Instagram and other social media platforms can be useful for keeping tabs on the daily lives of famous people. Celebrities from all walks of life often show up in photos, giving us glimpses into their whereabouts and activities. However, it’s not common to come across “sensitive” information about nations. This is especially true when it comes to something as serious as the nuclear arsenal of a country like India. Sometimes, reality overcomes fiction.
The post. On Tuesday, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a US-based non-profit organization that tracks the global nuclear arsenal, published an article titled “Hot-Launch Yoga: Cobra Pose Reveals Nuke Repose.” The first part of the title makes a playful reference to military code and yoga, while the second part refers to the revelation of information about nuclear positions.
It is indeed as it seems. The FAS has uncovered and revealed to the world a significant move in India’s nuclear weaponry through social media. Specifically, it was a post about a yoga class from the deck of one of its patrol vessels.
Nuclear India. Before we move on, let’s provide some context. India has 172 nuclear weapons, which makes it a minor player compared to countries like Russia and the U.S. which have over 5,000 each.
However, like other nuclear powers, India has air-launched, land-based, and sea-based nuclear weapons. India launched its first nuclear-armed submarine in 2016, but previously maintained sea-launched nuclear weapons aboard two Sukanya-class patrol vessels, INS Suvarna and INS Subhadra.
The Sukanya missiles. As the FAS explains, the Sukanya missiles were of an old design. This meant that they had a short range and needed to be fueled immediately before launch. Experts believed that India would eventually abandon these nuclear weapons on ships in favor of underwater nuclear weapons, but the exact timing of this decision was uncertain.
The country has up to seven Sukanya-class patrol vessels, but only INS Suvarna and INS Subhadra are equipped to deploy nuclear weapons. After reviewing satellite imagery, the FAS noticed that the stabilizers required to launch the nuclear missiles seemed to be absent from the decks of the ships. The question is: Which ship, INS Suvarna or INS Subhadra, could it be?
Instagram. The FAS believed it’d be easier to find clues about the boats considering they’re not submarines. After hours of searching, the team found a post on Instagram that the Prasar Bharati News Services account had shared in October 2022. It showed people doing yoga on the deck of INS Suvarana. Another post, published by India in Seychelles in February 2024, showed the deck of INS Subhadra.
No doubts. The missing stabilizers in both photos indicated that India had relocated its nuclear weapons. Ironically enough, yoga, which is ingrained in the country’s way of life to the extent that the government and the military utilized it in diplomacy, solved the great unknown.
In short, the FAS solved its research in an unlikely way: using an Instagram photo of people doing yoga on the deck of a ship that once housed nuclear weapons. “It’s much more unusual to learn things about military systems–especially nuclear systems–in non-military settings. That’s what makes this case unique,” the FAS says.
This article was written by Miguel Jorge and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Federation of American Scientists | Indian in Seyschelles
View 0 comments