Cruise Control
India Today
A naval helicopter clattering above the Arabian Sea has just picked up the target, a hostile warship off the Indian coast. It transmits the location to the destroyer INS Rajput over 100 km away. With a deafening roar, a missile blasts off the deck of the warship and streaks across the sea at nearly thrice the speed of sound. Dropping down to a few meters above the waves it sniffs its quarry using onboard radar. When the nine-meter long, three-ton missile hits the tar get, it sets off a 200-kg warhead, cleaving It and sending both halves to the seabed. It has taken the BrahMos the world’s fastest supersonic cruise missile, a little less than five minutes to seek and smash its target.
When bewildered naval brass and scientists later overflow the scene in a helicopter there was only flotsam. It was like arriving at the aftermath of a battle,” recalls Dr A. Sivathanu Pillai, chief executive officer and managing director of the BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited (BAPL).
The 10th and final test of the missile last fortnight, the first of a combat prototype (with a live warhead) heralded the formal induction of the missile less than four years after its first trial. It marks a quantum leap for the armed forces which are acquiring a formidable force multiplier. Cruise missiles are like kamikaze aircraft which are piloted by an onboard computer using pre-fed co-ordinates and guided by satellites. Unlike ballistic missiles which exit the atmosphere vertically and re-enter to free fall on their targets, cruise missiles follow a flat trajectory and “cruise” on their own power to the target.
While ballistic missiles like Prithvi and Agni are like hammers, the BrahMos is like a surgeon’s scalpel. Deadly accurate—officials boast it can fly into a football goal post 300 km away— it can be used to mount high speed precision strikes against an array of surface targets ranging from warships to bunkers, airfields, command posts and infrastructure facilities.
Because the BrahMos is a universal missile—it can be launched from multi dimensional platforms like aircraft, warships, submarines, trucks and land-based silos—It can be used by all three armed forces. This enables standardisation and mass production, which result not only in significant cost savings but also quality control on the missiles produced in batches.
Mass production of the missile has commenced and the company expects to supply the Indian armed forces with 1,000 missiles by 2015. BrahMos officials are cagey about revealing the cost of the missile. Defence analysts say it is roughly Rs.10 crore per missile.
The BrahMos will equip all major Indian naval warships like the three under construction Project 15A destroyers and project Project 17 frigates and will be retrofitted on one existing warship each year. “The missiles sheer speed means it can inflict heavy damage on targets and renders itself immune to known countermeasures”, says a senior naval officer. “Besides, it can replace at least three imported missile types currently being used by the navy.”
A test for the army’s variant In Pokhran last December, equipped with special image processing software to fly over land, saw the missile search and destroy a 50-cm-thick concrete bunker with pinpoint precision. Last week in Hyderabad, the army raised and began training its first core group to man the missile which it will induct by 2007. Around this time, the air force variant, lighter by one tonne, will begin trials to equip specially modified Su-3OMKI fighter-bombers which will carry up to three missiles each.
In the crowded missile menagerie, supersonic cruise missiles are extremely rare birds, a technology perfected only by Russia. (China operates the bulky Russian-supplied first generation supersonic Moskit missile). Western supersonic cruise missiles are still in the development stage—most missiles like the Harpoon and Tomahawk are powered by solid rocket fuel or turbojet engines and trundle along at subsonic speeds. The BrahMos, however, flies at the speed of a 7.62-mm rifle bullet, thanks to a liquid kerosene ramjet engine. A solid first stage or booster blasts the missile to supersonic speed and then drops off.
BUZZ ON BRAHMOS
• Flies at nearly three times the speed of sound, the speed of a rifle bullet, and has a range of 300 km.
• Nearly impossible to intercept. High kinetic energy due to speed also means missile can cause tremendous damage to target.
• The same missile with minor modifications can be used by the army, navy and air force.
• Can be fired from ships, submarines, aircraft and trucks.
At this point the second stage “rams” the air in through a nose-mounted intake and mixes it with liquid kerosene in a combustion chamber and uses the explosive mixture to fuel its supersonic flight.
The missile can hit targets 300 km away, roughly the distance between Delhi and Chandigarh, in just five minutes. Reason why its makers think it is unstoppable. “It penetrates enemy defences using brute speed,” says Pillai.
The BrahMos can trace its DNA to the fearsome P-700 Granit (granite) missile, a 550-km Cold War Soviet missile which armed the doomed submarine Kursk, almost exclusively designed to kill American aircraft carriers. When it was presented by the cash-strapped Russians in its shorter-legged, MTCR-friendly avatar as the Yakhont in the world missile market in the mid-1990s, it was seized by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which suggested joint funding and development. (Missile Technology Control Regime or MTCR prohibits sale of missiles with a range of over 300 km.) It emerged as the BrahMos (a composite of the Brahmaputra and Moscow rivers), a consortium jointly funded by the two countries and involving inputs from 10 Russian and 20 Indian public and private sector industries, including L&T and Godrej.
While the revolutionary kerosene ramjet propulsion system is still wholly Russian, the inertial navigation system which steers the missile, launchers and fire control systems are of Indian origin. Technology developed for the missile has helped improve the accuracy of the Prithvi and Agni missiles,
Now BAPL wants to use the missile to penetrate the West-dominated global cruise missile market. “This is the first Indian defence product with extremely bright export prospects”, says Pillai. He will not confirm this but countries like Malaysia and South Africa have shown interest in buying the missile.
Meanwhile, BAPL is contemplating a BrahMos-2, capable of flying up to Mach 8, to ensure its supersonic product retains its speed lead well into the future.
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