India Accidentally Fires Missile into Pakistan
India blamed a “technical malfunction” during routine maintenance for the incident in which a missile was fired across the border into longtime foe Pakistan.
According to NBC News:
“On 9 March 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile,” India’s defense ministry said in a statement. “It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident.”
Earlier on Friday Pakistan’s foreign office said it had summoned India’s charge d’affaires in Islamabad to lodge a protest over what it called an unprovoked violation of its airspace. Pakistan called for an investigation into the incident, which it said could have endangered passenger flights and civilian lives.
Pakistan warned India “to be mindful of the unpleasant consequences of such negligence and take effective measures to avoid the recurrence off such violations in future”.
Military experts have in the past warned of the risk of accidents or miscalculations by the neighbors, which have fought three wars and engaged in numerous military clashes, most recently in 2019 which saw the air forces of the two engage in combat. Both nations have nuclear weapons.
“The flight path of this object endangered many national and international passenger flights both in Indian and Pakistani airspace as well as human life and property of ground,” Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Babar Iftikhar said.
Air force officials in Pakistan said the missile flew at an altitude of 40,000, at Mac 3, and traveled 77 miles in Pakistan airspace before crashing.
Considering that 77 miles is only about 2.5 minutes at Mach 3, that is not very long for the missile to be in flight before crashing. Given that limited timeline, it would make me wonder if the Indians were successful in disarming and/or disabling the missile, thus lending credence to their statement that it truly was an accidental launch.
Of course, I do also wonder why they didn’t send a self-destruct code to the missile to have it destroyed while still 7.5 miles above the ground. I am sure that they could have found an area on the flight path which would be minimally disturbed by any falling debris. Could it be that there was a reason that they wanted it to “crash” into Pakistan instead? Curious minds want to know.