looks like GLONASS will now be restored. heh heh – *finally* access to mil-grade signals ?

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1413036,00040005.htm

India to launch two Russian satellites

Indo-Asian News Service

Bangalore, June 27, 2005

India’s space agency will launch two Russian satellites during 2006-08 as part of its programme for international cooperation on a commercial basis.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Monday his agency had a firm contract with Russia to launch the satellites to restore the Glonass navigation network.

The global navigation satellite system or Glonass is an international project involving 30 countries.

Of the 24 satellites in the constellation, 11 satellites have already been placed in geo-stationary orbit and the remainder are to be launched in coming years.

The Russian-built satellites will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh using an Indian rocket, the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV), between 2006 and 2008.

“We have agreed to cooperate with Russia in the Glonass project, which has two objectives. The first is to launch the Russian-built spacecraft using the GSLV and to put another satellite in the polar orbit,” Nair said on the sidelines of twin conferences on planetary exploration and space laws.

“We have entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Russian space agency Soyuz to jointly build an Indo-Russian spacecraft for research from a polar orbit.

“This satellite will also be launched from Sriharikota using the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV),” he said.

ISRO is scheduled to launch the Agile satellite for Italy in the next year for multiple space applications.

The agency has also has an agreement with EADS of Austria for jointly building a communication satellite and launching it from Sriharikota on board the GSLV.

The three-day conferences on “Advances in Planetary Exploration” and “Bringing Space Benefits To The Asian Region” are being organised by the Astronautical Society of India (ASI) and International Academy of Astronauts (IAA) along with the International Institute of Space Law, ISRO and its subsidiary Antrix Corp.

and day by the day the terrorist maggots gnaw and bore into the woodwork in places like Toronto, taking advantage of very liberal canadian immigration and asylum laws. they say they have come to “spread the faith” and plant the flag……netherlands, france, sweden, norway, canada….nice soft rich countries…easy pickings for the Horde.

er, why does canada need a advanced fighter ? Russia is hardly going to invade from the north.

if contribution to american adventures and/or UN missions is the goal – a good fleet of medium transports, helos, ground attack a/c, UAV, G-MTI and CSAR assets.

shooting down the Mig21 clones owned by terrorist regimes is a task best left to the Raptor on H-hour. each should be able to bag 6-8 per sortie to clear the way :p

the new defunct MBB was a consultant long back. havent heard of any involvement in the last decade though. Snecma is ofcourse developing a more powerful engine.
MBB suggested using a skid for the land version to save weight from what I recall reading as a high school student.

hmmm…talk about literally smoking rats from their holes.

Lab develops bombs to ferret out militants
By Abhay Vaidya/TNN

Pune: Drawing lessons from the Afghan war where US forces had to ferret out the Taliban from caves and bunkers, India’s leading defence explosives laboratory in Pune has developed specialised bombs to deal with terrorist hideouts.
While the high-penetration, smoke-spewing incendiary ammunition developed by High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) is ready for production, work has been initiated on oxygen-depleting thermobaric warheads.
“The earlier version did not have a high-penetration capability. Our latest version can penetrate 9-inchthick walls and then explode inside, releasing suffocating smoke to ferret out terrorists,’’ HEMRL director A Subhananda Rao said in an exclusive interview with TOI.
Thermobaric warheads, which are used to attack targets inside closed environments such as bunkers, caves or buildings, explode after penetration, releasing a shock effect, flammable gas and sucking out oxygen.
HEMRL, which specialises in developing a range of powerful warheads for Indian munitions and propellants for missile systems, has initiated work on thermobaric warheads.
‘‘We have already started work on this and will have a project sanctioned,’’ Rao said. HEMRL has also developed anti-thermal, antilaser smoke bombs that obscure infra-red signals and enable tank movement behind a smoke cover.
These grenades which emit smoke and also provide IR (Infra red) screening effect provide a cover from active and passive night-vision devices, thermal imagers and laserrange finders and thereby increase the survivability of tanks and armoured vehicles in the battlefield.
Rao said it would take another two years for HEMRL to develop the ‘‘multispectral camouflaging flares’’ that mislead antiaircraft homing missiles by simulating the exhaust emissions and infra red/millimetre wavelengths of the Su-30 and other combat aircraft. ‘‘This is an advanced area and will take us another two years to develop,’’ he said. Meanwhile, a superior alternative to the conventional teargas has been developed by HEMRL, specifically at the request of Border Security Force.
These new non-lethal smoke bombs based on capsicum oleoresins (active chemical in chillies) have been demonstrated successfully and are ready for production.

indeed I dont see why EU nations still buy US when they have rolls royce, thales, marconi, vickers, giat, oto breda, fincantieri, bazan, fimeccanica, snecma, dassault, dcn, bofors, MTU, kraus-maffei, signaal , hispano suiza, mbda etc etc etc …all local jobs and local money.

any other country would kill to have 30% of that list inhouse.

arent they the TR-3 model now ? I wonder what exactly they are used for in this day of KH-12 10cm res satellites ?

hopefully it didnt crash spying on India 🙂

how important to a fighter pilot are the huge frameless HUDS now swamping the market? do pilots like the better forward visibility ?