With all honesty I have said it here before I’m not at all fan of the gorshkov deal by a single bit.

But the need of extra 113 million is not true, as Indian Navy has watered down the report!

Jonesey what perception do you have on our ADS? is 40k tonnes we are building enough? isnt it too short sighted of us building a 40k tonne carrier? and we should have went for atleast 65k?

I think, such a missile will be far bigger than the current BrahMos. Most likely it will fall in the category of the Granit (around 8 tn). The quantity if fuel loaded in it must be massive even if use an extremely efficient scramjet propulsion system. Maybe the Russians will offer some technologies from the GELA experimental vehicle.

Apparently I have no idea how this misisle will shape up in future.

ISRO has Demostrated scramjet propulsion as well in labs, and has developed a engine and will fly a air breathing vehicle within this year end or next year first as per latest report.

But it is a civilian organisation and i dont know if DRDO can derive a bit from it in this programme.

I think this missile is at best a decade away.

You might have a point there. When was Akash initially designed?

I’ll let when it was designed argument to Nick, he knows better about history, and FYI The ferrite phase shifters was designed around 98 IIRC.

Are you saying it is not meant to protect against babars that take the sea route? The reported tests indicate the plan is to atleast try and see how Akash performs in such a role.

Its unimaginable the amount of BS your putting, when I have cleared you it 2 times already :rolleyes:

The reported test IS WRONG AS SUCH TEST DIDNT HAPPENED.
Will you stop trolling with factual reports WHERE IS THE PROVE?
You want the report to be prove alright I’ll show you We have UFO so how about that?
Akash doesnt has multi path reflection bug, It was there in Trishul and has been solved in Akash!

WHERE IS MOD.NIC.IN REPORT? DO YOU KNOW AFTER EACH TEST IT IS REPORTED TO MOD.NIC BE IT FAILS OR SUCCEEDS, DRDO HAS REPORTED FAILED TESTS BEFORE WHAT STOPS IT FROM DOING NOW?

About protecting from Baburs on sea route,

A M-SAM intercepting Babur over sea? that you keep insisting!! and thus the need to test over sea.

honestly do you know mathematics? :rolleyes:

True. Getting to sea (and land) skimmers isnt easy.

[/quote]
It has been a land skimming missile already, has intercepted targets in land skimming mode, has gone through over 30-40 trials in its lifetime.

JANE’S MISSILES AND ROCKETS – JANUARY 01, 2005

Akash flies with a live warhead
India has successfully tested its Akash medium-range surface-to-air missile with a live warhead for the first time. Fired from a mobile launcher at the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur-on-Sea, near Balasore, on 30 November, the round engaged a moving target towed by a Lakshya pilotless target aircraft flying at an altitude of 4.5 km.

The trial was preceded by a launch on 26 November against a target dropped from a pilotless target aircraft. Further test firings were due to take place by the end of 2004.

Akash is being developed by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for use by the Indian Army and Air Force. It is one of the missiles being developed under India’s Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP).

The associated Electronic Research and Development Establishment (ERDE) Rajendra multifunction phased-array radar can simultaneously track several aircraft at a range of up to 40-60 km, providing the surveillance, target-tracking, missile-acquisition and missile-guidance functions needed by the Akash round. Maximum missile range is about 27 km.

Now go figure how old is the report HT talks about!! there already has been some upgrades since then which got revealed in Aero india 07.

ARH can be put if service asks and range icnreased, but services have to ask about it.

presentlyThe rajendra radar system has more range than the misile..

Prof. Bharathi Bhat is an eminent scientist in the field of Radar Technology. She was a professor in IIT Delhi and served as the Head of the Centre for Applied Research in Electronics, IIT Delhi. Dr. Bhat is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institution of Electronics and Communication Engineers (IETE), a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and Life Member of the Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE). She was the chairman of the IEEE Electron Devices Society (ED-S) / Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Chapter of the IEEE India Council.

Dr. Bhat is instrumental in the making of AKASH missile system which is guided by Phased Array Radar – RAJENDRA. This radar can simultaneously track multiple aircraft and also guide multiple missiles towards these targets. The crucial technology to achieve this capability is the ‘phase shifter’, when integrated in large numbers for electronic beam steering. RAJENDRA Radar has 4500 phase shifters. These phase shifters were not commercially available because of restriction from developed countries. This phase shifter was designed and developed by Prof Bharati Bhat with her team. Today, India has the Phased Array Radar technology which is on par with that available in developed countries.

“In yet another example of creating a synergy of scientific talent, Prof.Bharathi Bhat of IIT Delhi, working with the Solid Physics Laboratory (SPL) and Central Electronics Limited (CEL), broke the monopoly of the western countries by developing ferrite phase shifters for use in the multi- functioning, multi tasking 3-D phased Army Radar for surveillance, tracking and guidance of Akash.” – as quoted by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in ‘Wings of Fire’.

The President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam cited her work on Phased Array Radar in the International Conference on “Women’s Impact on Science and Technology in the New Millennium”.

Navy’s Marine Commandos steal the show

Arunkumar Bhatt

Called the Marcos they fight an insurgent like an insurgent

——————————————————————————–

Dubbed the `bearded force’ by militants
Indian Marine Special Force raised in the 1980s
——————————————————————————–

— Photo: PTI

THE DAREDEVILS: Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sureesh Mehta inspects the guard of honour at the investiture ceremony held at INS Kunjali in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Mumbai: They dress like terrorists, wear long beards, move about like militants and even tote AK-47 assault rifles. The Marine Commandos of the Indian Navy, whom the sailors call `Marcos’, follow in letter and spirit the adage of the counter-insurgency doctrine: fight an insurgent like an insurgent.

The `Marcos’ stole the show at the special naval investiture here on Tuesday when Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta pinned Nao Sena Medal (Gallantry) on the chests of three of them for outsmarting foreign terrorists in movement and action, being barely seconds ahead of them. The trio had ambushed several foreign militants.

The Marcos, officially called the Indian Marine Special Force, were raised in the 1980s out of naval divers to lead amphibious operations and clear beaches for the main body of troops. Being divers they could reach hostile shores swimming underwater. They could sabotage enemy vessels and harbour installations. These diving commandos were deployed in Kashmir for militants were using water bodies such as lakes, rivers and ravines to take cover. Soon they became famous as “dareewali fauj [bearded force]” among the militants.

“If civilians see us they would surely mistake us for militants for we look like them but militants would know who we are. If they spot us from a distance, they fire but if spotted nearby they try to run away and that is the time we go for a kill,” Petty Officer Ram Mehar told The Hindu .

With the support of his buddy, Ram Mehar had `eliminated’ two operatives of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. He was a few seconds ahead of the Pakistani irregulars.

The Marine Commandos usually operate with a small team to launch a covert operation. The petty officer was one of just nine Marcos who had laid multiple ambushes over a distance of two km.

“We do not leave behind the dead militants but carry the bodies to the nearest police station,” he said.

Other Marcos who were honoured were sailors Anoop Singh and Amarjeet. Admiral Mehta also conferred Nao Sena Medal (Gallantry) on diver Ajay Kumar and Petty Officer Ravinder Kumar for recovering explosive-laden containers from the cold waters off Mumbai in zero visibility to save the environment.

Captain Rama Kant Pattanaik, commanding officer of destroyer INS Mumbai got Yudh Seva Medal for what his citation called, “implementing flawless combat readiness procedure and simultaneously introducing a unique organisation for safe evacuation of stranded Indian nationals in the war zone of Beirut.”

`Not bigger but smarter’

Thirtyfour warships, including new submarines, are under construction in different Indian shipyards and the Navy is

planning to order 40 more vessels.

“We are not going to be much bigger but a little smarter,” Admiral Mehta said.

Talking to reporters here on Tuesday after the naval investiture ceremony, he said the modern Navy was not measured by the number of ships but its capability.

Admiral Mehta said the ship-building programme was the result of a 15-year long-term integrated plan. All major shipyards such as Mazagon, Kolkata and Goa had their hands full with orders and Kochi would take up the second aircraft carrier after it finished the first.

He said the Navy was facing asymmetric threats. Protecting national assets such as offshore oil installations was particularly challenging.

“These assets are fully protected now but we have to build forces to respond to threats from small boats.”

http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/02/stories/2007050203181400.htm

showtime, That report is nothing but FULL OF CRAP, you might want to check out the 5th reply I have given on that report, it is here only,

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=67661&page=8

What feast would that be? This article was published in an indian newspaper and ive corrected the misinformation that this was somehow the creation of another forum.

Globetrackers posts number tells something about his ecperience here, while I havent brought up from which forum it came because it simply put kiddishness, I showed you with bare fingers the mistakes that article has done which is more than enough to dicredit it.

If you want to discredit the article, take it up with the author. BTW, can you point me to any article critical of DRDO that you agree with? Or are all articles to be thrown in the dustbin?

I normally dont talk much on foreign millitary, and i personally expect who talk on indian millitary to be precise and not come up provinng propaganda articles which are already written to fed propaganda.

1> How many indiand defence writers do you personally know of?
2> What kind of trend of analyse do you see in writing of shiv arror /ajay shukla/ rajat pandit?
3> I can throw my towel in and challenge you you cannot prove the article to be correct however i have enough credible source to prove it wrong.

My point is as simple as it stands,

1> missile part done falls off like that, you have a live akash video! go and see it!!!
2> IAF already places radars more high than 13 metres and the radar systems are not placed that height.
3> akash doesnt has ARGH and so the radar is completely responsible for its guidance to acquiring and analysing target, if there is a issue it is with radar not what the article speaks of issue with missile, again, the radar has been succesaful and has been inducted by Navy, so care to explain what the article is explaining?
4> Akash is not a naval sam , yet it says the ever so secret report of akash being tested over sea and it failed to acquire sea skimming targets, with 95% of IAF bases not anywhere closer to sea care to explain the analogy used of akash being naval sam and relating it with a IAF sam?
5> Warhead of a M-SAM not being capable of engaging target is another blown out of poroportion point.

My agreeing and non agreeing with articles on DRDO has nothing to do with agreeing with absurd articles.

If your aware of mil spec things you should be aware to distinguish between articles which are absurd and totally out of the proportion.

I’m not here to agree articles that suits your/others/mine agenda, rather judge whats happening with the resources I have, if I’m wrong your welcome to point me wrong with resources you have, I’m always willing to learn and not fed by sarcastical comments on “look what critique on drdo do you agree with blah blah”.

For the sake of your argument, here are some of a few DRDO/Establishment critical articles I can point you out at,

Strategic projects need leaders, not crabs
By Bharat Karnad
Deccan Chronicle, 28 April 2007

K. Santhanam, a retired senior Defence Research and Development Organisation functionary and former director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, is quoted by a news agency report on the test-firing of the Agni-III intermediate range ballistic missile as saying that developing a follow-on intercontinental-range ballistic missile is inadvisable because it “would unnecessarily affect ties” with the United States and endanger the nuclear deal, that the country “should be satisfied with being a “leading regional power,” and that, in any case, “even in its wildest dreams, India does not plan to be a global superpower.”

That India is not about to become a “global superpower” in a hurry, is true. But is that reason enough to deny this country the building block capabilities of great power — proven and reliable advanced thermonuclear weaponry (which the nuclear deal seeks to prevent this country from acquiring by prohibiting further testing) and long range missiles?

With such views animating the Indian government’s outlook and policy, it is no surprise that official strategic thinking finds itself wrong-footed on important foreign-military issues and on the wrong side of vital national interests. And this, mind you, at a time when the nuclear deal is dead and awaits only a formal burial; and the ICBM, as the normally cautious DRDO chief, G. Natarajan, has ventured, is the next natural missile threshold for India to cross.

Had Santhanam questioned the ability of the Agni programme to deliver an ICBM on time and without cost over-runs, he would be on stronger ground. But the various ills afflicting the country’s strategic programmes are attributable, in the main, to the lack of quality leadership.

Absent strong and visionary leaders able, on the one hand, to motivate the staff and propel the project forward and, on the other hand, authorised to mobilise all available national resources cutting across government departments and private industry, to stay the dead hand of bureaucratic functioning, and expeditiously to resolve intra- and inter-agency tussles, these programmes have floundered. Indeed, after Dr Homi J. Bhabha, who spearheaded the dual purpose nuclear programme and achieved weapons capability by 1964, i.e., within 17 years of starting from a zero baseline, the country has had no czar to oversee the development of strategic technologies or comparable successes.

As a result, the landscape is littered with technology development programmes that have produced little except tension between the DRDO and the military. Two strategic programmes in particular dealing with the nuclear-powered submarine and the 5,000 km Agni-IV and the Surya ICBM, should be fast-tracked, put under Bhabha-type dispensations with czars being appointed and made accountable for delivery of the finished products within set time-frames — the target dates for the submarine to go to sea-trials should be 2009-2010; and the Agni-IV ought to be test-fired by 2008-2009 and an ICBM by 2012 on the outside. It is a historic “what if” question, but what if Jawaharlal Nehru had not intuitively made the correct selection in the scientifically and administratively-gifted Bhabha?

The chances are Nehru’s ambitious “Janus-faced” nuclear programme would have spluttered interminably as many other projects have done since. So, the selection of the right persons as czars of the two programmes is imperative.

As a matter of fact, the Manmohan Singh government in its early days in 2004 had the right idea of spinning off the long range Agni missiles programme from the DRDO and choosing R.N. Agarwal, who had lost out in the race for the post of science adviser to defence minister and DRDO chief, to head this new organisation. Dr Agarwal, the most accomplished missile-man after Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, had led the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad, with great success.

ASL, tasked with designing, developing and producing, on a hand-tooled basis, a variety of Agni long range missile prototypes for test launches, and with firming up the missile technology platform for Bharat Dynamic Ltd to use in serial manufacture, is one of the few unvarnished DRDO success stories. During Agarwal’s tenure, ASL developed and incorporated into the Agni-III innovative design features not found in missiles in service with many advanced nations.

Like the flexible rocket nozzle and the technology to enable the Agni, in its terminal phase, to pull endo-atmospheric manoeuvres, making it all but impossible for radar to track it, leave alone allow a ballistic missile defence system to interdict it. But the then defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee, backed out owing to in-house DRDO opposition to giving the Agni programme autonomy and Dr Agarwal overarching control of it.

It was the same old “crabs in the basket” story wherein, owing to envy, jealousy or plain cussedness, natural leaders in Indian organisations are pulled down by their peers. But it is now time to revive the concept of a completely independent long range Agni Missiles Programme (AMP) directly under the defence minister and, in its initial phase, to get Dr Agarwal to head it.

The Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV) programme — a ridiculous moniker for the nuclear-powered submarine project — has been in the doldrums for much of its existence. Significantly, it experienced a surge during the years that Vice-Admiral R. Ganesh headed it.

Admiral Ganesh, captained the INS Chakra — the Charlie-class submersible leased from the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s and, damagingly for the genuinely strategic aspirations of the Navy, returned to Moscow after only five years, when the whole system was available to be absorbed by India at a throwaway price. It was a most short-sighted move by the Indian government and led to the loss for nearly a generation of hands-on nuclear submarine handling skills. The point to make is that this project has suffered hugely owing to non-submariners being pitch-forked into leading it.

Predictably, they used their positions mostly for socialising and personal public relations, because lack of familiarity with the platform and relevant technology is a liability they could not surmount. Non-experts at the helm meant no technical direction and oversight from the top. The urgent need is, therefore, for a stalwart submariner to take charge. Scanning the Navy rolls, there is no better fit for this post than Vice-Admiral A.K. Singh, presently Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command, retiring April-end.

Among the last of the serving officers to crew the Chakra, Admiral Singh has spent the bulk of his service career in submarines and ashore in various capacities in the submarine establishment in Vishakhapatnam and as Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Submarines) at the Naval Headquarters. Trained in the Soviet Union, familiar with the nuances of Russian submarine technology and standard operating procedures, fluent in the Russian language and with vast experience of dealing with the Russian naval establishment, he will be a priceless asset in enhancing cooperation with Russia on this project, which is critical to its success.

Reportedly, he is on the Navy’s short-list. But it remains to be seen whether his candidature will be pushed hard by the Navy and whether the Indian government will show the wisdom in installing him at the top of inarguably the most decisive underway strategic programme. The ATV project promises thermonuclear-tipped ballistic missiles fired from a nuclear-powered submarine — the most invulnerable, survivable, and lethal leg of the retaliatory triad in the national nuclear deterrent.

With the no-nonsense and performance-oriented Dr Agarwal and Admiral Singh heading the Agni Missiles Programme and the ATV project respectively, a vertically-launched 250-300 kiloton thermonuclear warheaded IRBM for the indigenous nuclear-powered submarine can be concurrently and collaboratively developed by these two units and readied for service in double-quick time.

This is eminently realisable, as are many other equally challenging technology programmes, but only if the right kind of organisations are configured and the right sort of persons put in charge of them. And, if those in policy circles who entertain small ambitions for India are kept at bay.

Bharat Karnad is Professor at the Centre for Policy Research and author of Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, now in its second edition

and this,

hopefully will make you happy to know i am not in active denial nor I’m trying to push “something” through lifafa journalists whose articles can be taken on a ride by the leaset defence familiar guys around.

Also to be noted Trials with Mirach system will happen as DRDO has placed a order to lease em.

Thank god for small blessings. 🙂

Blessings and me? 😮 I would be blessed to have a cup of tea in Lahores gymkhana 😀 :diablo:

jonesey and nick.. Indian navy has declined the late issue so what so much beating is going on about.

I’m sick of all the knee jerk reaction of peoples.

simply put a report came out gorshkov delayed till 2010, Indian Navy CONFIRMED THE REPORT IS WRONG.

what anymore fuss is going on?