Bharat Rakshak

BrijeshB, There is a thing called V- gamma map for any RV. Its a plot of Velocity, angle of attack for different ranges. What it looks like is a stretched hand kerchief with two extreme conditions: maximum aerodynamic loads and maximum thermal loads. Both are not concurrent. In order to proof the system you need to repeat the flights a minimum of two times at each of these two points.Hence the four A4 flights.
While doing this one can make other changes that dont effect the prime goal of proofing the RV. These changes are secondary...

ramana garu
In order for the logic to work, India must deploy Hundreds of mobile TELS with A5's and her younger siblings all over India backed by a hardened network backbone for SFC CNC.
How long would it take for India to reach the stage where we have atleast 100 secretly deployed TELs meeting the min requirements?
6 months? 1 year? 2 years?
Altair

on another note how much do people think we need to absorb a 1st strike from Cheen, keep to the NFU and then destroy the top50 in Cheen in exchange?

my wild guess:
- 100 x A5 on road with 3xmirv head
- 100 x A4 on rail with 1 warhead (=> 40-50 such trains with 2 missile each)
- 24 x K4 with 3xmirv head (ie 3 on patrol subs with 8 SLBM each => need 6 such SSBN & 48 such missiles)
- 50 x A1 for TSP (1 warhead each)

warhead need comes to 150 big ones for A4 & A1, and ~450 small ones for A5 & K4

assuming Shourya will be conventional for anti-SAM/C3I strikes, as will Brahmos2 / Nirbhay and that K1 will be retired when K4 comes.

annual opex for this little troop of beasts will surely be in billions $$ range, forgetting about the capex for a moment.

this i would consider the MCD (min credible deterrent) though JNU lefties might want to divide by 10 probably

idea would be of the 600 warheads, launch 300 and wipe top50 in enemy nation off the map. while retaining 300 more for a follow up strike and to deter the vultures from other ends from swooping in to tear our flesh.

For PGS type thingys

USAF - DARPA FALCON program, includes common aero vehicle, now cancelled HTV-3x etc

US Army - Advanced hypersonic weapon program

US NAVy - under Arclight (will also include a hypersonic long ranged cruise missile which is under development) . Work will build upon Boeing's Hyfly hypersonic cruise missile demonstration program from the 2000s. ( LM , ATK et al may also get involved.)


Also for the USAF - Waverider derivatives in the future.

Altair, Think more. First dispersal ensures the challenger will have to commit himself to employ large numbers for neutralizing Indian retaliation. And nuke game is not a two player game. Only the US has such numbers!

If it is Cheen and/or Pakiland, not much. The second strike is the SLBMs. That is why you have a triad. Or you can go totally like Phrance/UK-stan and put the detterent in some 4 boomers and be done. I sort of like the Phrance /UK-Stan kind of deal. Long term I think that is the best model for us to go to.

You are welcome. The Crux of your passage as I read is that 1. we don't have enough missile to do CounterForce wrt China and 2. Even if we have, our CounterForce is not effective. Let put some numbers to see where we stand or can stand.

1. No. of missiles to do CounterForce:

China, as per open source, is considered to have, including MRBM to ICBM roughly between 1500 to 2000 missiles, further chances are that they could be adding more every year. It could be that real force China possesses could be higher by a factor of 2 or more. But lets work with available numbers, some rough calculation.

a. We know Agni V can take 3 to 10 MIRV as per official info. At 10 warhead per missile, it takes only 50 Agni V missile to destroy 500 missiles. Media speculated the cost of Agni V to be 60 to 80 Crores. For 50 missile it comes around by today exchange rates, ~750 million USD, not even a billion USD when you are purchasing ~100 aircraft for more than 10 billion USD. To take out 2000 missiles, you need ~ 3 billion USD; When we can start factories for producing thousands of Nag and Akash, can't we produce few hundred Agni V missiles? Just a thought to ponder.

b. By one account, China assigns a launcher for 5 missiles. So if we can take out a single launcher, we can render unusable more than one missile in Chinese arsenal for immediate use.

c. Leaving out Brahmos and Shourya, we have, from Prithvi to Agni 3, some 200 - 300 odd missiles totally as per open source. How difficult to add few hundred more just for CounterForce?

So, how many missiles are needed to do CounterForce. Don't you see, we have the wherewithal to do CounterForce in terms of number of missiles required, atleast if not now but in immediate future?

2. Effective CounterForce:

If you see from pure theoretical sense, effective CounterForce is one which can destroy 100% of your adversary missiles. CounterForce strategy couldn't fully succeed during Cold War becoz the initiator of N war can't guarantee such a high percentage close to 100% of destruction to avoid retaliation. Even to do that it requires such a large nuclear force that the after effects or the radiation fallout couldn't be confide to that locality and the Carnage going to be so huge & unacceptable to World polity defeating the purpose of CounterForce. By one account, to destroy Chinese missiles 100% by CounterForce, it need such a volume of N force that it amounts to destroying neighboring countries like Korea/Russia. You can see various writings from Western authors of Cold War era on how CounterForce is not a viable one, ie. you can't wage a N war and win without getting yourself destroyed typified by movies like The Hunt for Red October.

But now, accuracy of missiles has improved. Buker buster tech improved and improving. Pure conventional response is a possibility. Second, Anti ballistic missile defence is in our grasp. So, if you want you do CounterForce without fully aggravating your adversary, you can, by means of Conventional response. With ABM available, you don't need to target for 100% destruction, even a 10% destruction at initial stages of war will have huge impact on the course of War and amounts to that much less warhead that we need to tackle and further N war is indeed wage-able, you can scale back/ scale down N war against if it is a purely CounterValue response.

Let say, as Pak stated, it uses tactical N warhead on our force for a Cold Start like action. If there is no CounterForce capability with us, it leads to uncontrollable N war that leads to further more destruction. Indian Gov is by the people and for the people. Unlike autocrats like Mao who is willing to sacrifice half of their population just for the national pride and his ego, Indian Gov has the first priority to protect its people before going for punishing her adversary. So CounterForcce enables Indian Gov do its prime duty without losing face, economy and population.

NFU or any other doctrine is like 'Beware! Dogs Inside' sign board on the gate. Its utility ends once a intruder accepts the challenge and prepare to enter uninvited. After that it becomes usual game of waging a War. So there is no need to wrangle ourselves in the debate whether CouterForce means first strike or MAD or NFU. CounterForce can be part of Second Strike too. It take its own course once the War started.





You know, one of paradigms of winning in a N war is the ability to retain sizable warhead/missiles to do a second strike. By corollary, if you want to deny victory to your enemy in N war, you destroy considerable amount of N missiles she possess by doing CounterForce.

Edit: Corrected error.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/apj- ... 86052.html

Its a Typo ..
Rs. 93 lakh crores translates to roughly USD 1.8 Trillion !

Should be about 93 thousand crores which is ~ USD 18 Billion.
Out of the 18, Akash has orders of ~ USD 6 Billion and Brahmos has orders of ~ USD 4 Billion ... Prthvi and Agni Series would account for the rest ...

More pertains to china military watch thread, but since we are talking about counter force against China and extensive tunnel system, thought of posting here.
A nice YouTube video showing sort of development of Chinese tunnel system with glimpses of interiors made by Geogetown Univ if I m not mistaken.
Now if we are to take out such extensive tunnels, it is almost impossible, but perhaps we can block the entrances? Is that possible with BRahmos? if that is possible we can effectively render hundreds of missiles useless provided it is some sort of a well coordinated surprise strike. But the very big question is, is it even possible to close tunnel entrances effectively? Gurus kindly comment. And also take notice of mention of tunnels in TIbet around 14:05 mins into the video.

venug !! what have u been smoking of late? block entrances thru Brahmos. This is not humour thread...

saar, I am not a missile expert, but would like to know if there is any wherewithal with us to just do that. I mentioned Brahmos- III because if they can do a steep dive, they are good for mountainous regions, tunnels hidden in such regions can be reachable, but I am ignorant about if such thing is even conceivable or just as you mentioned or I am smoking dope . Brahmos are also limited by range, so if not them any other arsenal we can think of just that?

venug...just kidding. Cant be done. These are flights of fancy...

a good road infrastructure along china border, good mountain artillery, well equipped troops, a powerful AF and a more aggressive political stance will do more to deter the *deleted* then anything else. I was recently in AP and met GOC of a mountain Div and what i write above are some of his thoughts. *deleted* outmatch us in all these deptt but now they are not so sure about a certain and decisive outcome as in old times if ever the two nations clash conventionally. we have made quite a few improvements and as per the GOC, last 2 years have been critical in terms of us being more prepared. but soooooooooooooooooo much to be done as per him.... all this talk of taking out chinese N arsenal is pure BS.

China has a whole underground network of tunnels linked by trains to deploy the missiles quickly to different places.The missiles are out in the 'open' only when fired from the 'nodes' in the system.The whole network has lots of redudancy built in and has been systematically improvised and upgraded over the years to provide a highly effective and concealed nuclear force.The whole system is almost immune to a nuclear counterstrike.Beauty of the system is that there is a lot of redudancy even when specific 'nodes' are take out.And the whole complex is expansive and vast.Takes years and lots of commitment to do something like this, but national will prevails.In a small measure almost every major country worth its salt has in some measure its own 'tunnels' hidden from prying satellite eyes but the chinese system is truly immense by any standard.

By the way PK seems to have its own tunnels in some of its mountains.They call their weapons 'safe' once deployed in those regions.

we will have to build a credible N deterrence against China and also develop a credible SUb based N strike capability. This talk of taking out chinese N arsenal is total BS. And what is range of brahmos? how deep can it go into China... ? total BS... dont even think abt it..

>>all this talk of taking out chinese N arsenal is pure BS.

If someone uttered about India acquiring technologies for Anti Ballistic Missile before the first PAD test, I'm sure, he/she must have heard the same message that it is BS.

I say, If you or anyone have so much conviction in your statement, I request you to inscribe those statements in a place that you often visit. It will come very handy. Lets see.

U.S. Alters Non-Nuclear Prompt-Strike Plan

[ quote ]
Instead, the report says, the Pentagon will continue to explore “boost-glide” concepts that have a nonballistic flight trajectory, which is deemed less likely to be mistaken for a nuclear attack and would not be counted by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which limits only missiles with a ballistic trajectory.
[ /quote ]

[ quote ]
One possible mission for conventional prompt-strike weapons, congressional staffers say, is to be able to knock out Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities early in a crisis.
[ /quote ]

By extension any missiles and launchers.

The point is? I am missing it.

Also, not in relation to the above post, but can anyone here confirm/deny the payload of Shourya not K15 is going to be nuclear only?

another aspect for NFU deterrence is one shot A5 delivering multiple ASAT weapons.. I am thinking we should be able to pack about half a dozen anti-sat missiles in an a5 shroud.. may be I am wrong since homing logic for anti-sats needs first orbit inputs, calculations, as when it crosses a point in orbit, and then engage the chase and hit to kill. Assuming on a luanch mission, that joins the orbit at x speed, and waits for the sat to merge, and then boost up an orbital thrust to kill the sat.

Now, one point shoot all the way from Earth is another aspect, but orbit loitering can deter chippanda and "www.mutu" club to tisssy!.. .

"all this talk of taking out chinese N arsenal is pure BS."

A simple layman's thoughts: The idea is to make the Chinese pay a heavy, massive, price for any use of nuclear weapons against India. The belief is that they are rational enough not to want to risk the chance of a counter strike against their *cities*, not just their military/strategic bases. There's also the belief that the Chinese wouldn't desire the enormous international opprobrium and retaliation( of whatever sort) that any use of WMD against democratic, pluralistic India would bring forth. And then there's the environmental fall-out that people have alluded to. How would that be dealt with?

The Chinese have an extremely strong, vital, interest in preventing the not-so-rational TSP from using nukes against India. India would likely associate a Pak strike against India with a China strike, and hence retaliate against both.

There's no notion( far as one can see) of 'winning' a nuclear exchange with China. The idea is to inflict unacceptable losses to the nuclear attacking country. You are right that more needs to be done to achieve this capability, particularly with submarines.

Initial report as came in public domain indicated Shourya is meant for Second Strike. Later, I vaguely remember Conventional role was also talked about in media. I'm too tired to search and give the link. Thks.

But again, the question lingers on, how are you going to take out ASAT weapons if they are buried deep inside tunnels? do we have bunker busters?

perhaps drop few brahmos with a shield canister, and once inside atmosphere, the shield separates, and brahmos will do the bunker busting.. see imaginations can go any way.. possible, yes. all it takes is the mission to charter on these, and public thinks it is a worthwhile investment, that gives a lot of civilian off-shoot technologies. part of the game changer theory.

I think it is worthwhile to think and develop some bunker busters, TSP has tunnels and PRC has tunnels, too uncomfortable, TSP think nukes are safe because it can safeguard them inside the tunnels. Develop bunker busters, have an open show by busting some mock concrete bunkers, that will rob sleep of at least TSP. And with dedicated tunnel studies we can have a plan in place to counter PRC tunnels, something is better than nothing. If you cannot take all of them, render few useless.

Is it only me or is there anybody else who thinks that a 100 kg 20 kt dirty plutonium FBF embeded in a 200 kgs of further exotic casing material, mounted on top of an air launched Brahmos will be able to punch through about 30 meters of earth and a further 2-3 meters of concrete to eventually blast a cavern about 30 meter radius.

And yes i do believe i am being too conservative with this. And also that this is just to much of a bother. Christmas in Shanghai is much better.

Also all this talk about hidden nukes in tunnel networks makes me wonder why?

Besides what if they are not hiding nukes there. what if these are conventional weaponery stockpiling, to facilitate their idea of a cold start?

we can make it quasi conventional with DU loaded on brahmos. Either air launched or A5 injected.

Depleted Uranium as casing kya? Doable certainly but DU would add too much to weight of Brahmos warhead. Besides Tessy would be wasted in hitting the caves in South Tibet and East Tibet , probably just 300 km from Indian Borders.

Casing made of the material that they use on F1 Cars for the front end. A much thicker one is what I was thinking.

Even if Brahmos-III or modified version of current weapons do exist, we need to show we do have them through a test, how else will they know we are prepared. And that they can run and
hide, but not for long. RISAT and one bunker buster test too and the signals will be clear.

Added later:
In fact Brahmos aren't enough, we can't take out those deep inside the PRC mainland. We need dedicated weaponry which does one and only one thing, take the tunnels out.

Kanson: a counterforce doctrine against China is and will remain a nonstarter. They do not talk about the size or dispersal of their arsenal. Even the US has no clue about it. They are not party to any arms limitation treaty with any deterrent adversary. Their land based doctrine under the 2AC uses a widely dispersed (by some accounts 5000km long) tunnel system that enables them to protect their arsenal from a first strike. It was originally intended to protect them from Soviet megaton payloads. The accuracy or numbers of our arsenal do nothing against this - we don't know what to hit, where and how many.

Further, the entire debate amounts to arguing the modalities of a particular doctrine without bothering to ask what purpose it serves. Everything follows from the basic goal - effective deterrence against PRC. What do they fear losing most, and what do we have the most ability to credibly target ?

There's either option CF - spend ruinous amounts of money on a vast, accurate arsenal that can take out a large number of military targets that we don't know where they are or how many there are. Alternately we can implement option CV, where we build a smaller number of accurate, maneuverable single and MIRV payload based ICBMs and IRBMs that we can credibly use to state 'no matter what you do to us, you will lose all your top N big cities.' From everything we've seen of Agni-IV and Agni-V technology and capability, we've been implicitly pursuing the latter approach.

See, if you are talking about targets that houses underground launchers, then send one 200kt wala direct. why bother about brahmos.

now, under NFU, it is important that we have all coordinates ready to strike, and with what type of weapon. It just can't be one type of missile alone. For various target types, we might want to use different types of maals.

Assuming, we have already lost few cities, and realing under pathetic babooze going haywire.. the only thing left is few good brains in the submarine with say dozen A5 (K class), and be ready just push the mission button. We need to have mission profile for pakis separate and chippanda separate.. all preconfigured, but programmable., as strategies keep changing.

coordinates are frequently gathered and updated.. our RISATS and other spies can help. blowing away strategic targets should satisfy the NFU agenda, that the agressor becomes near extinction, to make the deterrence value high.

All these dicussions adds value to deterrence actually. jmt

CV might work only in case of PRC, what are you going to hit at in case of TSP? we have more to loose than them. In TSP case it has to be CF. Then again, how if they lock their arsenal securely, then they can always hit us at will till they exhaust their stock pile.

Quite agree with u Suraj. CV is the sensible choice/option from all angles. A Agni V based+Sub based capability is enough deterrence and that is indeed the way India is moving. Additionally a strong conventional capability along china border will ensure peace and security.

CF doctrine is wet dreams of jingos and armchair analysts on BRF. No offence meant !!

This I dont buy. Has India ever declared explicitly they would do this? Is it a well understood red line for China that we will do that. I am not sure.. Also do we have the required numbers of patakas to do that ? We will be basically saying goodbye world if we do that since the chances of survival are very low to none for us if we get into a shooting match with China whereas we can and will survive a Pak strike and send them to oblivion for sure..

If the enemy suspects that "boost-glide" thing is intended for taking out nuclear missile silos/TEL, will they not launch rather than loose them? Does it matter if the incoming payload is nuclear or conventional? Does it matter if the incoming missiles are not ballistic and therefore not counted under new START?

a tunnel is not a small room with a little door which will be effectively targetted and anything inside destroyed totally is BS. tunnel systems are a very long and complex maze of tunnels with blast gates /fire containment/rail tracks inside. a missile can be anywhere inside this complex web of tunnels. its not a kiddys job to destroy even a tunnel system even with the most super duper missile in the world. imagine the degree of difficulty of targetting ALL such tunnel systems accurately and completely.

one has to also understand that chinese have a fairly good sub based capability for 2nd strike which renders this whole CF questionable unless ofc BRF members have found another super duper missile to target chinese n sub capability on high seas !!

last but not the least is the cost aspect which really really renders this CF doctrine irrelevant....

CV's value entirely depends on accuracy of the system and inputs., indirectly heavy investments, but massive quality for NFU... the shear quality attributes alone should challenge the agressor using CF. Then we are in.

Yes It is understandable that a tunnel is not store room, so you open the door and launch a missile and sit quiet. Does it mean you just GUBO because you can't counter it and then get hit by hundreds of theirs and you have no targets because they are hidden deep inside? this is defeatist at the best. If the situation is so helpless, Ameerkhan wouldn't have developed bunker busters.Secondly it is not about destroying every tunnel, just make them in operational. CV works when your enemy like PRC has a huge infrastructure and high values targets to protect. In TSP's case their economy is pathetic, what are you going to hit that they would fear you? in fact they can hide inside the tunnels and can cause extensive damage and you will have no answer.