back to article Nervy nuke-armed nation fires missile with 5,000km range

India has successfully tested a surface-to-surface ballistic missile. The nation was kind enough to announce the test on Thursday, revealing that its Agni-5 “was successfully flight tested for its full range … from Dr Abdul Kalam Island, Odisha. This was the fifth test of the Missile and the third consecutive one from a …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't tell the Orange-utan

    He'll only brag about how his are biglier!!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't tell the Orange-utan

      Why should he? The Indians aren't posturing like butt-hurt progs.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Don't tell the Orange-utan

        Because he is a child.

        He can't help himself.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Don't tell the Orange-utan

          Try looking in the mirror. ;-/

          1. James 51
            Alien

            Re: Don't tell the Orange-utan

            @ B(M)J 'I'm asking him to make a change'

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How could you possibly mistake

      A shit flinging gibbon for an Orange-utan?

  2. 7teven 4ect

    Jai Hind

    Mahabarat is maha :D

  3. redpawn

    As long as...

    no one tells the Lying Sack of Trump (LSoT) that India isn't Christian there should be no problems.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As long as...

      You do realize Trump's son in law is Jewish? Did a Christian traumatize you as a child?

      1. E 2

        Re: As long as...

        What, are you the local Trump sock puppet?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: As long as...

          No, just a guy who likes to rub prog's faces in their own failure. It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it!

        2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
          Unhappy

          What, are you the local Trump sock puppet?

          Haven't you seen enough of his posts to know?

      2. jmch Silver badge

        Re: As long as...

        Judaism is an accepted religion in the US. In fact, Israel can do pretty much as it pleases and the US will nod and smile.

        Hinduism is probably looked on with suspicion (they don't eat beef?!?!?!?!?), although I'm not sure many USAians know what a Sikh is. On the other hand Trump might get trumpy if he knew a significant part of Indians are Muslim

        1. James 51
          Angel

          Re: As long as...

          In a country with as many people and India, religons that are a tiny minority can still have tens of millions of members.

          1. eldakka
            Holmes

            Re: As long as...

            In India's 2011 census, 2.3% of the population declared as christian.

            With over 1.2 billion people, that's more 27 million Christians. Only 50 of the 230ish countries in the world have more people than that.

        2. Chris G

          Re: As long as...

          @jmch, you do know that Sikhs are not Hindu, their religion is Sikkim, they are all warriors and some of the most honourable people I have met.

          There are large communities of Sikhs in the US so shouldn't be a total mystery to them.

          1. jmch Silver badge

            Re: As long as...

            "@jmch, you do know that Sikhs are not Hindu"

            Yes, I meant to show they are a seperate group unknown to the USAians, but it didn't quite come out that way :)

          2. aqk
            Pint

            Re: As long as Canada, you say?

            As well, Canada's Minister of Defense is a Sikh, and a Sikh is now the leader of Canad'a New Democratic Party.

            But sadly also, Sikhs were responsible for the worst piece of Aircraft terrorism in history. No one ever seems to remember that, as unlike the Lockerbie "incident", most of the passengers were Canadian and somewhat darker-skinned.

            1. E 2

              Re: As long as Canada, you say?

              Normally I don't like rating disasters, but I don't think the Air India bombing can touch the 9/11 attacks - for either immediate death toll or knock on death toll.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: As long as...

            As Sikhs wear turbans clueless pindosy mistake them for Arabs and beat some of them up once in a while as Arab terrorists.

          4. jgarbo

            Re: As long as...

            Oh? A Sikh was murdered shortly after 9/11 - mistaken for a Muslim! Americans are greatly ignorant.

      3. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

        Re: As long as...

        "bigly" john, your brain needs a reboot.

        trump is as rascist as... a very racist person. Seriously, he banned immigrant from 6 countries illegally, because they have Muslims in them - whilst ignoring Saudi Arabia, where most of the terrorists actually came from, which is also a Muslim country!

        He slams black people protesting police brutality, and calls white Nazis "very fine people".

        So the OP has a point - more so than you.

        1. Jonathan Schwatrz
          FAIL

          Re: YetAnotherLocksmith Re: As long as...

          ".....trump is as rascist as... a very racist person.......because they have Muslims in them...." Take a deep breath, try to concentrate, then repeat after me - Islam is not a race.

          ".....whilst ignoring Saudi Arabia...." Which actually blows a massive hole in your whole point of him being "racist"/islamophobic - if he really only wanted to ban on the grounds of Islam rather than terrorist threat then surely Saudi would be top of his list? But Saudi has gone a long way towards curbing their own extremists since 9/11, far further than the six Islamic states on his list.

          "....He slams black people protesting police brutality...." No, he pointed out the use of violence by both BLM supporters, and that the "alt-Left" (AKA Antifa), have a long record of violently "disrupting" any other group they don't happen to agree with (which is every group espousing anything even slightly to the Right of Stalin).

          ".....and calls white Nazis "very fine people"...." No, he said many of the people at Right-wing marches were "very fine people", he never endorsed Nazism or any individual group at those marches. You may try and claim everyone at those marches was a "Nazi" but then that is probably because you perceive anyone slightly to the Right of Stalin as a "Nazi", right?

  4. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    And let's not forget India's very own seven-satellite GPS alternative, launched in part to reduce dependence on other nations' satnav facilities.

    You forgot:

    1. Has 2 aircraft carriers. With aircraft.

    2. Is the co-developer of sea skimming hypersonic missiles and builds them.

    3. Has a fleet armed with these

    4. Is co-developing Mach 7 hypersonic missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos-II

    5. If memory served me right their visiting team also handed the RAF their heads on a plate (with the RAF fielding the most weird excuse that they deliberately used the most mediocre pilots they could find for the engagement).

    6...

    It is a reality - India is practically there to become a Tier 1 world power (while UK is clearly dropping out of the major league).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm sure we can all agree that all those vital high tech death tools are far better uses for the money than proper infrastructure, sanitation, rural development, reducing corruption, improving democracy, addressing a range of brutal long running local insurgencies, addressing the rape culture prevalent in some parts of Indian society, or even data security on the national biometrics database..

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        India does have much of the best land on earth. You would prefer that they remain low-hanging fruit? That would lead to more war, not less.

        1. Adam 52 Silver badge

          India's not really low-hanging fruit. Apart from anything else it's got 2.5 million trained soldiers. But it is next door to the world's largest, and increasingly expansionist, military.

      2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        @ledswinger - completely with you on the subject.

        However, do we like it or not, building death tools LOCALLY creates jobs. One of the Indian most impressive achievements is that they have managed to successfully insist that they build nearly everything locally with the corresponding job creation.

        Not BAE building it for them in USA.

        As far as sanitation, etc - it will take decades if not centuries to get the country to a modern footing. It is a BIG country with large chunks of it in a really backwater state. Ditto for insurgencies. Corruption - no comment.

        1. Mazo

          Building "death tools" is not a choice

          For India they had to do it because the British left them with this mess called Pakistan next door. And then they had Mao on the other side. The need for building these weapons was not a lark or an ego project but a considered decision - just like their space program. The development of independent industrial, technological and scientific capabilities was one of the foundation stones of Indian Govt policy. Self sufficiency in food was another. Today they have achieved both of those largely.

          Sanitation in general is a product of their poverty - not due to lack of interest. The over-population and under funded civic authorities naturally means that that sanitation struggles to improve.

          1. Jonathan Schwatrz
            Stop

            Re: Mazo Re: Building "death tools" is not a choice

            "For India they had to do it because the British left them with this mess called Pakistan next door...." Bzzzt! Nil point! The Partition of Imperial India into India and Pakistan was nothing to do with the British, it's completely homegrown due to the inability of Muslims to get along with anyone. If anyone should take the majority of blame it's the Pakistanis seeing as the Aligarh Movement came up with the idea that Indian Muslims should be treated as a separate people as they defined themselves as Muslims first before Indians, and therefore insisted they should have their own country, Pakistan. Nothing to do with Imperial Britian, colonialism or anything other than Islamic intransigence.

          2. The First Dave

            Re: Building "death tools" is not a choice

            The British are to blame for many things, but 'partition' as it is known, occurred _after_ India re-gained independence.

      3. Red Bren
        Mushroom

        Same goes for Trident

        If we're going to lecture "developing" nations about solving poverty and building infrastructure before investing in WMDs, we really ought to ensure we've solved our poverty and infrastructure issues before spending a fortune on Trident.

        1. aqk
          Coat

          Re: Same goes for Trident and used subs

          Meh- Need more money?

          Just sell more of your rusty old diesel subs to Canada. They're suckers for that.

      4. Mazo

        Britain has invested plenty in building Aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and maintaining nuclear missiles despite not having any significant threat to its interests since the end of the Cold War. Has all that extra money build better infrastructure, improved democracy, addressed a range of racial, ethnic and social issues, addressed the race gangs, the Sharia courts, the grooming gangs, the number of child homeless, the state of the rural economy, the NHS, the number of children trafficked, the spread of ISIS ideology or even building the IT infrastructure that countries like India, China are building to take their societies into the 21st century ?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They are certainly far ahead of us on the poverty scale with (as of 2014) 58% of the population living on less that $3.10 a day.

    3. Ken 16 Silver badge

      "UK is clearly dropping out of the major league"

      Didn't that happen 50 years ago?

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: "UK is clearly dropping out of the major league" Didn't that happen 50 years ago?

        I'd suggest more like about 62 years ago.

    4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      6...

      Will be testing an Oxidizer Rich Staged Combustion rocket engine with the thrust level of the Spacex Merlin 1d mfg in India at a Russian test stand.

      The US ULA has been buying RD180's (also ORSC) from Russia for the last 16 years and the US/Russian JV that slaps made in USA on the packing crates "upgrades" and "certifies" them for US use has been claiming they could mfg them in the USG if paid enough money, but it's so hard because "y'know this techs complicated and we don't really know how to do this stuff and all the blueprints are written in Russian and none of us speaks Russian and the metallurgy is tricky and and"

    5. wyatt

      Interestingly the Pakistani entrants to the British Army Cambrian Patrol competition have won for the last two years, doing very well in others. Not sure about India. Soldiers from that region are well trained and motivated.

      1. Mazo

        You can't "win" a Patrol..

        The Cambrian Patrol is an exercise - not a competition. Teams from around the world participate in the "training event" and consequently Common wealth nations are usually the most represented.

        Gold (75 percent), silver (65-74 percent) and bronze (55-64 percent) medals are awarded based on the number of points earned on completion of the gruelling course. Certificates are awarded to teams that finish with lower than 55 percent of the points.

        Indian, Pakistani, Nepali etc teams regularly get the Gold.

    6. Floydian Slip
      WTF?

      And we still send them aid????

    7. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      7. The Indian Army have perfected the funniest joke in the world into a comedy show, killing the enemy with laughter.

      My conscription service had its WTF moments but this takes goes straight to the twilight zone.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        "7. The Indian Army have perfected the funniest joke in the world into a comedy show, killing the enemy with laughter."

        You could say similar about the guards at Buck House, the Swiss Guard at the Vatican or the Greek Presidential Guard, all of whom can seem quaint or even funny to an outsider but will kick the shit out of anyone impugning their honour or the job they do. Never assume that the way a military marches is a reflection of their capabilities just because you don;t why they march the way they do.

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hum....

      "India is practically there to become a Tier 1 world power"

      Whose Citizens still shit in the streets and have so many other issues they will always be

      a third tier living experience. (I believe is the term is shithole ).

    9. E 2

      re: (while UK is clearly dropping out of the major league)

      Shorely the UK can invest an extra 350M pounds per week in weaponry now?

  5. Valeyard

    priorities..

    We still give around £200 million to India in aid. Looks like either they don't need it or they're fine to spend less on their citizens because they know we'll step in

    1. Mazo

      Re: priorities..

      Everybody knows that UK "Aid" to India, China etc is a scam that only profits British bureaucrats and business interests. Neither the Govt of India nor the people of India see any of that money and haven't for decades. The "aid" that UK doles out to other countries is more about funding the large body of "professional NGO" groups who are staffed by retired bureaucrats, wives of ambassadors and politicians.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Agni-5’s range is also less than half....

    They do have a concurrent space program that can heft 5 tonnes into geostationary orbit, so they can't be very far off covering the whole planet if push came to shove.

    1. Mazo

      Re: Agni-5’s range is also less than half....

      They could put a 300 Kg Probe into Martian Orbit with under $150 million in investment. If they WANTED to they could have covered the Globe decades ago.

      Their missile ranges are not an indicator of their capabilities - but rather their threat perceptions.

  7. Tigra 07
    Mushroom

    "nobody expects it to lob missiles at any of those locations, because it’s a stable and peaceful democracy that generally observes international laws"

    Except, maybe towards Pakistan. After all they have been shooting each other's soldiers the last few weeks across the border. Don't expect either side to accept that.

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