whats interesting is that the chevaline worked in part, because the ussr was limited to 100 interceptors around moscow and hence a specific threat envelope was available to defeat, for the system to work.

it also seems to be focused against radars in specific. now with todays technology, entirely new penetration aids would be required against long wave iir seeker equipped KKVs, not to mention with the exponential growth in digital processing, radars would be harder to spoof and decoy.

i am very surprised that the brits declassified this program, which suggests that a chevaline follow on is in service, then!

or that the threat perception has changed so much that a viable nuke deterrent against russia is no longer necessary (i doubt it).

the LRTR/ Mfcr combo in the indian test was able to plot the tracks of the various debris post collision.

a low res pic is here. seems to reinforce the fact that in this era, even more advanced penetration aids would need be deployed.

interestingly this is the view from the mcc which the radars link to. the green line and black lines are supposed to be the missile vs the reentry module which the interceptor took out. all the clutter is the debris and individual tracks of each.

wish there was a high res pic released publically

the official video released has a sanitized view with all the details snipped out. it just depicts one ballistic trajectory of the missile being intercepted by the ballistic trajectory of the interceptor and both continuing.

so thats like a max of ~ 700 km in range or thereabouts.

i think a two tier system is essential for irbm class systems which the noko are developing, and whom this thingy seems intended for. and the prc already has those and icbms as well (though those are for deterring the US mostly).

are there any plans to sell/ codevelop an arrow eqvt with japan?

With regard to Pakistan having done any work on MIRVs, a news report back in 2002 did state that Pakistan was to start its MIRV programme in near future. However, im not aware of any further developments.

i remember those reports, but they were very sketchy and seemed to be the usula journalistic copy paste from here and there.

Indeed you didn’t. You said that it would be quick. Chevaline took 13 years, and that was with substantial US assistance.

Quoting from your posting was just a simple way of bringing the reader’s attention to the particular aspect of the discussion that I was addressing.

Today, the problem would be even more difficult than that faced by the Chevaline designers, as any ICBM penaid would have to counter not only radar sensors, but also space-based sensors and future land-based non-radar sensors. For example, Boeing has studied a scheme in which high-powered laser pulses would create ablation of the incoming warhead or decoy, and the resulting effect or lack of it on the object’s trajectory would give an indication of the object’s weight.

Mercurius Cantabrigiensis

Mercurius, may i impose upon you to post more upon the chevaline system?

cheers

Doesn’t work that way. If I’m China and you have 100 50% effective ATBMs I’ll either fire a missile your missile can’t handle from further away or double up on targets that are defended. So maybe I’ll need to add 50 missiles to my arsenal or none at all if I’ve already got enough to throw four missiles at every target worth hitting. 100 ABMs effectively means no defense at all against an adversary like Russia or China, who can throw a thousand missiles at you, unless all your ABMs are defending the same target.

India wont deploy 100 “ABMS”..it will employ some dozen ABM systems, each with many ABM TELs and multiple radars. The number of rounds per system and how many incoming targets it can handle in a surge, is classified. Saraswat says the same in his interview.

China may be able to overwhelm some targets with brute force targeting, but earlier, it would have been able to take out ALL targets…even a 50% reduction, from the Indian POV is a huge improvement.

If it is focussed against China it needs to be ICBM capable……..period.

Given estimates of how many ICBMs China has, and what they are focussed on, they are not the primary threats India faces. IRBMs are.

I would suggest that this is actually a rather rational and sensible move on the part of India in case Pakistan goes from bad to worse, from failing military junta to Islamist terrorist state in which case India (and I would say China also) need to be prepared to defend themselves against nuclear armed muslim terrorists.

Just caught your edit Nick, thanks for the info, I suspected that was the case.

Pakistan is the #1 threat, but so is China as far as defence goes. But Pak is definitely the biggest issue at hand, because of which this system was developed.

And a correction to my earlier statement, there are statements that the next threshold to be crossed are even longer range radars and hypersonic missiles, so ICBMs could be the next bridge meant to be crossed, even if no Indian scientist will publically state it (why reveal your hand so early on)

That statement means nothing as far as saturated attacks are concerned, if anything it suggests doubts about the ability of the upper stage to intercept the warhead. I suspect that this 99% figure is derived from the combination of both systems.

~99.7% pk is achieved by the combination of pad and aad both.

Just becouse something is developed recently it does not mean that it is capable of dealing with current or future threats, especially in the very complex and difficult ABM situation.

the system specs are already for threats beyond what india faces currently in several respects, so viability against irbm class threats wont be a problem. icbms are another matter entirely.

speculation apart, there is no evidence that pakistan has developed mirv technology. china is believed to be working on it, as is india. on the other hand india does have manouverable reentry vehicle, without the “i” in between, that is not many of these on one bus which would include decoys.

coming to decoys, and such it is a joke how some automatically assume an abm system would be useless because it can be overwhelmed by brute force.
the entire point is to raise the threshold on an aggressor so that he has to dedicate more and more assets on one target rather than have enough to strike multiple ones at leisure.

the indian system aims for a Pk of 99.6% with a quad pack salvo of 2 PADs and 2AADs per incoming target. and regarding costs, india anticipates a cost of $ 1.125 billion per high value city/ target for a functioning abm system. thats affordable, if india earmarks a percentage of an increased budget for around 10 targets/cities in totality.

its also foolish to assume that india hasnt evaluated defence against cruise missiles . the aad which is the second tier interceptor in this missile system has a secondary role against both cruise missiles and aircraft, and the onboard guidance system to enable it.

the radar -ground based to back it, mfcr is a sband AESA with 360 degree surveillance for this exact purpose, to detect low flying targets as well as high altitude ones. the entire system will be networked with the 6 awacs on order from israel and drdo as well to provide detection against low flying targets.

india is also purchasing 11 aerostat radars for long range surveillance against both low and medium alt targets, and 19 radars for cm detection. these are apart from the many low flying detection radars already ordered.

at the end of the day, india aims to create bubbles of protected airspace around select cities, high value targets (airbases, strat weapons sites).

the current abm system is designed for intercepting targets which can travel 3K KM range (as SOC says, this implies missiles with speeds of that nature). the current tests have managed to provide a proof that it works till 2k Km.

once the tests are complete – the abm will function against systems with a range of uptil 3 k km.

after that, drdo will have to develop hypersonic interceptors and longer range radars, whcih program has already been evaluated.

india is already working on a hypersonics program with russia and recently cleared many experimental facilities for the same reasons. it now makes sense, for what and why, not just a brahmos follow on, but for the future programs as well.