Bharat Rakshak

Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister Dr Vijay Kumar Saraswat sat down for a detailed interview with Senior Editor Sandeep Unnithan

Q: Why is the Agni-V different from the previous Agni missiles?
VKS: Agni-V is a completely new missile system. It is a 21st-century missile because of the technologies used and a game changer because of its strategic deterrence value. The missile went from drawing board to launch pad in just over three years. The government sanctioned the Agni-V project in December 2008. We began design work on it in April 2009. The missile was on the launch pad on March 14, 2012 and launched five days later.

Q: What are the new technologies that the DRDO has developed for this missile?
VKS: Agni-V has taken us to a new level of technological maturity. This missile is entirely different from the Agni 3 and 4. The second and third stage booster of the missile are made entirely of composites. The third stage is a new booster that we developed. It is the lowest end of the tapered cone that ends with the warhead. That itself, in terms of composites, is a breakthrough. The navigation system is highly accurate. Don't forget that this missile travels at over Mach 20 in its terminal stage. Both the ring laser gyros (a device that measures the orientation of the missile and helps in inertial navigation) and the accelerometer (which measures the missile's rate of acceleration) are indigenously developed as part of the indigenous ballistic missile defence (BMD) programme. We also proved redundancies of our new onboard navigation system. A backup navigation system that was less accurate but more robust was put in place. This navigation system was supported by a unique fault tolerance software that we installed in the missile. The re-entry nose cone that contains the warhead had to be completely redesigned with new material and resins. This is because when the missile re-enters the atmosphere, it is hurtling towards the ground at over 20 times the speed of sound. Friction on the nose cone causes temperatures in excess of 2000 degrees centigrade. This system had to be proved on the ground and that was a major technological development for us.

We are also working on a canister-launched system for the Agni-V. We have designed a canister that can eject the 50-tonne missile 50 metres in the air and fire the first stage. The canister will allow us to store the missile for ten years with no maintenance. The missile will be carried on railcars and on a 12x12 road-mobile truck. Carrying the missile on a road-mobile launcher is better because it is more flexible, you just need some level ground to launch it. The first launch of the A5 was from a railcar, we hope it will subsequently be fired from road-mobile launchers.

Q: Costs and production of the Agni-V? There is a concern that you will not be able to produce more than one or two missiles a year.
VKS: The A5 costs approximately Rs 50 crore per missile. We will need two more tests before starting serial production after two years. The DRDO is working with production agencies for this. All I can tell you is that we will produce more than just 1 or 2 missiles a year.

Q: What were the challenges posed in tracking such a long-range missile?
VKS: The Agni-V required a different range deployment. The range of over 5,000 km meant the missile would land north of Antartica. That meant the ships tracking the launch would have to sail nearly a fortnight before the launch window. We had a slight difficulty in that all our tracking systems are ship and shore-based. We don't have airborne sensors. We needed three ships to track the launch: two near the splashdown and one to track the mid-course correction. The ships are due to return on April 30 or, 11 days after the missile test. We have a highly integrated tracking range comprising 15 sensors, seven radars and seven telemetry systems. They did an admirable job of tracking the missile flight in real time.

Q: Does DRDO have the capability of destroying satellites in space?
VKS: Today, India has all the building blocks for an anti-satellite system in place.

We don't want to weaponise space but the building blocks should be in place. Because you may come to a time when you may need it. Today, I can say that all the building blocks (for an ASAT weapon) are in place. A little fine tuning may be required but we will do that electronically. We will not do a physical test (actual destruction of a satellite) because of the risk of space debris affecting other satellites.

Q: How did you develop these ASAT capabilities?
VKS: There are a few essential parameters in intercepting satellites. You should have the ability to track an orbiting satellite in space, launch a missile towards it and finally have a kill vehicle that actually homes in to physically destroy it.

We have a Long Range Tracking Radar (LRTR) used in the Ballistic Missile Defence Programme that has a range of over 600 km. We will increase the range to 1,400 km allowing us to track satellites in orbit.

It is far more difficult to intercept ballistic missiles than it is to intercept satellites. Satellites follow a predictive path. Once you track a satellite, you will know its path.

In the BMD project, we track and intercept a 0.1 square meter target over 1,000 km away. A satellite is ten times larger-over 1 meter wide.

We have the communication systems in place, again developed for the BMD project. The first-stage booster developed for the Agni-V can inject a warhead 600 km into space. We also have a kill vehicle developed for the BMD project. The kill vehicle actually homes in onto an incoming missile. We have the Infra-Red and Radar frequency seekers on the kill vehicle that accurately guide it to its target.

Q: At what phase of development is the BMD programme?
VKS: Phase-1 of the BMD programme will be completed by 2013. In this, we will intercept Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles with a range of 2,000 km. The second phase will be completed by 2016. In this, we will be able to intercept intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with ranges over 5,000 km. Phase-1 has two missile interceptors called the PAD and the AAD. This year, we will be testing a new interceptor missile called the PDV. This missile will replace the PAD. Two missiles, the AD1 and the AD2 will be tested by the end of 2013 under Phase 2 of the BMD.

Q: What about cruise missile defence?
VKS: That is a whole new ballgame because it calls for an entirely new set of missiles and radars. My team is presently studying CMD. We are looking at it as a possible next programme after finishing the BMD programme.

Q: The DRDO has made breakthroughs in the K-series missiles for the nuclear submarine project. Why didn't you use a land-based variant of this missile?
VKS: The technologies involved in both missiles are different. An underwater missile has to deal with the pressure of a10 metre column of water above it. Hence the configuration of the missile is different. It is heavier, the structure is different. Unlike the Agni missile, this missile carries a lot of dead weight.

Q: When will the indigenous nuclear submarine INS Arihant be commissioned?
VKS: The submarine will test all its systems this year.

Q: Field trials of the Arjun Mark 2 ?
VKS: We have the first test of the Arjun Mark 2 in June, this year. We have given the army 80 per cent of the changes in Mark 2. There are 126 more Arjuns being built, in addition to the 126 delivered to the army. We are confident of getting another order of 350 Arjun mark 2 tanks.

Q: What stage is the Future Main Battle Tank (FMBT) project at?
VKS: We are holding discussions with the army for this. We will finalise the specifications of the tank in six to eight months. We are looking at industrial partners for this. We want new technologies for weapons, mobility and signatures for the FMBT. We have to decide on the type of armour to use for it, whether active or passive. The FMBT will be a tank complimentary to the Arjun. It will not replace it. Each tank has its own theatre. The T-90 MBT (used by the Indian army) has its theatre, the Arjun has its own theatre.

Q: When will the Long Range Surface-to-Air Missile (LR-SAM) be tested ?
VKS: The first successful trial of the LR-SAM was in 2010. After this we decided on a complete change of configuration. We will have another test of the modified missile in Israel in June 2012. The missile system has already been integrated into the first P15A warship (the INS Kolkata, being built at Mazagon Docks Ltd, Mumbai).

There has been needless confusion and obfuscation about the Agni-V missile test-fired on April 19. First was the delay in the launch by some 11 hours. For a missile touted as “all weather”, a bit of lightning shouldn’t have frightened off the DRDO brass. More likely, the reason was last minute jitters about a missile whose launch had been turned into a media circus.
What is less comprehensible was the persistent description in the media, no doubt at the DRDO’s prompting, of the Agni-V as an “Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile” (ICBM) when, given its stated range of around 5,000 kms, Dr V. Saraswat, DRDO boss and scientific adviser to the defence minister, identified it correctly for television cameras as an Inter-mediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). The first hint of Agni-V’s ICBM status was dropped by the minister of state for science, Ashwini Kumar, when he referred to the missile re-entering the atmosphere at “24.4 times the speed of sound”. Depending on the altitude, this works out to roughly 7.2 to 7.7 kms per second as terminal velocity, making it unquestionably an ICBM , compared to 6.2 to 6.5 kms per second re-entry speed of Agni-IV , which is IRBM performance. Obviously, Agni-V was fired in a high-parabolic trajectory to depress the distance it travelled, which may be why Chinese military sources have claimed that Agni-V’s 8,000-km range is being covered up.{Here BK gets it wrong. AV was on a depressed trajectory. A4 was on a lofted trajectory.. Details...does not matter that much...the idea is correct.} The Agni has to have a minimum range of 10,000 kms to be considered an ICBM. But why did the DRDO not publicise the missile’s full capability?
The reason was to mollify the Manmohan Singh government that has always been fearful of spooking the US. Washington has insisted that India restrict its missile capacity to cover China without tripping into the ICBM range lest that leads to India being perceived as a threat, resulting in American counter-measures. While the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA government’s minister for external affairs (MEA), Jaswant Singh, denies he had cut any deal during his 19 rounds of “strategic dialogue” with Strobe Talbott, former US President Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, in early 2000 to cap Indian missile capability at the IRBM level, the Congress coalition government has adhered to this restriction, which is reflected in the DRDO’s programmatic thrust.
Indeed, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s reluctance to offend Washington was stretched to a point where he reportedly kept delaying the approval of the first test of Agni-V until defence minister A.K. Antony put his foot down around mid-2011, and compelled Dr Singh to approve the launch. The government tried to soften any negative reaction by scheduling foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai’s speech extolling India’s spotless nuclear and missile technology non-proliferation record at an MEA-sponsored seminar on the same day as the missile test.
The DRDO’s fear of the government disallowing sustained testing of critical strategic technologies, backed by an equally nagging apprehension about reduction of funds for strategic technology development, is why the DRDO resorted to over-the-top publicity. The DRDO’s strategy was to thwart moves by the government to curtail activity in the missile field by creating huge public support for Agni-V and follow-on ICBM. It resembles the decision by nuclear scientists to simultaneously trigger three devices (which produced mixed, suboptimal results) on May 11, 1998, because of the fear that under foreign pressure the government would terminate testing after the very first explosion if a series of separate single underground tests had been resorted to.
The hullabaloo over the untested MIRV (Multiple Independently Re-targetable Vehicles) technology, enabling one missile to engage three to eight different targets that Agni-V is configured to carry, was also for the same reason. So much public hype about the MIRV technology, awaiting government permission to test for the last eight-odd years, means that Dr Singh cannot now stop its testing in the second launch of Agni-V.
The other stellar attributes of the Indian IRBM not talked about, but worth mentioning, are the chip-embedded guidance system and the servo-mechanisms for thrust control to permit mid-flight manoeuvring.
Were the Indian government strategic-minded, which it is not, it would push through an accelerated programme of testing and induction into service of Agni-V and, in parallel, quickly develop and test-fire over Antarctica a genuine ICBM by replacing the first stage made of steel on the IRBM with lightweight composites to accommodate more fuel. What an ICBM does is allow Chinese targets to be hit from virtually anywhere, thereby immeasurably enlarging the space for manoeuvre by Indian firing platforms outside Chinese satellite coverage. Further, the production rate of Agni-IVs and Agni-Vs needs rapid ramping up to keep pace with even a minor adversary — Pakistan.
The success of Agni-V, however, highlights the danger that I have been warning about for many years, namely, very advanced and accurate long-range missiles married to untested and unproven thermonuclear warheads that, without further physical testing of fusion and boosted-fission weapons designs, could prove to be duds. That will be a devastating denouement for the Indian strategic deterrent — accurate delivery but fizzled impact. Even so, with a proven IRBM, India has reached deterrence parity with China in the sense of being able to reach the most distant Chinese targets.
The MEA should capitalise on the interest generated by Agni-V to explore an Indian role as the “net security provider” that countries in Southeast Asia would welcome and Washington has been urging Delhi to play. Our dilly-dallying on the sale of the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile led Indonesia to buy a variant directly from Russia. Vietnam, which also seeks Brahmos, is unlikely to wait around either. Unless India treats Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and other Asean members as the first tier of India’s defence and missile-arms them on a priority basis, national security will remain grievously impaired. New Delhi emphasising non-proliferation norms at the expense of the country’s geopolitical interests is tragically short-sighted, given that the brownie points it wins cannot compensate for China transferring nuclear missile technology to Pakistan, or insinuating itself into the military affairs of Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives, to disadvantage India.{Exactly what I had said about our being the bishma pitamaha of the world to earn plaudits from the gora sahibs at the expense of the security of our country.}
The MEA should not squander the chance to pursue substantive cooperative security measures with the United States and countries on China’s periphery beyond anti-piracy patrols and joint military exercises by, for a start, discussing and preparing for contingency scenarios.

The writer is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Now, strategies can be played ball for ball, but they can't however do one-one anymore.

There has been needless confusion and obfuscation about the Agni-V missile test-fired on April 19. First was the delay in the launch by some 11 hours. For a missile touted as “all weather”, a bit of lightning shouldn’t have frightened off the DRDO brass.

That said, why is the Agni-5 being touted as an ICBM when, at 5000 km range, it is only an IRBM? It is true that this missile has all the technologies such as, the vernier rocket motors in the nose-cone for maneuvering in the terminal phase for exact guidance to target, and only requires the Manmohan Singh government to gird up its loins and give the green signal for the ICBM presently at an advanced design-development stage at the Advanced Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, to start becoming a reality. But that will be Agni-6, or whatever it may becalled. For the ICBM, moreover, a more powerful solid fuel propellant — with slower, but more intense, burn, will be required, because to add another stage to the 3-stage missile would be impracticable to enable payload delivery to in excess of 10,000 kms — the true mark of an ICBM.

Mislabelling Agni-5 as an ICBM is par for the course with the Indian atomic establishment claiming a thermonuclear weapons status for the country when, in fact, the fusion and boosted fusion weapons designs remain unproven, because the design correctives incorporated into the thermonuclear and boosted fission designs that fizzled in 1998, are still untested and, therefore, unreliable.

The success of Agni-V, however, highlights the danger that I have been warning about for many years, namely, very advanced and accurate long-range missiles married to untested and unproven thermonuclear warheads that, without further physical testing of fusion and boosted-fission weapons designs, could prove to be duds. That will be a devastating denouement for the Indian strategic deterrent — accurate delivery but fizzled impact.

Unless India treats Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and other Asean members as the first tier of India’s defence and missile-arms them on a priority basis, national security will remain grievously impaired.

Aah, a good one from BK at last - ..
You simply can't have credible deterrence with lingering doubts - it is impression management that counts when it comes to deterrence. ...

You simply can't have credible deterrence with lingering doubts - it is impression management that counts when it comes to deterrence.

Bharat Karnad on the Agony
India’s missile bamboozle

As BK says, we can test MIRV in the next round. 1st stage composite in another round. SLBM in another. You could build upto a full MIRV ICBM/SLBM configuration under the Tessy umbrella. The idea being that DRDO doesnt need GOI sanction to perform additional tests. That's probably one of the biggest reasons for DRDO's excitement.

Direct ascent hit becomes feasible for targets in LEO with higher close in speeds, for GEO one has to take a merging orbit with sufficient velocity

for GEO, ISRO routinely tends co-locate its Insat series sats due to limited equitorial space spots observing India, while in space terms they might be real close, in absolute terms they might be 10s of kms apart, this last mile problem could be solved by a docker/kill vehicle

That could be deliberate, to allow for satellite drift and to allow for timely correction. Some sort of electronic jamming would be more cost effective in the long run as a ASAT capability. If a laser kill is feasible why waste effort/resources using kinetic kill ?

On September 13, 1985, the United States destroyed US satellite P78-1 using an ASM-135 ASAT anti-satellite missile. On January 11, 2007, China destroyed an old Chinese orbiting weather satellite. A year later on February 21, 2008, USA destroyed a malfunctioning US spy satellite USA-193 using a RIM-161 Standard Missile 3.

Boost phase killing is impossible, unless you have ready ABMs loitering in space.

What I am really interested in is sub-launched-boost-phase-kill.

There has got to be another women in DRDO/ISRO/whereever to solve this issue.

Well, I am sure she will be "Messy" atleast for Pakis!