Diego Garcia : A real threat to Indian ocean countries

The US Naval Base Diego Garcia located in the center of Indian Ocean, is a real threat to the security of Countries around Indian Ocean. US created so much hue and cry when Russians established their military base near US mainland in Cuba, which is also known as "Cuban Missile Crisis". But why there is no cry heard when it is establishing its bases near other nations? US used this base to house B52's to attack Iraq during gulf war. Following is the article published in military.com giving its history.

Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory is located at 7 Degrees South Latitude, off the tip of India. Diego Garcia was discovered by Portuguese explorers in the early 1500s. It is the largest of fifty-two islands which form the Chagos Archipelago, located in the heart of the Indian Ocean. The island's name is believed to have come from either the ship's captain or the navigator on that early voyage of discovery.

A tropical footprint-shaped island just 7 degrees south of the equator, Diego Garcia is heavily vegetated. The island covers 6,720 acres in area with a maximum height of 22 feet and an average elevation of four feet above sea level. The shoreline is about 40 miles long and the island encloses a lagoon 6.5 miles wide and 13 miles long.

In 1965, with the formation of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), Diego Garcia was under the administrative control of the British government of the Seychelles. In 1976, the Seychelles gained independence from England and the BIOT became a self-administering territory under the East African Desk of the British Foreign Office. The Crown's representative on island, the British Representative (BRITREP), acts as both Justice of the Peace and Commanding Officer of the Royal Naval Party 1002.

Until 1971, Diego Garcia's main source of income was from the profitable copra oil plantation. At one time, copra oil from here and the other "Oil Islands" provided fine machine oil and fuel to light European lamps. During the roughly 170 years of plantation life, coconut harvests on Diego Garcia remained fairly constant, at about four million nuts annually. The plantation years ended with the arrival of the U.S. military construction.

On March 24, 1971 construction began on a U.S. Naval Communication Facility. This construction was accomplished by units of the U.S. Naval Construction Force (Seabees). Naval Communications Station Pre-commissioning Detachment arrived to prepare for operations in December of 1972 and on March 20, 1973 the U.S. Naval Communications Stations, Diego Garcia, was commissioned. The communications facility was later changed to Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station (NCTS) in October of 1991.

A major change to the island organizational structure occurred with the establishment of the Navy Support Facility (NSF) on October 1, 1977. Commanding Officer, NSF, assumed all duties and responsibilities previously assigned to the Island Commander. The nucleus for NSF came from the original Communication Station enlisted and officer allowances. All billets, other than those dedicated to communications support, were transferred to CO, NSF, who is responsible for maintaining and operating facilities and providing services and materials in support of several tenant shore activities and units of the operating forces. Following the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, Diego Garcia saw the most dramatic build-up of any location since the Vietnam War era. In 1986, Diego Garcia became fully operational with the completion of a $500 million construction program.

The 1990, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked the most intense operational period in Diego Garcia's history. From 1 August 1990 to 28 February 1991, NAVSUPPFAC Diego Garcia achieved and maintained the highest degree of operational readiness and provided levels of support which outstripped all contingency planning. As the base population doubled almost overnight, with the deployment of a Strategic Air Command Bombardment Wing and other aviation detachments, workload base-wide increased from 300-2000% over peacetime levels with no personnel augmentation. Diego Garcia became the only U.S. Navy base that launched offensive air operations during Operation Desert Storm and Diego Garcia remains a vital link in our defense structure.

India tests Trishul missile

The Trishul "quick-reaction" surface-to- air missile was again tested on 23rd July 2006, but just like its sister Akash missile it is still far from being inducted into the armed forces. The frequent time, cost, technical and operational slippages in the nine-km-range Trishul and 25-km-range Akash surface-to-air missile programs have meant that the country's air defence cover continues to have gaping holes.

Pakistan, in sharp contrast, has always accorded high priority to its air defence management, with its multi-tier surveillance cover, air defence fighters, quick-reaction, short-range missiles and an integrated control and reporting system. The Indian Armed Forces, however, continues to make do with its obsolete air defence systems, said an Asian Age report here today.

The IAF, for instance, has aging Pechora, Igla-1M and OSA-AK missile systems, and that, too, in woefully inadequate numbers. While Trishul was to replace its OSA-AK weapons system, Akash was meant as a substitute for Pechora. But both the Trishul and Akash air defence missile systems, which are part of the original Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme launched as far back as 1983, have been dogged by development snags in their "command guidance and integrated Ramjet rocket propulsion" systems.

Trishul, for instance, has been tested over 80 times so far without coming anywhere near becoming operational. It was, in fact, virtually given up for dead in 2003 after around Rs 300 crore was spent on it, before being revived yet again. Trishul's repeated failure, in fact, forced the Navy to go in for nine Israeli Barak anti-missile defence systems for its frontline warships, along with 200 Barak missiles, at a cost of Rs 1,510 crore during the 1999 Kargil conflict. The Navy is now inducting even more Barak systems due to Trishul's continued failure.

The Defence Research and Development Organization, for its part, contends the seven Trishul trials so far this year, including a flight test with enhanced range of 11.5km against a remotely piloted aircraft, have "met all mission objectives." Trishul can engage targets like aircraft and helicopter, flying between 300 meters and 500 meters, by using its radar command-to- line, of-sight guidance system, it says. The report card for Akash, tested 16 times since January 2005, is even better since it has completed all its development trials.

"On January 28 this year, interception of two moving targets by two Akash missiles with live warheads was successfully carried out," said an official. "Akash has multiple-target handling capacity with a digitally coded command guidance system. Its user trials are now in progress," he said. The missile's `Rajendra' radar, a multi-function phased array radar which carries out surveillance, target-tracking, missile acquisition and guidance, can simultaneously track several aircraft within a range of 40 to 60 kilometers.

India's space odyssey stalled as rocket explodes

Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh), (IANS) India's ambitious space programme suffered a blow Monday when a launch vehicle that was to put a communications satellite into orbit exploded moments after launch here but scientists pledged to come up with a new satellite within a year.
The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle GSLV-FO2 blew up into a huge ball of fire after deviating from its flight path while the INSAT 4C system plunged into the sea, causing despair among India's scientific community. The mission control at the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Sriharikota station gave the command to destroy the 2,168-kg satellite the rocket was carrying in order to prevent any disaster to populated areas.

'We had a mishap this evening,' ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair told the media at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota island, off Andhra Pradesh, describing the failure as 'a rare phenomenon'. He said one of the strap-on engines in the first stage of the launch vehicle under performed, causing the failure. Emergency measures were resorted to and the ISRO mission control gave the destroy command for its Rs.960-million satellite and Rs.1.6-billion launch vehicle, ending years of effort by hundreds of scientists, to ensure that the debris fell into the sea.

It was the first time an INSAT series satellite was launched from an Indian space station. It was the heaviest of ISRO satellites. 'The lift-off was normal. Within a few seconds, however, it was clear that the vehicle was not following the trajectory. After 60 seconds of the lift-off, parts of the vehicle were falling off,' the ISRO chief said. Nair did not rule out sabotage but said that he would not be able to anything definite unless he analysed more data 'on what happened this evening to INSAT 4C'. This, he said, would be available within the week. The INSAT 4C failure came a day after the Defence Research and Development Organisation's long-range ballistic missile Agni-III, capable of carrying nuclear warhead and travelling 3,500 km, failed in its test firing.

Nair said: 'In one of the four strap-on engines in the first stage of the launch vehicle, the pressure had fallen below zero.' This created an imbalance in the thrust to the lift-off. 'We could control this up to 45 seconds of the lift-off.' The vehicle's normal inclination was supposed to be about four degrees but by the time it was 60 seconds in the air it had tilted to 10 degrees or more. 'More telemetry data is required. The process to gather this data has been initiated,' Nair said. The launch, originally scheduled at 4 p.m., was postponed to 5.17 p.m. and then to 5.37 p.m. There was some fuel leak in the cryogenic third stage of the launch vehicle, which engineers had to put right at the last minute.

'This delay had nothing to do with the vehicle but was a ground-system problem,' Nair clarified. He described the failure as a 'setback' but noted 'ISRO had a success record for the last 11 missions' and promised to get another satellite up in a year's time. The third satellite in the INSAT-4 series - INSAT-4B - is to be launched from Kourou in February 2007. Nair said that those who had bought transponder services for the INSAT 4C would be accommodated in INSAT 4B transponders and with yet another new satellite later. The INSAT 4C satellite was to be placed 36,000 km from earth, by the 49-meter tall GSLV from the second new state-of-the art launch pad at the Sriharikota space station, 80 km north of Chennai.

The satellite contained the latest set of 12 Ku-band 36 MHz bandwidth transponders that were designed to provide direct to home (DTH) television services, transmit video pictures, assist digital satellite news gathering and support the National Informatics Centre for its VSAT link. The final orbit of the NSAT-4C satellite was to be geostationary, at 74 degrees East longitude. The launch vehicle, in its second operational flight already had two successful test flights. In April 2001 it put the 1500-kg GSAT-1 satellite into orbit, followed by GSAT-2 in May 2003.