Indian submarine sails for home after refit in Russia (with working Club missiles)

ST. PETERSBURG, August 6 (RIA Novosti) – The INS Sindhuvijay diesel-electric submarine departed for India early Wednesday after an extensive overhaul at a shipyard in northern Russia, the Zvezdochka shipbuilding company said.

The Project 877EKM Kilo-class submarine had been undergoing a refit at the Zvezdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk since 2005.

“The Sindhuvijay diesel-electric submarine has been handed over to the Indian navy,” the shipyard said in a statement.

The submarine is expected to sail for three months until it reaches India.

The Sindhuvijay was built in October 1990 at a shipyard in St. Petersburg. In March 1991 it joined the Indian navy and remained in service until 2005. On June 3, 2005 the submarine docked in Russia for repairs and upgrades.

The overhaul was delayed for six months due to the unacceptable performance of its new SS-N-27 Club-S cruise missiles. In six consecutive pre-delivery test firings in late 2007, the Club missiles failed to find their targets and India refused to accept the delivery until the problems had been resolved.

The Club-S subsonic cruise missile is designed for launch from a 533 mm torpedo tube, or a vertical launch tube. It has a range of 160 nautical miles (about 220 km). It uses an ARGS-54 active radar seeker and Glonass satellite and inertial guidance.

New trials were successfully completed in mid-July.

The upgrade program also involved a complete overhaul of the submarine, including its hull structure, as well as improved control systems, sonar, electronic warfare systems, and an integrated weapon control system. The upgrades reportedly cost about $80 million.

Sindhuvijay is the fourth Indian navy submarine to have been refitted at the Zvyozdochka shipyard.

Some pictures of the IAF Contingent on their way to Red Flag. Currently at
the Mountain Home AFB (Idaho ?)

Here

Glory! Indian Sukhois over Sicily! – Shiv Aroor

2 Images from there

Pic of an LCH at the Berlin AirShow – Thanks to ASharma from BR

Lots of numbers in this article

Source

Major indigenisation of military aviation

Sandeep Dik****

Total investment will be Rs. 22,000 crore; thrust on design and development

Design and development will be the thrust area

Mega tender for 350 imported helicopters slashed

NEW DELHI: In a move that could make overseas defence companies uncomfortable, the government has embarked on a major indigenisation of the military aviation sector. The total investment will be Rs. 22,000 crore and the bulk of the amount is to be spent on design and development of fixed wing aircraft and helicopters.

The programme envisages increasing the workforce in the sector to 2,600. One-third of the new additions will be design engineers.

“Design and development will be the thrust area. While licensed production leads to a maximum value addition of 45 per cent, this route will increase the percentage to 80,” said a highly placed source privy to a special review meeting on Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) by Defence Minister A.K. Antony. HAL accounts for half of the sales by all defence public sector undertakings taken together.
Mega tender slashed

In line with this thinking, the mega tender for 350 imported helicopters had been slashed. Only 197 helicopters would be imported and the remaining manufactured in the country, the source said.

Similarly, Sukhoi fighters would be made from the raw material stage, ending the peculiar problem of domestically assembled fighters being costlier than the imported ones. In both cases, the cost of India-made platforms would come down by 15 to 20 per cent.

With an order in hand for 159 advanced light helicopters, HAL planned to produce 18 this year. Of these, 66 would be configured to carry air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles, thus ending the move to import the gunship version.

Medium lift helicopters, numbering 346, would also be indigenously made, the source said.

HAL had entered into an agreement with a Russian company to replace the ageing An-32 transport plane. Under the $600 million plan, India would manufacture 205 military transport planes. Of this, Russia would take 100. Of the rest, India would retain 45 and 60 earmarked for export to third world countries.

“This would be a major addition to India’s product range. So far, we have done helicopters and fighters. This will be our maiden attempt to go into the transport area,” said the source.

The government had sent the technical requirements for the fifth generation fighter aircraft to Russia and is waiting for their observations.

The tonnage would be in line with the Sukhoi-30 MKI, but the plane would have stealth and other advanced features. Development was expected to take a decade.
Sukhoi production

The major production this year would be of Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters. HAL planned to produce 19, against 13 last fiscal. Mr. Antony, however, had asked the company to examine the possibility of making 23 planes.

The bulk of these planes would be made from the raw material stage, thus ending the problem of domestically made planes being more expensive than the imported ones. In all, 170 Sukhois would be manufactured by 2015. This would be in addition to the 50 imported from Russia. HAL has already produced 34.

The biggest setback to overseas countries would be curtailment of the mega helicopter tender. “This marks a victory for HAL because the armed forces favour imports. We argued that we don’t want to pay the licence fees. We also have competence in this area, having made nearly 600 helicopters indigenously. The maintenance of the imported helicopters will also be HAL’s responsibility,” said the source.

The company planned to make 50 advanced jet trainers, including 14 this year. It would then make another 57, as the armed forces have decided to expand the initial order of 66 to 123.

So there are 84 MKI’s in India currently, with around 20 being added every year built completely from the ground up.

Good news on the Helicopter front too.

An Eye in the Sky: the DRDO’s plan for a MALE UAV

Source

by Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 31st March 08

The so-called “war on terror” since 2001 has debunked much of the conventional wisdom about what military equipment a country needs to protect its citizens. But one piece of kit that has repeatedly proved its relevance is the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a remotely piloted aircraft which circles several thousand feet over a target area, continuously relaying high-definition pictures to a monitor, far away. The UAV has shown, in counter-insurgency and in anti-terrorist operations as much as in war, the critical importance of an “eye in the sky”.

Unsurprisingly then, India’s Defence R&D Organisation — despite having radically curbed its traditional eagerness to develop even non-essential systems — is going ahead with developing UAVs. The DRDO has sent out Expressions of Interest (EoIs) to several private sector companies, including the Tata Group, L&T and Godrej & Boyce, for manufacturing Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAVs, which will be developed by the DRDO. These MALE UAVs will fly at tens of thousands of feet, watching a target for more than 24 hours continuously.

There are several firsts in the MALE UAV programme. It will be the first aeronautical programme in which the DRDO will partner a private company; since independence, public sector giant, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), has monopolised this sector. This will also be the first time a production agency (the private company that wins the contract to manufacture the UAVs) will work with the DRDO right through the development process, so that the production run can begin without any hitches.

Significant as those landmarks are, the most interesting part of the MALE UAV programme is the decision-making process, which the DRDO has adopted, in consultation with the military. This was revealed to Business Standard in a series of interviews with top DRDO scientists.

In deciding on India’s fleet of unmanned aircraft, the DRDO and the military first zeroed in on UAVs that no country would sell. They agreed to develop micro-UAVs, which a soldier can carry on his back and quickly launch; and also complex Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), which carry full weapon-loads to strike aerial and ground targets.

A greater dilemma was over mid-sized UAVs; countries like Israel are eager to sell India MALE UAVs. But eventually, says DRDO Chief Controller of Aeronautics and Materials Sciences, Dr Dipankar Banerjee, it was decided to develop, rather than buy, MALE UAVs for two main reasons. Firstly, the large number of UAVs the military requires creates a powerful commercial logic for a private company to manufacture them. And secondly, the DRDO feared that import of MALE UAVs might be blocked.

Dr Banerjee explains, “We have to see what is possible under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which bans the transfer of technology and products with more than 300 kilometres range and 500 kilograms payload…. And so, there may be MTCR controls that prevent us from acquiring MALE UAVs. We also recognize that the technology that we develop for the MALE UAV will go into the UCAV.”

Notwithstanding the fears of technology sanctions, the DRDO knows that India’s growing leverage as a major arms buyer is making sensitive technologies easier to access. Technology planners in the DRDO say they are increasingly relying on components assembled from COTS (Commercially available Off-The-Shelf) equipment; the DRDO will develop only strategically vital components and carry out the technologically challenging task of “systems integration”, i.e. assembling a multitude of components into a functioning military system.

Before the end of June, Request for Proposals (RFPs) will be floated for the MALE UAVs. This project will be an important test for the DRDO’s new thinking, it will, equally be a test for the concept of bringing a private sector company into a major project as the DRDO’s industry partner.

Its not a deliberate act, the guys a complete nutjob who loves the (close) 🙂 company of other fanatical nuts.

So does this guy 😀

Thanks Ankush, I must’ve missed it in the Military images thread.