposed. Plus then there was the draft; there has been no draft in decades. You could argue these polls were taken at the end, not the beginning of the war, but one could also argue that the "Iraq War" was not a new war at all; technically, the US was still at war with Iraq over Desert Storm; the terms of the cease fire were repeatedly violated by Hussein, the sanctions undermined by the UN; and our sustained military bases in Saudi Arabia fueling recruitment for Al Qaeda.
Not that any of that makes it a good idea after all.

Re:Context is important

[IAN]

North Korea had just signed a agreement not to test weapons – which specifically included not testing long range missiles for “scientific purposes” in exchange for food aid.

They didn't sign anything -- see this article [armscontrolwonk.com]. Missile launch ban is the consequence of the UNSC Resolution 1874 [wikipedia.org], adopted after the North's second nuclear test. I don't think that the North is irrational -- just quite determined to preserve the regime and prepared to play provocative moves to that end.

Re:India invents the "V2"?

[vivtho]

This 'long range missile' was designed with SUBMARINE LAUNCH CAPABILITY IN MIND.

Does India have working Submarines?

Then the US is a target.

The Agni is a land-based missile and is expected to be launched from rail-based vehicles. The sub-launched missiles are the Sagarika [wikipedia.org] (700 km range and tested successfully but not yet in service) and the K-4 (3500 km range which is under development and hasn't had any flight tests as yet)

India does not have any ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in service yet. The first one - the Arihant was launched last year and is undergoing tests. All other submarines are either SSKs or SSNs