Govt wings at odds on Brahmos

New Delhi, Dec. 4: A joint Indo-Russian venture to export the Brahmos cruise missile to “friendly countries” has run into diplomatic hurdles and the defence ministry has now urged the ministry of external affairs to add ballast to its effort.

The Brahmos — named after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers — is being inducted into the Indian Navy, seven years after the joint venture was formed. Last month, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee was told in Moscow that Russia was working on fitting the missiles to some of its warships.

Russia and India have identified countries in Latin America and Africa to whom the missile can be sold, said Sivathanu Pillai, chief controller of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and head of the Brahmos programme.

“I cannot disclose the names. But the list has been drawn up carefully after studying the diplomatic considerations of both India and Russia. We were told in Moscow by (Russian defence minister) Sergei Ivanov’s team that they were very interested in exporting it. The export consideration has been part of the Brahmos programme since the agreement was reached in 1998,” Pillai said.

Pillai has himself been at the head of efforts to promote the missile. But the response of Indian missions abroad was not encouraging. On a visit to a Southeast Asian nation, for instance, the Indian ambassador had to be coaxed to attend the DRDO’s stall at an exhibition when a military delegation from the host nation was scheduled to visit.

Pillai and his team are promoting it as the only missile in its class. The Brahmos is a supersonic cruise missile. Launched from a ship, it flies at 2 mach (twice the speed of sound, making it supersonic) with a conventional warhead weighing up to 200 kg. It is said to have a range of 290 km, a little less than the Missile Technology Control Regime ceiling of 300 km. It can be fired from multiple platforms (ship, land, submarine and air).

The Indian naval ship, INS Rajput, has been equipped with the missile. The Russians and Indians are now working out the techniques to arm Amur (diesel) submarines with it. The Indian Army will induct a road and rail mobile version by 2007 and a short air force version will arm the Sukhoi 30 fighter aircraft by that year.

But despite the defence establishment’s belief that the Brahmos can be a starting point for the Indian defence industry to probe the global military market, the foreign ministry has been less than encouraging so far. Delhi does not want to be seen as a proliferator of weapons, goes the argument.

But Pillai countered by saying India has an impeccable record and it has its own laws against arms proliferation. Besides, the Brahmos is a corporatised entity that enjoys more flexibility than Indian ordnance factories.

DRDO officials are now visiting international military hardware exhibitions equipped with slide shows and audio-visual presentations to demonstrate the missile’s efficacy.

Do we know anything about the weapons fit of Vikramaditya yet? Barak and CIWS?

Daniel

supposed to be 48 vl shtil,3 kashtan and couple of ak-630 according to force but it hasnt been comfirmed.

I wish they had , But Nopes They wont , The plan was to upgrade the existing SHAR Fleet with Derby,2032 Radar & EW suites from Israel and use it till Viraat Lasts and perhaps some more time.

Although they did ordered some trainer variant of SHAR to compensate for the losses.

The Groshkov & ADS will carry the 29K and N-LCA

Right know future of Naval LCA is a very much like a question mark a lot of pieces have to come togther quick for it to work, I think next year will be pretty much be critical juncture whether it or Mig-29k will dominate the IN’s air arm. With Mig-29k trials to start early next year and Mig has been spouting off last couple months that IN will excersise the option for 30 more pretty soon i think the trials are make or break for the mig.

Anyway how many Shars were part of this excersise i can only see 6?

See P17, exactly those things remedied

i am not so sure about it, as i said in BR the whole point of talwar is stop gap measure quick fast cheap construction of vessels. Krivak-III frigate design is rather easy to build and mass produce and russian have very good experience in building it as opposed to P-17 which is little more comlicated to build. I doubt that there will be major design changes only difference probably be on the superstructure design a little more stealthier and perhaps a enclosed mast.

well i am pretty sure you removing kh-31a/p from the harpoon database is not gonna magically remove all of kh-31a/p from IAF arrsenal, besides why would IAF open acknowledge such purchase it hasnt done so for other anti radiation/air to surface missiles in its arrsenal. Anyway there is more than enough info that IAF ordered in 99 and Irkut has tested kh-31a and validated its performance prior to delivering 2nd batch of Su-30mki for IAF.

Anyone know the radar suite for new KDX-2 batch IIRC radar suite in the current version is quite disappointing considering the potential of the vessel and its cost.

I agree on the VLS and modular aspects of Barak-1 , Thats where it scores and thats a winning point , But The Trishul Scores on Range ( 12 KM ) and speed , Again there are grey areas like the ECCM of the system , ability to survive intense jamming and ability to burn through jamming condition which the Ka band is quite capable of doing.

About the reaction time its much less then the often quoted figure of 6 sec , I am sure they will make it better then foreign counterpart

Its quite possible that in those mentioned grey areas the DRDO systems are better then the Israel ones or Vice-verse

About the VLS capability , Its the chicken and egg dilemma , Does DRDO develop the VLS capability ,modularity etc and then hand over to the Navy or the Navy accepts the basic system with the non-vls Box/tube/trainable launcher and encourage DRDO develop further , What DRDO needs is incentive to improve the system like add VLS capability , improve range etc , If the IN does not accepts the basic system , then there is no motivation and incentives to develop the system, The scientist and engineers associated with the project go in deep coma and depression killing the project or slowing its completely.

Same goes with Akash , If DRDO is expected to develop and add ATBM capability to Akash then the basic system with anti-aircraft and anti-cruise capability needs to be accepted by the Airforce/Army.

Or else things will go in to the never ending phase of testing and user trials demoralising the team and shutting of the project.

On another note If you look at the indigenous procurement system done by defence forces via DRDO, Strategic systems like Prithivi and Agni for which there wasnt any import options were quickly accepted by defence forces and operationalised same goes for critical EW , sonar and things like that,

But systems where there was import options like Trishul equivalent barak-1,Crotale-NG etc and Akash equivalent like S-300,Buk, PAC-3 are going through never ending user trials with user finding fault or changing specification, same goes for Nag system you have Milan-2T and russian equivalent and the net result is that Nag is also going through user trials or being close to *induction*

May be DRDO is not *perfect* as French or Russian are, but that brings the larger question on how to support indigenous critical and non-critical weapons program.

Why Should IN accept an boxed launchers which have so much drawbacks and risk the safety of the vessels just so that it can support indigensation? Point is to force drdo to stick with schedules and improve its capability

Barak’s max range is 12 km as well and trishul orginally was 9 km increased to 12? and as i mentioned before the missile is smaller than trishul inpsite of being vertically launched and carries larger warhead.

DRDO has more the enough incentive to devolope VL variant i recall reading about it since 98 about plans for one, but i dont think IN has faith in DRDO devoloping one in modest time considering that devolopment is far complicated than what has been attempted with trishul. It would even require a possible redesign of the entire airframe IIRC russians abandoned VL-sa-8 in favor of a new design since they were running into problems. All said and done it would much more pratical to adapt something like astra for that purpose.