India to develop anti-missile defence system by 2010: official

VISAKHAPATNAM, India (AFP) — India will develop an indigenous defence system to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles by 2010, a defence official said.

The system was currently being designed and would go on trial from 2009, said V.K. Saraswat, the chief controller of the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

It would be capable of detecting, intercepting and destroying intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles from any country, he added on the sidelines of a science conference that ended Monday.

“We are developing a robust anti-missile defence system that will have high-speed interceptions for engaging ballistic missiles in the 5,000-kilometre (3,000-mile) class and above,” he said.

India had recently shown it was able to handle targets in the class up to 2,000-2,500 kilometres, he added.

The country would join Israel, Russia and the US in developing and possessing such technology once the system is rolled out.

The defence system’s tracking and fire control radars have been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation in collaboration with Israel and France, he said.

Nuclear-capable India also plans to test-fire in mid-2009 a missile capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 6,000 kilometres, Saraswat said.

A missile with a range of 3,000 kilometres was successfully test-fired last year from Wheeler Island off the eastern coast.

Blast-off from a missile era

New Delhi, Jan. 8: India has wound up its guided missile programme 24 years after it was launched, jettisoning the political philosophy of isolated self-reliance in military technology.

The burial of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) founded by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in July 1983 was couched in claims by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) that it has delivered all five missile systems that the plan envisaged.

The announcement comes a day before the DRDO celebrates its golden jubilee. Begun with an initial allocation of about Rs 389 crore in 1983, the cost and time overruns have seen more than Rs 2,000 crore being used up in the programme to develop five missile systems. (See chart)

C.K. Prahlada, the chairman of the IGMDP board and chief controller (research and development) of DRDO, declared today that the Akash surface-to-air missile system tested last month was ready for induction by the army and the air force. With this, the IGMDP has been formally wound up.

The winding up of the IGMDP does not mean that all work on the five missile projects is scrapped immediately. It means the government will not make any further investment in the research and development of these missiles over and above what has already been sanctioned.

For example, the Agni III strategic missile that successfully test-fired in April last year can still be fine-tuned and more tests of it are likely on the road to induction in the armed forces.

The government and the DRDO believe that the winding up of the IGMDP means the emphasis is now shifting from research and development to series production.

Prahlada said missile manufacturing capacities have to be expanded. Capacity at a missile facility in Hyderabad will be expanded in the short term to 100 missiles from 40 a year.

The IGMDP’s time actually ran out in December 2007 and were it not for the DRDO’s advertisement of the Akash as the pinnacle of its success, the programme’s burial would have been quiet. Work on the smallest of the missiles under the project — the anti-tank Nag — will be over this summer.

“You must understand the background of the IGMDP,” Prahlada explained. “It was started at a time when there was no help forthcoming from anywhere. That situation is not there now.”

To illustrate, he said there were organisations from as many as 14 countries that were now willing to collaborate with the DRDO in developing missiles. Among these were the US, Israel, Germany, France and Russia.

When the IGMDP was launched in July 1983, India was dependent almost wholly on Russian military technology. But even Soviet supplies and support for the strategic missile programme was niggardly.

Understanding that the US had imposed a technology-denial regime, India offered to devise its own missiles and put Kalam in charge.

The IGMDP was given time till 1995. On Kalam’s insistence, the P.V. Narasimha Rao government gave it a further lease of life for another 10 years.

In 2006, when the defence establishment had all but taken a decision to mothball the Trishul missile programme, the DRDO insisted again — when Kalam was President — and the government granted it another two years.

In these two years, the DRDO — and not only its missile programmes — came in for criticism from the users (the armed forces) and even its former scientists. But last year, the DRDO carried out probably the largest number of missile tests in the rush to meet the December 2007 deadline.

Asked if the IGMDP was going to be replaced by another programme, Prahlada said there would be a general move towards greater collaborative ventures but this would be decided on a case-by-case basis.

He said two possible models were the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile that is a joint venture between India and Russia run on commercial lines, and the Astra, a beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile for which the DRDO is tying up with institutions in at least four countries.

But this model, however, will not be adopted for strategic (read long-range nuclear-capable) missiles like the Surya (which is on the drawing board) and electronic warfare systems.

SLL, an update on Astra.

Astra missile to be tested soon

HYDERABAD: Astra, the beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile, having the capability to engage a high-speed, fast-manoeuvring target, will soon be tested by integrating the weapon system to a fighter aircraft.

A captive flight test would be first carried out in March-April by fitting the missile to the aircraft, Astra project director S. Gollakota told The Hindu here. During the test, the aircraft would conduct several manoeuvres at different speeds and altitudes when the mechanical, electronics and avionics compatibility would be checked. Following this, the flight test would be conducted when the missile fitted to the aircraft would be fired. “We are hoping to do it by October-November 2008,” he added.

He said the “futuristic missile” meant exclusively to intercept the target at supersonic speeds (1.2 to 1.4 Mach) was already tested on the ground to prove its avionics, guidance and other sub-systems, including the propulsion. After the flight trials, the missile would be integrated with the multi-role Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas) and Sukhoi-30 by the year-end. Early next year, it was planned to be integrated with MIG-29 and Mirage 2000.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) scientists are working to ensure that Astra performed effectively at different altitudes — one cruising at an altitude of 15 km with a range of 100 km, another at an altitude of eight km with 44 km range and the third (sea-level altitude) with a range of 21 km.

Stating that it was a highly agile missile though smallest of the DRDO’s weapon systems in terms of size and weight, Dr. Gollakota said it was better than missiles of similar class belonging to Russia, the United States and France. The aerodynamics design combined with accurate guidance, sensors and the Radio Frequency seeker provided the missile with the much-needed capability to intercept fast-moving targets at supersonic speed.

In a typical combat scenario, the coordinates of the target would be passed on to the missile by the radar of the mother aircraft through a secure data link system. This would ensure that “handing over errors” were minimised, accuracy increased and the miss-distance was less than five metres.

In the last 15 km, the seeker becomes active and homes in onto the object.

Indian Navy chief visiting Israel Jan 4-8

New Delhi, Jan 3 – Indian Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta leaves here Friday on a five-day visit to Israel for discussions on furthering the burgeoning military ties between the two countries that have seen Tel Aviv emerge as New Delhi’s second largest arms supplier after Russia.

‘Admiral Mehta will be visiting Israel Jan 4-8 for a series of high-level meetings with senior military and civilian officials,’ official sources said Thursday.

In July, India and Israel announced Rs.100 billion ($2.5 billion) joint venture to develop a medium-range missile for the Indian Air Force (IAF) to replace its ageing Soviet-era Pichora weapon system.

The joint venture between the Defence and Research Development Organisation (DRDO) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) would develop a new generation, 70-km range missile.

The IAF will also be associated with the project, which will have an indigenous component of Rs.23 billion.

Eighteen command and launch systems are also to be built for the new missile, which has been described as a robust system to counter a wide variety of threats to ground assets.

The new weapon is likely to be an advanced version of the Israeli Spyder quick-reaction surface-to-air missile the IAF has acquired. The Spyder has an effective range of 55 km.

DRDO and IAI are already in a Rs.14 billion joint venture to develop an extended-range version of the Barak missile that is deployed on frontline Indian Navy warships like the aircraft carrier INS Viraat.

The next-generation Barak will have a 70-km range against the 10-km radius of the existing missile.

India to double cruise missile output

MOSCOW, Dec. 31 (UPI) — The Russian-Indian joint venture BrahMos has purchased a manufacturing plant in south India.

BrahMos plans to use the new facility to turn out twice as many supersonic cruise missiles as before, a company spokesman said Monday, RIA Novosti reported.

The Indian state-owned company Kerala Hightech Industries Ltd. sold the facility to BrahMos, and the increased manufacturing capacity will allow the number of cruise missiles being produced to rise from 25 a year to 50 a year, the report said.

RIA Novosti reported that Praveen Pathak stated the Defense Research and Development Organization, which represents the Indian half of BrahMos, would put around $25 million in the plant within two years, and the Indian Space Research Organization would contribute another $6 million.

“At the plant in (the state of) Kerala, we will assemble BrahMos missiles, as well as make components for Astra rockets produced by ISRO,” Pathak said.

RIA Novosti said the contract on the transfer of the plant’s ownership to BrahMos is expected to be concluded on Jan. 1.

RIA Novosti said India could buy as many as 1,000 BrahMos missiles for its armed forces in the next 10 years and export as many as 2,000 of them at the same time.

Indian and Russian engineers are currently seeking to develop air- and submarine-launched BrahMos missiles, the report said.