Instagram and other similar social networks are a good source for spying on the daily lives of unrelated celebrities. Celebrities from all walks of life appear directly or indirectly in images that give a glimpse of where they are or what they are doing. But it is not usually normal to know “critical” data about nations. Much less if we talk about India’s nuclear arsenal, for example. Sometimes, truth surpasses fiction.

Broadcasting. A few hours ago, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a US-based nonprofit organization that, among other things, monitors the entire planet’s nuclear arsenal, published an article under the rather suggestive title “Hot -Start Yoga: Cobra Pose Reveals Nuke Repose,” the first section of which makes a military pun on yoga, ending explicitly with “cobra pose reveals nuclear position.”

It is exactly as it seems. Using social media, the FAS managed to discover and reveal to the world a significant movement of India’s nuclear weapons; in this case, a post about a Yoga class on the deck of one of their patrol ships.

Nuclear India. A little context before we move on. India is by no means the “top” of the nuclear weapons states. It is a small player in terms of arsenal size, with 172 such weapons. To give you an idea, Russia and the US have over 5,000.

Regardless, like other nuclear powers, the country maintains a triad: air-launched nuclear weapons, land-launched nuclear weapons, and sea-launched nuclear weapons. In the latter case, India did not launch its first nuclear-armed submarine until 2016, so it has kept its sea-launched nuclear weapons on its two Sukanya-class patrol ships, INS Suvarana and INS Subhadra.

Sukanyas’ missiles. In this case, the FAS explains that missiles of this class have an old design. Therefore, they could only have a short range and had to be fed immediately before launch. Therefore, it was assumed among experts that this would sooner or later lead India to the same decision: to abandon these ship-based nuclear weapons for underwater nuclear weapons, although no one is sure when this will happen.

There are as many as seven Sukanyas in the country, but only INS Suvarana and INS Subhadra carry the special equipment required for the deployment of nuclear weapons. With this data, the FAS studied satellite imagery and noted that the stabilizers required for firing nuclear weapons appear to be missing from the decks of the ships. INS Suvarana or Subhadra?

Instagram. Since these were ships and not submarines, the organization thought it would be easier to find clues about them. They spent hours searching social media for keywords until they came across the first post on Instagram. It was a photo of people doing yoga on the deck of INS Suvarana, published by PBS India in October 2022. They later found another one from the deck of INS Subhadra in February 2024.

There was no doubt. Both the photos were missing stabilizers, which meant that India was moving its nuclear weapons. Yoga, a way of life used in diplomacy through the government and the military in the country, had solved the great mystery.

So the FAS solved its investigation in the most unexpected way: with an Instagram photo of herself doing yoga on the deck of a ship that once housed nuclear weapons. “It’s much more unusual to learn about military systems, especially nuclear systems, in non-military environments. That’s what makes this case unique,” ​​they say.

Image | FAS, Indian in Seychelles via Instagram

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