Top BrahMos unit officer, 2 others sacked for ‘accidentally firing’ missile into Pakistan | India News

NEW DELHI: The commanding officer (CO) of a BrahMos unit that “accidentally fired” a supersonic cruise missile that crashed 124-km inside Pakistan on March 9 and two other officers have been summarily sacked by the government.
The IAF on Tuesday said the court of inquiry (CoI), headed by an Air Vice Marshal, found that “deviation from the standard operating procedure (SOP) by the three officers” led to the accidental firing of the 290-km-range tactical or conventional (non-nuclear) missile.

Apart from the CO, a Group Captain-rank officer (equivalent to a Colonel in the Army), the other two officers dismissed are a Wing Commander (Lt Col) and a Squadron Leader (Major).
“These three officers have primarily been held responsible for the incident. Their services have been terminated by the central government with immediate effect. Termination orders have been served upon the officers on August 23,” the IAF said in a brief statement.
TOI had earlier reported that the Group Captain and a couple of other officers would face strict disciplinary action for the grave operational lapse that could have triggered a retaliation.

The CoI report was submitted to the defence ministry for further action after it examined the entire sequence of events as well as the acts of omission and commission that led to the missile, jointly developed with Russia, being inadvertently launched from near an IAF base in north India at about 7 pm on March 9.
TOI had also reported that “human error” – which included overriding the in-built mechanical and electronic locks of the missile system – and not “any technical malfunction” was responsible for the incident.
The Group Captain was in charge of mobile command post of the BrahMos unit when the missile, which flies at almost three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8, was launched by mistake during an exercise being audited by Command Air Staff Inspection.
The unarmed BrahMos crashed harmlessly near Mian Chunnu town in Pakistan within seven minutes on March 9