The brahmastra

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R. Prasannan watches the exciting flight of BrahMos
Lieutenant-Colonel Vishnu Ram was not new to BrahMos, the world’s fastest cruise missile. He had rehearsed its firing many times, and had actually fired it thrice. He knew what to do at what point of that monotonous countdown. As the countdown reaches 11, he would insert the key. At nine, the missile would get pyro-armed. At count-zero, it would shoot straight up from the back of his Tatra truck, turn horizontal a few metres above his head, and rush towards an enemy target some 290 km away, three times faster than sound. There would be a tremble felt inside his truck, but he liked it. For no soldier in the world has had this privilege even once-of firing a cruise missile that flies three times faster than sound. He has done it thrice, and had even been in the team that fired an Agni three years ago.

On Sunday, April 22, he was going to insert the BrahMos firing key for a fourth time, a few minutes after 11 a.m. Today he had a sore throat, the result of yesterday’s long briefings and exposure to the sea-breeze at Chandipur-on-Sea. Here, twice every day, the sea recedes nearly three kilometres, leaving a vast stretch of crescent-shaped land over which one could drive a fully-loaded missile truck or even a battle tank. And twice every day, the sea would reclaim that stretch where test-weary scientists and soldiers can enjoy a little paddling.

They could even conduct a small test in high tide, and collect fallen parts either for tests or as souvenirs. “This range is the envy of many countries,” said S.P. Dash, director of the Integrated Test Range. “The British had set up the Proof & Experimental Establishment here in 1895, which came under DRDO in 1958.” The acquired test range is 19.4 km and notified range more than 50 km.

Today’s was going to be the final test for the Army, and Colonel Ram was excited. He tried his best to brief Lieutenant-General B.S. Pawar, commandant of the Deolali-based School of Artillery, and Major-General V.K. Chaturvedi, deputy director-general, artillery, at the Army Headquarters in Delhi. Both of them had come to witness the last launch. It was special because the Army had asked for some unique manoeuvring at the terminal end and Dr Sivathanu Pillai, head of the BrahMos Corporation and chief controller of DRDO, had promised them that the capability had been packed into the missile.

For Pillai, this was going to be the 14th test of his BrahMos. He had conducted 10 tests and handed over an undisclosed number of missiles to the Indian Navy. So confident was he about his missile by the ninth test that when the Navy asked for a tenth test with a warhead, he asked them to pay for it. The amused Navy complied. And as the then Navy chief Arun Prakash and his colleagues watched, Pillai had blasted away a decommissioned naval ship 290 km away.

Today would be his final test-launch for the Army, and he was confident that nothing would go wrong. But wasn’t there something wrong in the positioning of the canisters? They were not straight up, but slightly slanting. Pillai had ordered the launcher to be positioned at a 92-degree angle. He wanted to show the Army that they could take the launcher truck to a rugged countryside terrain and fire the missile, as accurately as straight up from the flattest terrain. Pointing to the middle one among the three canisters on the Tatra truck, Pillai told General Pawar. “The one marked D-15 will be launched today.”

Fourteenth test with D-15? “Don’t be confused by the number,” a young scientist whispered in my ear. “We didn’t have one marked 13.” There was no need to tell me. Earlier in the morning, I had seen R. Appavuraj, deputy director (safety) of the range, breaking a coconut in front of the mobile command post manned by scientist Prameela and her team. From the remains of coconuts scattered there, I had judged that virtually every scientist there had sought divine blessings.

Except perhaps Dr S.K. Chaudhuri, associate director, Research Centre Imarat, and M.V. Ravindranath who was on A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s personal staff for 15 years. Both of them had an arm each in sling; Chaudhuri by slipping in a ship (perhaps he was integrating BrahMos on a warship) and Ravindranath while helping the workers load the canisters. Pillai had asked them to take rest, but they won’t. “That is the spirit that Pillai invokes in his team,” a scientist told me.

Later, BrahMos project director Sibnath Som would tell me that before every launch he would go to Puri and seek the blessings of Lord Jagannath. “There could be a one-millionth of a chance for something to go wrong,” Som would tell me. “We seek divine blessings to take care of that.” Those who can’t or don’t go to Puri have a local temple, a gurdwara, a masjid and a church within the test range.

But Colonel Ram’s problem, however, was his sore throat. As Dr Pillai asked him to brief about today’s launch, the colonel could only whisper. Pillai and the generals smiled affectionately, as Ram told them about his problem. Colonel Uniyal, who retired from the Army and joined the BrahMos team, came forward to give the briefing.
The countdown began a few minutes past 11 a.m. It came down to ‘eleven’. Colonel Vishnu Ram inserted the pyro-arming key. He was two seconds late. The key went in at nine. The countdown came to zero, and there was no sight of the missile. In the air-conditioned control room, Pillai sweated. At stake was his entire credibility as one of India’s foremost rocket and missile scientists, built from the days when he assisted the legendary Vikram Sarabhai in evolving a 10-year space profile for the country.

Pillai had also been a member of the Kalam-led core team that developed the SLV-3s where he had developed the four-stage rocket motors, the first stage of which had become the booster for Agni. He had been a key member of the study team for the polar satellite launch vehicle which was to have the first successful commercial launch the next day. And he had tested his most favourite baby 13 times, most of them with cent per cent success.

All that, and the entire future of BrahMos as India’s Brahmastra, was hanging in the balance. “I have never seen Dr Pillai more worried (than at that moment),” Dr Venugopalan, director of the Hyderabad-based Defence Research and Development Laboratory, would say later. No one knew what was wrong. The previous night Pillai had reviewed everything, when he should have been sleeping off a jet-lag and a drive-lag. For Pillai had reached Delhi in the early hours of Saturday after a trans-continental flight, slept for two hours, attended office, taken a two-hour flight to Bhubaneswar and then had a four-hour back-breaking drive to Chandipur. He had reached five minutes late for the meeting, and had satisfied himself that everything was in place. He had told everyone, “We will have a perfect launch and this would be the last” (for the Army).

He had even solved a counting problem after that meeting. Just as he was about to go sleep, his six-year-old grandson had called from the US with a counting poser. “Why do you count one, two, three… in India?” he asked. “Here in America, we are taught to count zero, one, two, three…” Pillai explained to him a little bit of arithmetic and assured his grandson that Indians, and not Americans, had discovered zero. Barely 12 hours after he had explained the value of zero to the six-year-old, a zero was confronting him.

Over the radio, in the VIP shamiana, the control room, and all the monitoring stations the monotonous count continued, sending trajectories of worry lines through a hundred foreheads. Would safety officer Appavuraj have to ‘destruct’ the missile? The same monotonous voice was now counting up: “zero, one, two…”

Everything changed at that split second with a whoosh. BrahMos blasted out of its canister, shaking Colonel Vishnu Ram’s truck. She flew straight up; in a split second, fire and smoke emitted from her side. Like a cobra that turns on its hood, the missile turned horizontal and rushed towards the horizon. That would have been a unique sight even for those who have watched Agnis, Prithvis or even Minutemans and Titans. All those ballistic missiles are launched vertically, and they slowly climb up into space. Here is a missile that suddenly turns on its head full 90 degrees. In another few seconds, she was lost to the naked or even to the binocled eye.

Not to the dozens of sensors and radars which were sending signals to scores of computer monitors. The monitors had already been showing the intended flight-path and one only had to monitor whether the missile was following it. Almost like a nursery-child’s game of joining the dots. To eyes familiar with a ballistic missile flight path, this one looked grotesque. When the dots would be joined, it would look like the back of a giant snail.

That grotesque snail-back flight path is what makes BrahMos unique. It is easy to draw the flight path of a ballistic missile-a huge parabolic curve. The missile flies like a shell shot (though unlike a shell shot, it leaves the atmosphere and re-enters) from a cannon following all the laws of motion of Newton. And not even Newton can change its flight path.
But BrahMos is a cruise missile. She flies as if piloted by a skilled flier. In war, a fighter pilot takes off from his base, and climbs high into the sky. (Flying high saves fuel and thus gives him a longer range, than flying low.) But as he approaches enemy territory, he flies low so as to evade enemy radars.

BrahMos also does almost the same. As she approaches the target, BrahMos climbs down to just a few metres above the ground (much lower than a fighter plane) and closes in towards the target. The similarities end there. The fighter pilot delivers his bomb; whereas BrahMos hits the target with a 300kg warhead. A fighter plane closes in at subsonic or just above the speed of sound. BrahMos hits the target at almost three times the speed of sound, thus enhancing the impact and destructive power some seven times. A fighter plane, however low it approaches, may be picked up by the enemy radar; BrahMos is much sleeker, and is less prone to be spotted. And since it closes in at thrice the speed of sound, there is no time for the enemy to take evasive or counter-action.

The guidance technology of a cruise missile is the most complicated. Initially, the missile flies on inertial navigation, just like any other ballistic missile or rocket. But as it closes in on its target, the missile’s navigation computer takes over. From this stage, it flies on a trajectory by matching with the ground data, either gravitationally or matching with the terrain images already fed into its navigational computers. In other words, it knows its target and also the route through which it has to fly to that target.

On the monitors in the control room, and the VIP shamiana, a hundred pairs of scientific and military eyes were glued on to the snail picture. One could see BrahMos rushing forward joining the dots. As she climbed up to about a 14-km altitude, Colonel Uniyal stabbed his thumb on a computer monitor and warned the Army officers: “At this point, you may find the missile following a trajectory at a little variance-up and down. That is not because the missile is deviating, but because radars cannot pick it up accurately.”

And thus it happened. After seeming to deviate a bit, the missile followed the course that Pillai and his team had charted for her. As she approached the target, she dipped. And just about a few metres above the surface, she turned horizontal-and unlike the previous tests-and veered round the target, and hit it from behind-a last-second manoeuvring technology.
Sounds of applause rose from various corners of the vast test range, scaring away a flight of cranes in the Nisarg bird sanctuary. The sanctuary was built 12 years ago by a keen bird-watcher who used to frequent Chandipur then. He used to check into Room-4 (now named Mahendragiri) on the first floor of the spartan inspection bungalow and stay for days, mostly to contemplate on India’s strategic technological potential, and occasionally to test an Agni or a Prithvi. How he saved a parrot from being swallowed by a snake is still the lore of the tea-boys, gardeners and janitors.

From the control room, Pillai dialled that old bird-watcher. “It was a 100 per cent success, Sir. We have met all the requirements of the Army. It flew 290 kilometres.” And more technical details, partly in Tamil and partly in English. Then he handed over the phone to General Pawar. The general jerked to attention and spoke with utmost deference, addressing him, “Your Excellency”. The bird-watcher of Chandipur is now his supreme commander, President Kalam.

Half a dozen more calls were made to Delhi to inform Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Army Chief General J.J. Singh and other dignitaries about the perfect launch. “My heartiest congratulations,” one could hear Antony’s otherwise subdued, but now excited, voice. “Soon we will see the system inducted in the Army.”
How soon? The answer I heard later shattered all myths about DRDO’s delays. The promise had been to deliver BrahMos to the Army next year, but Pillai told his colleagues: “Your job is going to be harder now; let us try to deliver the missile next month.” In fact, this is what makes BrahMos different from other DRDO projects. Though under DRDO, BrahMos is run autonomously as an Indo-Russian private company. And it is the developer, maker and marketer of its product.

The young Army officers present at the launch were excited. For, in one month, there would be revolutionary change happening to the Army. Everyone knew it, but it was a young colonel who blurted it out to me, “Do you know what this means to us? Our strike capability has doubled.”

It took me time to work out the arithmetic. It had taken the Indian Army nearly three decades to acquire a strike range of 35 km with the Bofors gun in the 1980s. In just another decade, India’s missile scientists made it nearly five times with the 150-km Agni. (The 250-km Agni is for the Air Force.) Now the same scientists are giving them a capability to strike an enemy some 290 km away.

The strategic implications of such a capability are mind-boggling. Till now the Army was viewed, especially by the snooty Air Force, as a tactical force in conventional wars. Only the Air Force had the power to strike deep in enemy territory, but use of air power has always had the danger of escalating the war. The whole equation will change now. Without a single warplane having to cross the Indian airspace, without a single rifleman having to cross the border, the Army can deter an enemy with a threat to strike deep in his territory. And that goes with the doctrine of a winnable limited conventional war, enunciated in 1999 by the Kargil-victorious Army chief, General V.P. Malik.

Not that the air force has to be left behind. Having delivered the naval version, and proved the Army version, Pillai is eyeing two more platforms-the Sukhois for an air-launched version, and a submarine.

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