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Indian Army Mistook Planets For Spy Drones
hackingbear writes "BBC reports that India's army spent six months watching 'Chinese spy drones' violating its air space, only to find out they were actually Jupiter and Venus. Between last August and February, Indian troops had already documented 329 sightings of unidentified objects over a lake in the border region next to China. India accused the objects being Chinese spy drones. The incident even escalated to a military build-up and a stand-off at border between the two countries. Residents of the solar system are glad that India does not possess the capability to shoot down such high altitude objects."
in their Potrzebie. They'll need an Axolotl to fix that one...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
India has nuclear weapons. Sleep tight.
They can just request the drone to do the needful and reboot itself into safe mode.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Except to say, goverments want us to trust them? How? They are SO stupid!
Tomorrow is another day...
This is what happens when your society tries to leapfrog technological advancements without understanding the stuff that preceded them.
Shoot them down!
Venus has always been suspicious.
I personally find Pluto suspect.
You can understand why the Indian Army might be jumpy.
To See the Unseen
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Well in America, during the '60s people thought that the alignment of Jupiter with Mars meant the beginning of a golden age of harmony and understanding on earth.
Thats no planet, thats a battle station!
they program for America's offshoring to India.
Was their analysis open and shut? Did they decide to probe further?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Maybe they should start outsourcing some job positions to the US.
Since most won't RTFA - the confrontation didn't happen or escalate over the sightings. That was because the Chinese army setup camp in Indian territory. During that time soldiers reported these sightings, and the army (responsibly) went to the Indian Institute of Astrophysics for confirmation. This won't stop the India bashing of course, but hopefully someone will read this post or TFA.
It's a moon!
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
This is how Marvin the Martian started out
Table-ized A.I.
That's no moon!
Oh wait, yes it is.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Not sure if troll or Mad Magazine.
...from a nation that practically invented astronomy.
Proverbs 21:19
I am an Indian - so let me try to fill in the possible missing pieces in the story and the cultural perspective.
First of all the China-India border, especially in Ladakh is very tense with China occupying a border region called Aksai Chin for many decades. The Indian Army soldiers, who are most likely from the plains and who have never seen the sky in all its high altitude glory (we are talking about 15,000 - 20,000 ft altitude here) were likely tasked with looking out at the night sky and see anything 'interesting' - the officer who issued the order must have meant Chinese drones, but by the time the order got to the lookout guy from the officer via the JCO through the sergeant, it must have read look out for something 'bright'. The soldiers were seeing the brightest planets in their lives and obviously had plenty to write in their reports.
Then the sighting reports started pouring in and the officer in charge probably got suspicious and looked out and concluded that the objects were likely celestial. But just to make sure that he is right, he must have ringed up the battalion HQ to get some astronomy duded flown in to get a confirmation. That is probably why the request went straight to Indian Institute of Astrophysics. The astro-dudes flew in, confirmed that they are looking at planets and on their way back talked to a journalist about the incident and how stuuuuuuupid the army guys were.
That, I guess what would have happened.
Sound like an Indian outsourcing type mess up.
From: http://www.bwcinet.com/thule/4techdr.htm
The single exception occurred shortly after the BMEWS at Thule went into operation. In October, 1960, the moon rose over the horizon directly in line with one of J Site's detection radar beams. The engineers who designed the BMEWS system had apparently not considered that the ultra-high powered radar beams would reach the moon and in about 2 seconds, return to the super-sensitive BMEWS receivers. The resulting returns swamped the MIPS with return information, sending thousands of threat warnings to Cheyenne Mountain. While the angles, speeds, and doppler information did not fit the model algorithms of a real threat, the sheer vastness of the return information overwhelmed the system. The U.S. did not react to the point that we were brought to the brink of war, but the doors to Cheyenne Mountain were closed and locked for several hours while analysts tried to determine the cause of the fiasco. Once it was understood what caused the problem, a solution was quick to come. A modification to the radar receivers, called a "Moon Gater" for its ability to block, or gate, moon returns by shifting receiver frequency every one-and-a-half seconds, was designed by RCA engineers and installed on all the BMEWS receivers. When moonrise was forecast in one of the BMEWS sectors, the Gater was turned on. Every second and a half, the receiver frequency shifted, and the returns from the moon were ignored. The frequency shift caused the receivers to run somewhat detuned, and lights in the DRAM room routinely turned yellow.
Shoot them down!
That could be dangerous - you'd really get into trouble with the astrologer's union. I doubt "Venus ascends in aquarius and then disappears in a large nuclear fireball shortly before teatime" is something they have a prediction for in their charts. In fact you might force them to just make something up! ;-)
Hey kids rocks and rolls...Venus has a higher albedo than my libido so be careful when you ride to the chruch in your new tuexedo.
I know Americans are pretty dumb as it is. But when hicks from the sticks mistake a planet for a drone or a UFO, it's understandable. But I tend to think we would have figured it out before it became a military operation. This is pretty ridiculous.
Once again, that "military-intelligence" is an oxymoron.
When the U.S. installed one of the first Radar stations to catch Russian missiles as they came over the hemisphere. The Moon set off one of the first alerts, was a tad too sensitive.
Best cite I can come up with; but a common snicker when I was growing up.
http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm
"The rising moon was misinterpreted as a missile attack during the early days of long-range radar."
In my day, we made do with nothing more than weather balloons, and a few half-size test dummies. Darn whippersnappers!
Spy drones always fly with their lights on. Safety first!
I know most of us probably haven't taken a good, long look at the night sky. Most because of light pollution, or from just not bothering to look up.
I've seen planets before. With the naked eye, you know what they look like? Little dots of light, about the size of a star, or a high-altitude aircraft. Saturn is the farthest planet that can be seen with the naked eye, and also the hardest.
Without a telescope, you don't see the rings. Or much else - it's a dot in the sky, like the billions and billions of other dots in the sky. The only easy way to tell the difference between planets and aircraft, from the ground with the naked eye, is by movement - planets move far, far slower. Unless, of course, the aircraft is circling, or even just of a type that can hover (either a aerostat, or a helicopter design).
So yeah, I can totally believe that a squad of soldiers, most of whom were likely born in cities and never grew up with a good view of the night sky, and none of whom are trained astronomers, would find Saturn suspicious enough to report as an "unidentified object".
And, contrary to the headlines, they didn't "mistake it for a drone". A team of military observers observed something, made some requests to see if it was something benign, or a potential threat. The scientists sent back some requests for better information, just to be sure (after all, placing a drone around where a planet would be sounds like a decent idea for camouflage), then reported back "yep, that's Saturn".
Same goes for Venus. Easy to see in the night sky, sometimes even in the day, but not easy to identify unless you were specifically looking for planets. It's commonly seen, but misidentified - our own President Carter did so, for instance.
Planets also *move*. They're not in fixed positions from night to night - they move through the sky. So it's not like spotting constellations, where you just need a point of reference. Knowing where those planets will be takes some pretty complex calculations - figuring out how to do that drove many advances in math.
So yeah. Stop acting like they're morons for not instantly recognizing a planet. I'd wager money that you all wouldn't even spot them in the sky, much less know exactly what they are.
At the very least they checked with their astronomers, not astrologists, before they took any further action
With the collaboration of the NSA, now they can identify Uranus
The problem is, until now they have yet to locate their own anus
It's open source and comes for Windows, Mac and Linux. Surely someone in the Indian Army has a laptop and an Internet connection.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Another scary possibility - a meteor or asteroid being mistaken for an incoming missile.
That almost happened in 2002, when tensions were high between India and Pakistan. An asteroid exploded in the earth's atmosphere with the force of an atom bomb. Fortunately, it exploded over the Indian Ocean.
If the asteroid had hit the atmosphere a few hours earlier, it would have exploded over India or Pakistan. Whatever country was under the explosion might have thought it was under attack, and this mistake might have started a nuclear war between the two countries.
Some of them even sadly crashed. Confusing venus for an UFO is not so rare apparentely. The difference ? Pilot doingn the confusion in the middle of the US will not create an incident with their neighbor (canada/mexic). But doing this in India will do.
Before poo-pooing India for the confusion, realize that even the USA pilot did also get the same confusion.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Some of the comments on here by Americans mocking the Indians are pretty rich coming from a country that fought the Battle of Los Angeles
No left turn unstoned.
a 5 year old could've figured it was just planets using google skymap..
There is curiously similar event, local university astronomers had to calm the situation at half night and explain the difference between Jupiter and a ballistic missile. Sounds fun now but really was not at the time...
I'd hate having Jupiter and/or Venus crash land in my backyard ... ;-) ...
someone remembering this song?
No... no, thats not a F 117, it's just an innocent crow...
"If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in." --Alexander Warbucks
Casteism
What a sad commentary on how such stupid submissions make their way to slashdot.
OPERATION HALLOWEEN
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3. On Halloween, start posting Slashdot memes on 4chan. Leave the "Name" field empty.