World governments arent exactly forthcoming about where theyre stashing all their nukes.
You want people to know youve got them, but not necessarily where theyre located.
India has revealed the movement of its nuclear weapons in an Instagram post about yoga.
People posing aboard the INS Subhadara in February 2024.© Indian in Seyschelles via Instagram.
The FAS is a U.S.-based non-profit that, among other things,tracks the worlds nuclear arsenal.
At just 172 nukes, India is a bit player in terms of the size of its nuclear stockpile.
Russia and the U.S. have more than 5,000 each.
Like other nuclear powers, India maintains a triad.
It has air-launched nukes, land-based nukes, and sea-based nukes.
The submarine is an ideal place for a sea nuke because its stealthy.
But India didnt launch its first nuclear-armed submarine until 2016.
The missiles on theSukanyaswere an older design.
They could only go a short range and needed to be fueled immediately before launch.
For those reasons, experts always assumed India would eventually ditch these ship-nukes for sub-nukes.
They just werent sure when it would happen.
But he wasnt quite sure if the ships he was seeing were INS Suvarana and Subhadra.
It dawned on Korda that these ships arent nearly as secretive as submarines.
They have lots of missions beyond nuclear, including policing and coastal defense, he said.
That means that theyre usually sailing into areas where people might be taking pictures of them.
And thats when the yoga pictures popped up.
The second was from the deck of the INS Subhadra in February 2024.
The stabilizers were absent in both photos.
Meaning that India had moved its nukes.
View this post on Instagram
India does a lot ofyoga diplomacy.
Including on the deck of a ship that once housed nuclear weapons.
And in those posts they were missing their nuclear arms.
Perhaps a bit of military signaling, perhaps a bit of cultural diplomacy, perhaps something else entirely.
And sometimes that can tell us something valuable.
Its much more unusual to learn things about military systemsespecially nuclear systemsin non-military configs.
Thats what makes this case unique.
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