The United States might have known about India's nuclear-capable Sagarika and Dhanush missiles and the facility where they were being built in 2005 itself, one of the documents leaked by American whistleblower Edward Sheldon read.
An American news website, The Intercept, suggested that the National Security Agency had obtained information about other bombs under India's possession.
This information was accounted in one of the 294 articles that The Intercept published on September 14. These articles were reportedly obtained from SIDtoday, the internal newsletter of NSA's core Signal Intelligence Directorate, the Intercept reported.
These were a part of the bundle of documents provided by Edward Snowden, who was working for the NSA till 2013. He had moved to Honk Kong from the US and handed over the data to a group of journalists, leading to the leak of sensitive American intelligence data.
The document titled – New collection access yields 'spectacular' intel -stated that in October 2004, an NSA site namely RAINFALL had successfully detected the signals from a suspected Indian nuclear weapons storage facility and found out its geological location.
According to The Intercept, a "Foreign Satellite collection facility" by the name LEMONWOOD in Thailand and the Unidentified Signal and Protocol Analysis Branch at NSA collaborated in isolating these signals to check whether it was related to Indian nuclear weapons.
Soon an demodulating equipment was installed at LEMONWOOD to "expand the modest collection effort." Immediately after it was deployed, this new network began providing information what they called 'spectacular' activity. The new collection revealed about Dhanush, Sagarika and a pilot-less target aircraft project.
Sagarika is a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) while Dhanush, a sea-launched short range ballistic missile (SRBM). These are reportedly part of India's nuclear triad that makes India capable to fire nuclear weapons from sea.
Yet another document, dating back to March 2005, suggests that Pakistan was a partner of NSA and acted as a key in the success in global war on terrorism although there is no document confirming this fact.
