This news report has details of the Indian Air Force’s explanation concerning the 2022 Brahmos incident:

In a statement submitted to the Delhi high court during a case, the IAF revealed that a court of inquiry to probe the incident found that “combat connectors of the BrahMos missile remained connected to the junction box” during a routine inspection, leading to the unintended launch. The junction box is a critical component that transmits firing signals to the missile.

The probe further highlighted the gravity of the situation. The combat crew were aware that the combat connectors were still attached to the junction box, but failed to intervene. Consequently, the mobile autonomous launcher commander launched the missile, posing a potential threat to airborne aircraft.

Bit late to the party, but here’s the DRDO press release about the Agni V MIRV test:

DRDO successfully conducts Mission Divyastra

Indigenously developed Agni-5 missile makes maiden flight with MIRV

Posted On: 11 MAR 2024 8:02PM by PIB Delhi

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted first successful flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle ( MIRV) technology. The flight test named Mission Divyastra was carried out from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island in Odisha. Various Telemetry and radar stations tracked and monitored multiple re-entry vehicles. The Mission accomplished the designed parameters.

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi lauded the efforts of the DRDO scientists who participated in the conduct of the complex Mission. In a post on social media platform X He said, “ Proud of our DRDO scientists for Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.”

Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh has also congratulated the scientists and the entire team, terming it as an exceptional success.

The proceedings from that TNW workshop about which I’ve previously posted has this discussion of U.S. public opinion on nuclear weapons use:

Here’s a statement from the Swiss Federal Council on the TPNW:

On the basis of a new comprehensive reassessment, the Federal Council decided at its meeting on 27 March 2024, that there is currently no reason to change its position on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force in 2021. It has therefore reaffirmed the conclusion it reached in 2018 and 2019 and has decided that Switzerland will not join the TPNW for the time being. The Federal Council’s conclusion is based both on the assessment made in 2018–19 and recent security policy developments in Europe and globally. The Federal Council considers Switzerland’s commitment to a world without nuclear weapons, pursued within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to be a more effective approach.

This BAS piece by James Revill has a good summary of the issue, along with hyperlinks to many of the most recent relevant documents.

Discussion of BWC verification is a pretty big deal.

More from the 1969 proceedings:

WWTA:

New Delhi and Islamabad are inclined to sustain the current fragile calm in their relationship following their renewal of a cease-fire along the Line of Control in early 2021. However, neither side has used this period of calm to rebuild their bilateral ties as each government has focused on more pressing domestic priorities including election perpetrations and campaigning and for Pakistan, concerns over rising militant attacks in its west. Pakistan’s long history of supporting anti-India militant groups and India’s increased willingness, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to respond with military force to perceived or real Pakistani provocations raise the risk of escalation during a crisis. There remains the potential for an event to trigger a rapid escalation….heightened tension between Pakistan and India could increase the risk of nuclear escalation.

The 1969 proceedings of a DOD/AEC symposium contain this description of release procedures concerning TNW use:

Been on a bit of a break. Following up on this post about the British nuclear deterrent, I present this exchange in Parliament between MP Neale Hanvey and Minister for Defence Procurement James Cartlidge:

Hanvey: I thank the Minister for unexpectedly allowing an intervention. He says that he is working with the US, but the reality is that the US controls the nuclear deterrent that the UK provides.

Cartlidge:

That is wholly erroneous. Yes, we have a very, very close working relationship with the United States. We recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Polaris agreement. With the United States we secured the freedom of Europe in the second world war, and with the United States we are continuing to secure the freedom of our United Kingdom by deterring the most significant threat that we could face.

I emphasise that while we continue to invest in our nuclear deterrent, the Government remain fully committed to the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons. As a country, we have a strong record on disarmament, having unilaterally reduced our nuclear forces significantly from their cold war peak. We now have the smallest nuclear warhead stockpile of the five nuclear weapons states recognised under the non-proliferation treaty, and we are the only state to have reduced its deterrent capability to a single nuclear weapons system. However, other states have not followed our example, and as we survey the dangers facing our world today, our assessment is that further unilateral disarmament would only undermine our security and that of our allies. Nevertheless, we will continue to see opportunities to advance multilateral disarmament under the framework of the non-proliferation treaty.

Our nuclear deterrent deters aggression and coercion and helps to preserve peace.

The UK government made this statement during a January debate. It’s a decent brief summary of the program:

The key point is that every day since April 1969, there has been at least one nuclear-armed Royal Navy submarine at sea, helping to keep the United Kingdom safe—the whole of the United Kingdom. In January 1980, when the House debated the successor programme to Polaris, which led to Trident—the title of this debate—the Secretary of State for Defence, Lord Pym, boiled down the Government’s position to one essential point. While acknowledging the “horrendous” nature of nuclear weapons and regretting that we could not “disinvent” them, he concluded that Britain needed to be a nuclear power because of what it would contribute to NATO’s strategy of deterrence and, through that, to our own national security.

Essentially, that has been the position of every UK Government since then. The renewal of the nuclear deterrent was approved by an overwhelming majority of 355 votes in this House in 2016, and it remains this Government’s position today. In 1980 the debate was framed by the cold war, but in 2024 the threats facing our country have multiplied and become far more complex. The number of nuclear states has grown, while Putin’s aggression and intransigence have set back the prospect of nuclear disarmament more broadly. Russia still holds around 6,000 warheads, and we face a much more assertive, nuclear-armed China. North Korea remains hellbent on honing its nuclear capabilities at the expense of the wellbeing of its own people, while Iran has repeatedly violated its international nuclear obligations and has enriched uranium far beyond what it needs for civilian purposes.

Significantly, our competitors are investing in novel nuclear technologies, including new warfighting nuclear systems, to integrate into their military strategies and doctrines. If we measure the need for an effective nuclear deterrent by the number of nuclear-armed states overtly working against the UK’s national interest, it is clear that the need to deter has never been greater. Let us not forget that a credible nuclear capability is about more than merely countering nuclear threats; it is about deterring all of the most extreme threats to our nation. That is why the Government are investing in upgrading our nuclear infrastructure to support the next generation Dreadnought-class submarines and replacement warheads. These will be some of the most advanced nuclear systems ever built, which sends a clear message to any would-be adversary.

Four Dreadnought submarines will replace the Vanguard-class submarines that have maintained our nuclear deterrent since 1992. They will give us an independent, continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent well into the second half of the century, and progress is on track to deliver the first of the Dreadnought submarines into service in the early 2030s. At £31 billion, it is correct to say that the estimated cost of the programme is significant, but we cannot develop this type of world-leading capability on the cheap, and we must also weigh that against the terrible cost of war, which is what the nuclear deterrent deters from happening