AbhimanyuThe Chinese ASAT missile was launched on a predetermined path that was timed to coincide with another known path of one of its abandoned satellites.
The following is from a news report :-
The kinetic kill mechanism ensures that a killer rocket crashes head-on into a target moving at 28,000 km/hr. It adds its own speed to impact, creating a hypersonic shock wave that shreds the target into metallic confetti. The killer is positioned in the collision course by tracking the target with the help of radars and other monitoring equipment.
“We use same type of calculations before every satellite is launched. This is done to position our satellite in a crowded space without causing inconvenience to other vehicles using the same area. The same method can be used to position a killer vehicle near a target to destroy it,” top ISRO sources said.
In its space war exercise, China used similar methods to pinpoint the target and launched the killer using a ballistic missile before homing it into it. “With the existing technology India can also perfect this mechanism within no time. But we believe that space must be kept out of military dreams,” sources said.
Reference :
AbhimanyuIt is not simply a case of getting a rocket to the required altitude it is necessary to locate the target, track it and then guid the interceptor to it. Saturn 5 could go to the moon, does not mean it could intercept satellites.
Actually the Chinese ASAT test was not guided. An abandoned weather satellite was chosen, whose path was known after which the ASAT was fired to coincide with the satellite on its path only. No tracking or guidance mechanisms were used.
That is the reason of Mr. Madhavan Nair’s comment that the test can be done by India also given that its rockets can reach the altitude. The International community also was not concerned about any new technological capability acquired by China, but about the debris that was strewn which could damage other satellites.
It may be said again that the KALI-5000 is a microwave beam system and Not a Laser system. Its function will be to “‘fry'” the electronics on board satellites or ballistic missiles by collimating a concentrated EMI pulse of the order of a few gigawatts.
AbhimanyuThe sickening thing about this is that the M2K could have been ordered for the MMRCA contract to the Mirage 2000-5 mk2 standard with part of the deal including the upgrade of the existing fleet to the same standard. This could all have been under way by now and India would have a fleet of 180 very capable aircraft, especially if the Storm Shadow/Scalp/Black Shaheen had been ordered as well. Instead we have this seemingly endless and highly confused MMRCA contract that is going no where fast and despite all the protestations is unlikely to provide any technology that would not be available through a comprehensive Su-30MKI upgrade. Indeed I would suggest now that thebest thing that could be done would be to scrap the entire MMRCA saga and split the 126 figure between the LCA and further Su-30MKI’s.
sealordlawrence, the above is accurate. MRCA is unlikely to provide any technology that is unknown or not planned for the Su-30 MKI, except AESA radars and possibly datalink capability.
Most airforces operate only 2 fighters of 2 different types, in sharp contrast to the highly inaccurate claim made by Indian Parliament’s Standing Committee report on Defence that and I quote, “..most airforces like to operate light, medium and heavy class of fighters….”
The USAF operates only 2 fighter types and the USN, only 1 type. The same is the case of UK, France, Russia Australia and even China, which is often sought to be emulated in most respects (it operates Su-30 derivatives and J-10 only other than older MiGs and derivatives).
Thus, IAF can also operate just 2 primary fighter types i.e. Su-30 and Tejas with older Mirages and MiGs, and the Indian Navy may operate the MiG-29 K and Tejas. This is similar to the US model.**
the erieye will help in giving them some amount of look see into indian territory, but i doubt it will be operated too close to the border, and being a smaller platform, its range/ performance are going to have limitations.
Though offtopic, I agree with the above as some Akash batteries can be placed close to the border areas. Thus, Erieyes may not be able to operate at 20-25 kms at many parts along the border. A 20 km reduction in ‘forward-look’ may reduce its scan area by a few thousand square kms.
** Considering fighter planes only. This discounts transport planes, and in case of the US and Russia, it discounts bombers.
AbhimanyuChina last January launched a missile that destroyed one its old satellites in orbit. Something Western intelligence agencies believed China wasn’t capable of for another 10 years at least.
Actually, as per the Chief of the Indian Space Research Organization, Mr. Madhavan Nair, such a test is not difficult. As per this news report, he has stated that it is “no big deal” for India to also perform such a test as its rockets too can reach that altitude.
It may be noted that as of 2000, India was developing a beam weapon that could potentially severely damage the electronics components of satellites and ballistic missiles by sending a highly concentrated pulse of EMI.
The KALI-5000 has already been used in the study of the trajectory of ballistic missiles, and in the testing of the vulnerability of electromagnetics in the Tejas combat jet.
This beam weapon need not be placed into space, but can be on the ground itself. However, after 2000, work on this system has been classified.
Reference :-
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19990819/ige19013.html
AbhimanyuIf so, then i guess Israeli AF (regarded on of the best, if not The Best) will be at an inherent disadvantage against her Arab adversaries, once the latter notices the advantages of flying Bisons vs blk 50/52 Vipers. All these Arabs/Iranians have to do is to get their older mig-21s and other russian systems upgraded on Bison lines, and there goes the Israeli qualitative advantage with the former having a quantitative advantage. With regard to WVR, well with a decent HMD/off boresight missile, even a Mig-21 could possibly hold its own even against F-22, let alone F-16/F-15.
Vikasrehman, a view held by Pakistanis is that in the presence of AWACs and BVR missiles, the features of long-range radar and TVC of the Su-30 MKI no longer remain advantageous. In the same manner, Indian MiG-21 upgrades have HMS and many avionics found on contemporary 4th G fighters. Thus, backed by Phalcon AWACs, they should also be able to engage any 4th G fighter from the PAF or PLAAF. The same can likewise be said of J-7 upgrades of PLAAF, which too are a few decades old.
The MRCA contract has been proposed to phase out the MiG-21 through -27 (MiG-25 has been retired already and replaced by satellite reconnaisance), which date to 3 decades in age and also due to fast approaching decommissioning deadlines. Their airframes cannot be refurbished any further, which is a reason for accidents involving mostly these older fighters. In a few years, it is doubtful whether all their critical spares will also be continued to be made available by the manufacturers.
In the first few years of this decade, the IAF had proposed to purchase only Mirage-2000s as replacement, which could not be met due to Dassault’s decision to discontinue the assembly line of the same. In 2004-05, an open tender for the same was proposed and F-16, Gripen and MiG-35 were the original “unofficial” contenders. Some time in 2005 or 2006, Boeing’s F-18, Rafale and Eurofighter included themselves, or were unopposed by the IAF/ministry of defence.
However, instead of foreign-made MRCAs, the indigenous Tejas can easily meet the requirements of the MRCA. Having max. load capacity of the MiG-27 bomber, and range of the current MiG-23’s (the very planes MRCA is supposed to replace), it has avionics that have been used on the frontline Su-30 MKIs. Besides, the F-18, Rafale and Eurofighter have range-payload capacities approaching that of the already serving Su-30 MKI. So, they won’t add any new functionality.
AbhimanyuIf required to penetrate hostile airspace the Backfire would be more survivable due to its supersonic dash capability, but with stand-off cruise missiles that requirement simply isn’t very pressing for China today.
Trident, in a war-time scenario, carpet bombing, surgical strikes, and strikes of targets not known in advance are performed by stealth bombers. Cruise missiles may be inadequate for each of these specific roles.
Besides, strategic targets can be defended against possible cruise missile attacks as cruise missiles have been defeated in actual tests by Israel, US, Russia and India. Medium range and quick reaction SAMs have been tested against UAVs and sea-skimmer missiles.
However, the effect of the same will be negated in case of nuclear armed cruise missiles. For such purposes, long range anti-cruise missile defence like India’s Pradyumna are being developed with AWACs support.
Abhimanyuvikasrehman, the Spyder missile deal is close to being cancelled because of evidence of a bribery scandal in its deal, involving the Israeli company. CVC to probe missile deal with Israel.
Besides, the Spyder is a quick-reaction SAM, in the class of the 9-12 km Trishul missile, and not that of the medium range Akash missile.
Last year after the Barak missile scam was exposed, in which a former Chief of Navy is also suspected to be involved, the Defence Minister had claimed that, ‘DRDO is in dialogue with Air Force for possible induction after jointly developing the user trial criteria’ as per this news report.
Abhimanyuno..no..
in the indian case the surveillance cum tracking radar is the lrtr or the long range tracking radar, an indian version of the greenpine.
its backed up by the multifunction fire control radar which can rotate all around, and has antiaircraft capability as well. but both work in tandem for the intercept. its not following the russian concept or us concept really since there will be similarities between all three. actually we are quite similar to the US system in the usage of a 2 layered shield
Nick_76, I agree with the above. Earlier, I had mistaken the use of a separate surveillance radar and a tracking radar. India’s BMD is a mixture of US and western architectures.
In the Indian BMD system, the individual radars (like Patriot’s track radar) scan particular sectors in the atmosphere. Whenever a target is detected, it is first sent to the MCC which classifies the target, predicts its impact point, and depending upon the predicted path assigns one of the optimum TELs to engage it.
Thus, surveillance is done by a combined use of “blinkered” track radars which are allocated areas in the atmosphere to look for possible targets.
also, like thaad even india is planning to integrate all it can into the bmd system, it would be foolish not to. so all the iafs radars for low flying targets, long range strategic radars like thd-1955, aerostats, awacs..its going to be a large integration.
obviosuly you’d want to get a unified air picture with zero gaps (as much as possible) that means as much radar coverage as possible.
The above is actually being [i]specifically[/i] done for cruise missile defence, which needs to track low-flying cruise missiles via AWACs. If a cruise missile happens to pass by a ground radar also en route to target, its info will be registered with the radar network.
The claims about Babur having the capability to loiter around, or being programmed to automatically evade radar are unlikely to be true, as loiter capability is only with the latest version of US cruise missile developed 2-3 years ago.
Babur is a basic GPS-INS guided missile only with or without Digital Scene Matching at terminal phase (assume worst case with the latter). Till the time the BMD system does not have the capability to intercept cruise missiles, short-range defence via Akash SAM can be used to defend strategic locations within Babur’s range of 700-1000 kms.
AbhimanyuThere is a difference in the design methodologies of Russian BMD systems like S-400 and western BMDs like THAAD, Patriot and Arrow. Russian systems have a separate surveillance radar and the tracking-guidance radar, whereas in western BMDs both these functionalities are integrated into one radar unit for atleast the Patriot-3 and Arrow systems.
The advantage of separating the surveillance and tracking radar units as in S-400 is that the separation can be of many kilometers, thus resulting in a wide area of defence. This is in contrast with point defence like Israel’s Patriot-3 and Arrow systems, as a consequence of integrated surveillance and tracking modes on one ground radar.
However, to solve this, the THAAD system instead of a dedicated surveillance radar uses a network of sensors ranging from AWACs, ship-based rardars and other ground radars. This diagram illustrates this.
The network of AWACs etc. will communicate to a central operations centre, which in turn will simply designate the nearest missile launching unit to launch an interceptor at the target.
The disadvantage of such a system may be issues of interoperability between various ad-hoc and independent platforms with the BMD centre. Thus, the S-400 may be more robust and also has far fewer issues of interoperability, compared to that of THAAD.
It may be noted that although the Indian BMD Pradyumna uses Israeli radars, it follows the Russian architecture exactly :- a surveillance radar detects an incoming threat first very early. After that, the launcher unit is assigned the target. The launcher unit’s local tracking radar then guides the missile to the target.
The Japanese SM-3 which has been co-developed with USA, is similar to the Aegis and Patriot-3 BMDs that it plans to acquire. As per globalsecurity.org, SM-3 is mostly the effort of Aegis’ main contractor Raytheon, with Japan’s role limited to support only. Hence, like the Mitsubishi F-2 fighter jet which is an F-16 clone, the SM-3 is also likely to be only a design replica of the Aegis.
The SM-3 system emphasizes on a precisely homed terminal kill for which it is guided by an infrared sensor. The nose-cone is is jettisoned in the terminal exo phase to expose the sensor. Thus, it may be nearly impossible to jam. The ground-based radars discriminate targets in a target scene.
Most of the emphasis is on the stage-wise uplift and protection of the kinetic warhead until the terminal phase. This is an advantage over the S-400 and Indian BMDs, which use proximity fuses.
References :-
AbhimanyuAkash SAM downs UAV in flight trial
The fifth and last trial successfully took place at 2.15 pm today at Chandipur- on- sea. The missile destroyed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which was flying simulating the air attack.
From the above, it may be surmised that even though the main role of Akash has been claimed to be that of anti-aircraft defence, the Akash can be used to counter cruise missiles also.
The target UAV was released from an aircraft and had a cruise speed of 700 kms per hour, which is high subsonic speed (Mach 0.77). Thus, it effectively simulated a cruise missile target.
Thus, Pakistan’s 700 km range Babur cruise missile or the air-launched RA’AD missile may have vulnerabilities against the Akash, though not fool-proof. It may be interesting to note that in the 5th test, it targeted a decoy towed from a UAV. The RA’AD is a large encased missile “lugged” and later released by fighters, which Akash may be capable of countering. It is unlikely that RA’AD exceeds sonic speeds.
References :-
AbhimanyuAs per the 3 previous news reports posted by Nick_76, the Akash missile system is likely to be the mainstay of the IAF and army’s medium range air-defence. Being a passively guided missile, it cannot be jammed easily.
Here is the official website of akash sam from DRDO. The diagram shown shows the figure of engagement profile of Akash SAM system. This page shows the various operational scenarios like the Box, Trapezoidal and Linear Array configurations, which can be used to defend areas ranging from 62 x 62 to 5000 sq. kms.
As can be seen, the distance of the missile TEL from the BCC is classified. This distance can be of the order of 40-50 kms. In turn, the distance from the Central surveillance/Acquisition radar can be 62 kms (Box config) to a large one (as in Trapezoidal config).
Now, PAF’s tactic would be to use long range JDAMs or standoff munitions (of F-16s) to destroy either the Central radar or tracking radar from a distance of over 100 kms. The F-16s may passively detect the far located CAR and BCC radars by their emissions, but the missile TELs will be placed at a distance of just 25-30 kms of the incoming F-16s and thus will not be detected. Thus, the incoming fighter may at once find itself getting tracked without warning even though it passively detects the hostile radar at around 100 kms away.
Akash missile is passively guided and hence, jamming measures will not be useful against it. Missile warning receivers may only warn if they have the ability to detect incoming missile plumes.
AbhimanyuPakistan is likely to purchase the HQ-9 missile system from China. However, it gives basic defence against tactical Scud-type missiles only, and not ballistic missiles. Thus, some “crude” protection may be gained against 150 km Prithvi missiles, but not against higher ranged missiles.
It may also divert funds to procure European systems or even older versions of US systems like Patriot-1 or older Aegis.
AbhimanyuWe may assume in the worst case, that Pakistan or China develop a fully functional MIRV.
In such a case, as the Indian BMD can detect 200 targets at a distance of 600 kms, the main MIRV module and its path can be captured on radar. If separation does not take place beyond 80 kms, the entire MIRV module can be neutralized in the enxo mode itself, by Pradyumna.
However, if the separation takes place before that, then individual Pradyumna interceptors for the enxo mode and interceptors for the endo mode may have to be fired.
That a few separated missiles can be individually detected is clearly evident from the diagram posted by Nick_76 in post #544 (top of this page), which highlights to a high detail, even the debris of the destroyed target.
In fact, it may be interesting to note that the Indian BMD itself performs a sort of saturation attack against the incoming targets; every target is allocated 2 missiles each in the endo and exo modes respectively. Thus, liquidating MIRV targets should be possible.
AbhimanyuMercurius, you are welcome.
With regard to Pakistan having done any work on MIRVs, a news report back in 2002 did state that Pakistan was to start its MIRV programme in near future. However, im not aware of any further developments.
Modern BMD systems are very recent; most, like India’s, are being developed in this decade itself. Thus, the characteristics of all known types of ballistic missiles–including MIRV–must have been considered by the developers.
It must be rememeberd that the Indian BMD system already dedicates 2 missiles for a single target, i.e. in the endo and exo mode. The following statement by Dr. Saraswat quoted by the article posted by abrahavt :
The DRDO has now set its sights higher. It wants to take up “the harder challenges” of engaging an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), launching two missiles in the exo-atmosphere and the endo-atmosphere against a single target missile, and so on.
Thus, the above can be used in case of failure of interception in the medium stage and also in case of a saturated attack.
AbhimanyuHow many missiles are in the Pakistani inventory? What is the multi-target engagement capability of the Indian ABM system? What is the intended coverage for this system? And finally what is the procurement timetable for interceptors and the total system?
sealordlawrence, earlier I meant all types of Pakistani ballistic missiles can be countered,a s its capacity is to deal upto 2000-km class of targets.
The Swordfish radar of the BMD system has the capability to track 200 targets at a range of about 600 kilometers.
The BMD system, at present can cover an area of 200 square km.
The timetable for the completion of the project is 3 years, though subsequent procurement and numbers is undecided.
References :-
1) http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=3681&start=0 (Post by ramana, 10 : 26 pm. the original report is not archived; the particular thread is solely a collection of all news articles and interviews regarding India’s BMD test).
2) Interview of Dr. Saraswat. (link posted earlier).
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