The weight of the missile does not correspond to the range looking at other long range missiles in the world.
The warhead is unnaturally large. Either India is not confident that they cannot miniaturize their nuclear warheads to a small enough size or they put a huge warhead on it just to constrain the range.
Here is speculative illustration of the supposed lightest ICBM in the world. It was cancelled by Gorbachev in 1991. The Yanks cancelled their Midgetman in 1992.
3-stage solid
length – 11.2 m
diameter – 1.36 m
Weight – 15,000 kg
Payload – 500 kg
Warhead – 100-150KT Nuclear
Range – 10000-11000 miles
CEP – no more than 350 m
Operating temperature – -40 to +50 degrees C
Added later
I must add here that earlier the American Govt agencies reports had talked about how India’s ICBM is likely to be on Topol-M. Probably now both are enjoying their honeymoon and the reason why no one from America said that Agni-5 is based on the above cancelled missile seeing the similarity. :p
It is NOT an ATC tower and it is NOT optimaly placed to see the front and back of the ship.
yep, I think you are right. On closer look there is no provision for human “comfort” on that tower.
So there is only one ATC related part and that is on the island and we see it right above the bridge in the below picture. The close-up picture of the island gives us a good view of the ATC which is protruding outward.
Added later.
On the placement of the above said tower. The tower is placed on the extreme edge and for sure the ski-jump and parking lot will be visible..but on how much and how far remains to be seen.
But note that this order depends on the An-124 being modernised, & put back into production, for which a larger order was necessary than India was willing to commit to. It also implies some uncertainty in the delivery dates, performance, & ultimate cost.
At worst, an Indian deal to buy modernised An-124s off a re-opened production line could have been another Gorshkov, with years of delays & demands for more money to complete the deal.
India was able to buy C-17 from a functioning production line, with both delivery & performance assured.
Gorshkov and An-124 are not the same, work on Gorshkov was much more complex and was like building almost 2 carriers.
The dealy in An-124 procurement will be on how soon they can start production of the aircraft and deliver it. But the cost of An-124 will anyway be lower than that of C-17 for the same number of orders. $400+ million per aircraft for strategic heavy lift is just insane!
IAF still don’t show any urgency for augmenting the the AWACS fleet, but they are more interested in having C-17s and strategic airlift. :p
The An 124 is in the C5 Galaxy class heavy lifter not comparable to the C-17.
I don’t believe India is in the market for a strategic heavy lifter.
True its in the class of C5 and still the An-124 costs less than the C-17.
Btw, C-17 is bought as a strategic heavy lifter by completely ignoring the true heavy lifter on the market. 😉
Like the Bofors, in the near or distant future we’ll get to hear a lot on who all made money in many deals that happened from 2004 onwards…
what a matured strategic force needs is an automotive TEL. Not a TEL which needs another diesel engine to give it motive power and two other bogies to launch 1-2 missile. Hope ppl will be able to figure out how long a rail-mobile missile “unit” looks like. From what is seen in open, even the rail-mobile TEL looks primitive compared to what the Russians employed.
Designing TEL (rail & road) is no childs play and require good innovative solutions. A crude over-engineered stuff as an after-though is not the solution, it has to be planned along and considered as an integral part of the system. That is the main difference we see when we compare the Russian systems and systems from around the world. Be it the Scud or the Topol or any other. All are blessed with a good TEL mainly because it is included as an integral part of the whole system and given as much priority.
Even our Prithvi missiles does not have a good TEL and its logistical footprint is not very good. Iskander is the best SRBM system in the world and that include the storage, mobility and the logistical footprint.
what we see (or consider) in the above picture is 22 x Iskander missiles (one re-load truck is empty, else it is 24).
The payload of each missile is 450+ Kg though some mention Iskander-M with 800Kg payload. If we take 450Kg of payload per missile, what we are seeing in that picture is nearly 11tons (for 24 nos) of deliverable payload upto a range of 480Km from just 12 trucks!
compute that to how many we require for the Prithvi to deliver the same payload (to the same range) and we will understand why good TEL is required.
The re-load vehicle comes with its own transferring crane which make things a lot easier.
we’ll see a lot of “roads” like these all around in India and North east is even worse. The “woods” in the area will also look similar and gives natural camouflage… For such places we require good TEL for tactical as well as long-range missiles. Dreaming off railway lines everywhere would be too much.
Good video of the MAZ.
Scud launcher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwGzzE4fNTA&feature=fvwrel
Topol-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9_-rneUjmQ&feature=related
some more good shots from the unexpected entry given to the media
From the media tour it was apparent the importance of the Satellite control center. Unlike the other control room, the media guys were not let loose to the “well” of the control center and they only watched it from the gallery.
I find it little bit strange that the layout in North Korean Satellite Control Center is very similar to the Russian Space center down to the top part where the welcome message can be seen. Was it just an inspiration?
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