Did Pakistan Fake The Launch Of Its Submarine-Launched Babur-3 Missile?

Soon after Pakistan proclaimed that it had successfully test-fired a submarine-launched cruise missile, Babur-3, from a submerged platoon at an undisclosed location in the Indian ocean, a satellite imagery expert in India claimed that the test actually failed.

In a series of tweets, the expert said that the missile kept flying with its canister for almost 8 seconds after launch, pointing towards a possible glitch in the missile’s launch mechanism. Pakistan, he claimed, used a computer generated image of a missile over the background to show that Babur-3 was successful.

According to India Today, Colonel (retired) Vinayak Bhat, who is also an imagery expert, said that the video of the launch shared by Director General (DG) of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Pakistan Army’s media wing, has been made using computer graphics. Here is the video DG-ISPR shared on Twitter:

Colonel Bhat also pointed out that the colour of the missile changes from white to orange in the video. He added that speed of the missile, as seen in the video, is impossibly high.

Babur-3, the missile in question here, is said to be a submarine-launched version of Babur-2 land-based cruise missile and has a range of 450 kilometres. As Swarajya reported earlier, this test launch came soon after China expressed displeasure over India's decisions to test long range ballistic missiles. Last week, an op-ed in the Global Times, mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party warned India about the tests, saying China won't hesitate providing Pakistan the technology that it may need for development of long-range missiles.