Indian Missiles and Munitions Discussion

[VinayG]

1. Dhanush page shows photo of two Carnatic vocal singers where underneath it says "dhanush"

2. My bad but kindly indulge. where is IIR seeker for Nag being taken from? mean it is not indeginous. Israeli or Russi?

Neither- France.

according to TOI IIR seeker is indegenously developed by BDL

HYDERABAD: Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad, has come out with the production of Imaging Infra Red (IIR) Seekers, the technology of which was developed by DRDO for the 3rd generation 'NAG' anti-tank guided missile.

The 'Seeker' is a very sophisticated system for the missile guidance giving it the 'fire and forget' capability.

With the production of the IIR Seekers, BDL has joined an elite group of companies across the globe engaged in the production of the 'Seekers'. BDL is the first in the country with the requisite skills, according to a press release. The first lot of IIR Seekers made by BDL was handed over to DRDL director P Venugopalan by BDL chairman and managing director Maj Gen Ravi Khetarpal (rtd) on Tuesday.

The 'Seekers' will be used for the forthcoming developmental trials of helicopter-launched NAG, the other variant of the NAG missile being developed by DRDO. P K Srivastava, director (production), Emani Krishna and K Laxmi, general managers, and senior scientists and engineers from DRDO and BDL were present on the occasion.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes ... cs-limited

[Aditya_V]

according to TOI IIR seeker is indegenously developed by BDL

HYDERABAD: Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad, has come out with the production of Imaging Infra Red (IIR) Seekers, the technology of which was developed by DRDO for the 3rd generation 'NAG' anti-tank guided missile.

The 'Seeker' is a very sophisticated system for the missile guidance giving it the 'fire and forget' capability.

With the production of the IIR Seekers, BDL has joined an elite group of companies across the globe engaged in the production of the 'Seekers'. BDL is the first in the country with the requisite skills, according to a press release. The first lot of IIR Seekers made by BDL was handed over to DRDL director P Venugopalan by BDL chairman and managing director Maj Gen Ravi Khetarpal (rtd) on Tuesday.

The 'Seekers' will be used for the forthcoming developmental trials of helicopter-launched NAG, the other variant of the NAG missile being developed by DRDO. P K Srivastava, director (production), Emani Krishna and K Laxmi, general managers, and senior scientists and engineers from DRDO and BDL were present on the occasion.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes ... cs-limited

The IIR Seeker by BDL and MMR seeker by DRDO is only recent. I am not sure how long before the IIR local seeker is productionised, all trials before that were using the French IIR seeker. Don't whether IA is waiting to induct NAG is domestic seeker, if that is the case many Jingos here will be very happy.

But for many years the complaint against the NAG was there was no MMR seeker and IIR seeker was imported from France.

[Singha]

theoritically once the mmw seeker is productionized we could have our desi brimstone (slight mod to helina for supersonic carriage) with 15-20km range and each fighter could take 9-16 @ 50kg each on triple or quad pylons.

[nash]

first mmW and then SoC, these are some basic technology which can be used in various missile.
future missile for Indian armed forces will surely leaner and meaner.

[Kanson]

He seems to have used the term "anti ship" instead of "ship launched", ddm as usual

To paraphrase Saraswat on Shourya, it is a hybrid missile which is powered by solid fuel like that of Ballistic missile but acts as a cruise missile in reaching its target.

This alone should have set alarm bells ringing already. But we are habituated to do things without much fanfare.

[Singha]

er, care to elaborate a bit more? is it a shourya tuned to ASBM role ?

[Neela]

first mmW and then SoC, these are some basic technology which can be used in various missile.
future missile for Indian armed forces will surely leaner and meaner.

Wasn't the mmW seeker one of the priciest parts of the missile?
A long time ago, I heard the number 75 lakhs quoted for this.

[Kanson]

er, care to elaborate a bit more? is it a shourya tuned to ASBM role ?

If exists Exocet cruise missile powered by solid propellants as anti ship missile, I guess what fun it would be to talk about another solid fueled missile.

No, what I'm trying to say is, when we achieve Zero CEP in Prithvi missile and have mastered the technology to make a ballistic missile acts as a cruise missile and with Hypersonic Brahmos missile appearing only after 2016 with limited range, it would give enough impetus for the Navy to explore the possibility of engineering Anti ship missile of having performance higher than supersonic Brahmos in range, speed and warhead too.

Sorry if my answer appears winded.

“Taken from routine production lot during earlier user’s trials by the Indian Army, the missile has achieved single digit accuracy reaching close to zero circular error probability,” he said

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ind ... 528596.ece

[tsarkar]

Hmm - anti-ship being mentioned twice. DDM or is something else cooking?

Brahmos Block 3 has top attack capability, so if the seeker works well in top attack over land, no reason why it cannot do well for attacking ships over sea. Top attack capability is nothing new, Harpoon and Soviet missiles had a programmable top attack mode for evading ship defenses that focussed on sea skimming threats. The missile did a "bunt" and attacked from top outside tracking radar cone. For taking out top attack missiles, Phalnax and AK-630 are able to elevate up to 85 deg. So Prithvi with seeker can do top attack.

The ASBM concept (if its proven)

Challenge with ASBM are two -

1. Cueing at that range - Assume A2 is fed with initial target coordinates before launch, by the time it arrives, say after 20 minutes, the ship may well have moved x km from initial position and out of seeker FoV. How does one datalink information to a BM? Which leads to second challenge

2. Missile control - Flight control at high speed with control surfaces is next to impossible. At that speed, movable flight control surfaces & joints will heat and shear off. Hence BMs use gas thrusters like A3 or Shourya. Or use thrust vectoring. Check this missile which flies at speeds up to Mach 4.5 http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zUe7sq7m3h0/S ... 110826.JPG The control surfaces are fixed with control via thrust vectoring.

Problems with such controls is that their platforms can skid but not turn or loop. This is not a problem with land targets that are fixed. But if targets are moving like at sea, then BMs, with skid imparting TVC, will have difficulty engaging them.

This is how a manoeuverable missile looks like. Check the number of flight control surfaces - six -http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ile001.jpg

This is also why AAD cannot be a good anti aircraft missile http://www.indianexpress.com/news/indoi ... y/442501/0#

DRDO: MRSAM is four times more manoeuvrable than AAD. AAD performs sub-optimally while engaging aircraft in tail-chase mode, reducing the air defence engagement envelope.

[Kanson]

^ Sir, 30 knots is less than 60 km/hr speed. With a lumbering big object like frigates/destroyers in an open sea, you consider it is more difficult to take out than an land based moving targets ?

[Singha]

in the 10mins it takes for a mach6 hypersonic missile to reach target area, a 60km/hr ship can move 6km in any direction, but mostly in a fwd cone from initial heading since ships are not cars to stop and turn on a dime. the AAM tiny radars have a range of 20km, so a bigger one on ASBM is likely to be 50km minimum, probably 100km...thats way more than enough to detect the moved ship and home in on whatever target its programmed to go after. but it needs to sharply manouver to orient itself to the changed location because its plunging fast and headroom of 75km height is limited @ mach6...something like 45 secs.

if you fire 3 missiles in a nice triangle straddling the last known position of target, its almost certain that atleast 2 will detect and attack the target.

I recall reading the brahmos2 has a target range of 1000km as its not a directly exported weapon we are free to use the MTCR for toilet paper.

[SaiK]

I have never felt so elated! Let us Astra with a big SoC on!

[tsarkar]

^ Sir, 30 knots is less than 60 km/hr speed. With a lumbering big object like frigates/destroyers in an open sea, you consider it is more difficult to take out than an land based moving targets?

BMs currently cannot take on land based moving targets, because of lack of agility because of lack of sufficient control surfaces. FWIW, even cruise missiles cannot take on land based moving targets. One targets based moving targets using relatively short ranged missiles like Nag or Shtrum. BMs simply lack the agility to take on any moving target, land or sea. Using gas thrusters or TVC, BM can course-correct, but not manoeuver. BMs on land and sea target fixed targets, like C3 nodes, POL dumps, airfields, other missile silos.

If one adds control surfaces to BMs, it significantly increases drag. That is why space shuttle has a fuel tank larger than itself and needs two boosters - because of the inefficiency of the airframe for ballistic flight - hence more energy required vis-a-vis conventional rocket design.

but it needs to sharply manouver to orient itself to the changed location because its plunging fast and headroom of 75km height is limited @ mach6...something like 45 secs.

Exactly - like a cricketer running between wickets or an olympic 100 meters sprinter, at that peak speed, they cannot re-orient significantly. Gas thrusters/Engine vanes/flex nozzles can deflect 10-15 degrees from vertical, but control surfaces that can help deflect 25-30 degrees from vertical are absent.

http://www.fea.ru/spaw2/uploads/images/ ... MOS_03.jpg and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... s_imds.jpg Note Brahmos movable rear fins, that can provide significant deflection. The circles show the actuators. That is why Python 5 is the most manoeuverable missile.

Its not about seekers, its all about the manoeuverability of a ballistic shape designed for speed.

And its about how does one designate targets 2000 km away. Unless one thinks like the Chinese, launches missiles, and dont give a damm whether they hit aircraft carriers or innocent merchant ships like Iran Iraq war in the 80s.

ASBMs, despite their wow factor, wont be as efficient as BrahMos, do an S or similar stuff.

[Katare]

Detection at high sea is the biggest and first chellange, seas are wast and enough air assets are not available to scan or detect blue water ships far from shores. No places to put land based gigantic RADARS at high seas either. If a ship is detected by an air asset (MPA) it should be engaged right than by the MPA to achieve the best results. If that plane sends information to shore or to another ship for missile launch it'll take 20-30minute before they would be ready to launch and than missile starts with zero speed at launch and peak speed is achieved somewhere midway than it descends at the target which means lower average speed. All this would take half an hour or more in a practical world as we are dealing with a large multi-ton ballastic rocket.

Even if by using a UAV or some other starwar technology we detect a ship as per GD's scenario and missile was launched instantly and it achieves average speed of Mach 10 and it has a RADAR with 50KM range for homing on target. Reentry temps and plasma distortions, control surface and other such isses are assumed solved for this example, it'll still be next to impossible to engage a moving target. Consider this, even if at the max RADAR range of 50 KM missile homes at a ship that has moved 6 KM away from the original location, now the missile has only 1.4 seconds left to detect, track, calculate trajectory corrections, correct for over corrections, winds, temps, weather, deploy control surfaces to hit the target and engage the target.

When it comes to antiship you want a missile that is slow so you have time to find and loac the traget. That is why every navy has a subsonic missile for AShM roll not a supersonic one like Brahmos. Disadvantage of slow speed whic allows enemy time to launch anti-missile measures are take care of by extream manuvering from first movers advantage. An ideal missile for moving targets, in my opinion, would have very high boost-speed, thrust for entire trajectory (Akash) and most importantly ability to slowdown as you move closer to the target to allow for tighter manuvering. The high Mach speed of 20G AAMs is what allows 7G subsonic fighter aircrafts to defeat them.

In a nut shell, higher speed deprives enemy of time to take evasive/counter measures but it also limits attacking force's ability to precisely target moving objects. This high speed is also what makes it so much easier for ABMs to engage large missiles if they can be detected early enough. Once large missiles have achieved high machs they are very limited in manuvers and even those small manuvers would cause ungodly G loads on the body of missile and most certainly results in loss of CEP.

[jai]

My bad but kindly indulge. where is IIR seeker for Nag being taken from? mean it is not indeginous. Israeli or Russi?

Why do you say/suspect so ?

[Kanson]

Raytheon to Redesign Tomahawk Cruise Missile to Strike Moving Targets
July 21, 2009

The U.S. Defense Department awarded Raytheon a $12.8 million contract to design and test a new warhead for the Navy's Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile, which would allow it to precisely hit moving targets.

The company plans to re-engineer the existing cruise missile design, in which the missiles are released offshore to blow up buildings and other vital infrastructure on land hundreds of miles away, into one that can target moving warships a thousand miles away. This development was reported in the Arizona Daily Star.

Raytheon said the company plans to design a technology that will integrate a target seeker into the nose of the missile, the paper reported. The missile also will be equipped with an advanced sensor that processes radar and radio signals from destroyers and aircraft carriers in order to identify the correct target.

Other improvements planned for cruise missiles include a warhead that can penetrate warships, and increased bandwidth and data capacity to receive and transmit via the Internet. The upgrades provide an ability to fire anti-shipping missiles at enemy ships protected by land-based aviation, without risking friendly ships. These missiles are not intended to be used to combat pirate vessels off the Somali coast, according to the report.

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Range of ~ 500 km for anti ship missile is nothing new during Cold war. If it Dhanush we are talking about 300-500 km range and if it is Shourya it is around 700 km range. Sensor range and capabilities are increasing day by day. If US can think of using a 1000 mile range missile for anti ship operation, to our capabilities we can atleast start thinking about 300 - 500 mile range for anti ship operations. Actually Navy asked for 700 km(450 mile) range anti ship missile, if we go by reports appeared years before.

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It is not apt to bring the example of Anti aircraft missiles as the target moves several hundreds of km/hr compared to Surface ships which at the max speed moves around at ~60 km/hr.

Air targets are very nimble compared to huge lumbering big objects like Surface ships of caliber frigates/tankers/destroyers/aircraft carriers. So comparison of missiles meant to engage air targets and big Surface ships is moot.

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MaRV equipped with terminal seeker when offers very high precision in manoeuvres and can precisely target with near zero or single digit CEP, it is only matter of adjustments & enhacements to be made in seeker and guidance to make it engage a moving target.

With Hypersonic cruise missiles like Brahmos on the horizon, it will be helpful to remember that, there is no difference between aerodynamics & challenges encountered by Hypersonic cruise missile and Hypersonic manoeuvring missile like Shourya or any other similar missile. Both operate in Hypersonic regime.

If the target moved 6km and supersonic Brahmos missile opens is terminal seeker ~ 50 km, the deviation is only 6 deg. It still can do a S manoeuvre after that and hit the target with pin point accuracy with Mach 3 speed. If it can do that, can't a Mach 7 missile like Shourya do that without a S manoeuvre for a start?

Shourya does terminal manoeuvre on reaching its target similar to that of Brahmos LACM. That's why I said that, a mere statement that Shourya behaves like Cruise missile should have set alarm bells ringing or at the least should have raised an eye brow.

[Singha]

tomahawk ASM was there until mid 80s I think when it was retired. they are now putting a new sensor pkg on same old concept.

[Singha]

t'll still be next to impossible to engage a moving target. Consider this, even if at the max RADAR range of 50 KM missile homes at a ship that has moved 6 KM away from the original location, now the missile has only 1.4 seconds left to detect, track, calculate trajectory corrections, correct for over corrections, winds, temps, weather, deploy control surfaces to hit the target and engage the target.

I think your calculation is a bit wrong. assuming mach10=10,000kmph (its lower at sea level), it is 2.77km/sec. so 50km still leaves 18 seconds not 1.4sec to reorient the missile using control vanes in the exhaust and gas thrusters in the side.
calculations and sensor readings are in microsecs range.

[bmallick]

t'll still be next to impossible to engage a moving target. Consider this, even if at the max RADAR range of 50 KM missile homes at a ship that has moved 6 KM away from the original location, now the missile has only 1.4 seconds left to detect, track, calculate trajectory corrections, correct for over corrections, winds, temps, weather, deploy control surfaces to hit the target and engage the target.

I think your calculation is a bit wrong. assuming mach10=10,000kmph (its lower at sea level), it is 2.77km/sec. so 50km still leaves 18 seconds not 1.4sec to reorient the missile using control vanes in the exhaust and gas thrusters in the side.
calculations and sensor readings are in microsecs range.

Moreover we need to increase the range estimation of the radar. If a Active AAM, with a small radar in a 20 cm nose can find a small 5sqm Fighter at 15-20 km, then a bigger missile with a bigger radar can easily locate a big ship with its bigger RCS at much better range than a measly 50km.

[Singha]

yes I was just putting a absolute lower bound on radar performance.

I feel the DF21 ASBM is not lizard yanking khan's chain or pure psyops..there is meat behind the project , albeit they will need radar satellites over western pacific to full exploit this weapon....with the ability to loft 10t into GTO , launch capacity is not an issue. I am sure they are working hard on their own and tapping ukrainian friends for radarsat projects.

not sure of the israeli tecSAR we launched with x-band radar and 4cm res has maritime application as well.

the P3/P8I type planes have the ESM onboard to detect ships passively from 100s of km away. if a submarine with klub/brahmos onsite is not there, or a heavy surprise attack is desired, then shore based Shourya ASBM can take up this role. 1000kg warhead dropping in at Mach10 is a fairly unpleasant prospect even for a large carrier...a solid hit will mission kill it for sure and even even penetrate vital areas deep down like munitions storage, engine compartment and so on...

[tsarkar]

into one that can target moving warships a thousand miles away.

Terminal targeting was never an issue, cueing the missile over 2000 km to place it in the general vicinity of the target within terminal seeker FoV is the challenge.

From your link -

Raytheon said the company plans to design a technology......increased bandwidth and data capacity to receive and transmit

So networked Recce Surveillance Targeting Assets (RSTA)will feed the missile with data continuously. Is this high rate data transfer possible with BM's today?

Tomahawk is a subsonic cruise missile, not an exo-atmospheric BM, so its communication needs are relatively simpler. Tomahawk has flight control surfaces to enable it change direction according to fresh data.

Range of ~ 500 km for anti ship missile is nothing new during Cold war

Yes, but cueing and targeting was poor in that era. In the last IN missile attack on Karachi, when PN ships were hiding along US & UK merchant ships, P-15 missiles seekers could not distinguish between merchant or warships or oil tanks, for that matter.

MaRV equipped with terminal seeker when offers very high precision in manoeuvres and can precisely target with near zero or single digit CEP

MaRV presently do course correction and side-step enemy ABM, but certainly do not significantly change course. The low CEP is against fixed land targets.

it is only matter of adjustments & enhacements to be made in seeker and guidance to make it engage a moving target.

How can adjustments & enhacements in seeker improve a missile's flight characteristics. Assume a human mind has understood how a bird flies, but with wings absent from a human's physical body, can a man fly?

Shourya does terminal manoeuvre on reaching its target similar to that of Brahmos LACM.

We know it can spin, skid or sidestep. Can it loop or weave like Brahmos without any moving control surfaces. I noticed in photos that its fins were fixed.

MARV with flex nozzles and gas thrusters are an improvement, but not as manoeuverable as an airframe with control surfaces.

[tsarkar]

I feel the DF21 ASBM is not lizard yanking khan's chain or pure psyops..there is meat behind the project

The Chinese objective is Sea Denial and not precise targeting. Sea Denial is preventing any ship - merchant or naval - any access.

The Chinese believe with a large flotilla of ships, their ASBM will pick some target. And since every ship in CBG is important, sinking some will dent capability. Like, for example, tankers carrying aviation fuel rapidly consumed by 100+ aircraft.

So if a CBG is denied access, irrespective, of whether missiles are precisely targeted at it, Chinese strategic objective is achieved.

India has never followed a sea denial policy, so lets see how things shape up.

[Singha]

The Chinese believe with a large flotilla of ships, their ASBM will pick some target. And since every ship in CBG is important, sinking some will dent capability. Like, for example, tankers carrying aviation fuel rapidly consumed by 100+ aircraft.

the same strategy can be used to target CBG (chinese or others) if and when they appear in IOR region from land bases. if RCS is the determinant of which target to pick. it will home in on the carrier or tanker, followed by the DDGs - exactly what we want.

due to short distance involved at the bottom of the cone below the plunging ASBM, it need not do any fancy S or zig zag, just change course gently a couple times to orient itself in a straight line to new position of ship detected on active radar. if confusing moves to evade radar guided SAMs are needed perhaps it can do a corkscrew type descent or a waverider type S descent at a more shallow angle....anything is possible with Shourya semi-ballistic technology.

someone should look at google earth and draw 1500km circles from porbandar, karwar, laccadive, rameswaram, kovalam and car nicobar ASBM bases...it will cover a lot of area for sure.

[Karan M]

The IIR Seeker by BDL and MMR seeker by DRDO is only recent. I am not sure how long before the IIR local seeker is productionised, all trials before that were using the French IIR seeker. Don't whether IA is waiting to induct NAG is domestic seeker, if that is the case many Jingos here will be very happy.

But for many years the complaint against the NAG was there was no MMR seeker and IIR seeker was imported from France.

Any IIR seeker consists of many parts. It has an optical assembly, including the cover (akin to radome in a RF seeker) for certain wavelengths, the optics (sort of like a mini telescope with a gimbal to slew the assembly, but with a detection sensor attached, which will be CCD for a day only sensor or an IR matrix for an IR missile) and then the processing (to make sense of the imagery captured by the optics and actually provide guidance inputs to the navigation system). This entire package is the seeker. This entire thing is the system developed by DRDO, a huge achievement in itself, considering the many mechanical systems which need to be developed, how miniaturized yet robust they must be and work in a consistent fashion. Then there is the image processing software which is closely guarded and is a contributor to robust tracking, even in presence of obscurants, atmospheric or manmade (latter commonly referred to as counter measures). In this entire assembly one subsystem, was imported from France & a source of DDM angst. For obvious reasons, its best not to speculate about all such stuff in detail. After all, we gain nothing from tom tomming such things, even if they are based on public information.

BTW, there is a picture of the DRDO IIR seeker as they had showed it publicly, it should be around someplace.

Similarly, the DRDO did develop a MMW seeker for the Nag several years back and even had prototypes. But, the IIR seeker took precedence and hence the MMW project & its development was secondary. Its very heartening to see they have managed to get it to successful trials, and clearly, it will have a huge spin off on our PGM and future weapons program efforts.

[Aditya_V]

This is how a manoeuverable missile looks like. Check the number of flight control surfaces - six -http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ile001.jpg

This is also why AAD cannot be a good anti aircraft missile http://www.indianexpress.com/news/indoi ... y/442501/0# DRDO: MRSAM is four times more manoeuvrable than AAD. AAD performs sub-optimally while engaging aircraft in tail-chase mode, reducing the air defence engagement envelope.

Tsarkar the link has some propoganda as well so I will take it with a bit of salt.

The Left, traditionally opposed to defence ties with Tel Aviv, wants the deal scrapped because IAI is under CBI scrutiny in the Barak missile deal. It also wants the Government to explain why 6% of the contract sum is being paid as business expenses to IAI. The BJP says the deal reeks of middlemen, and will scrap it if it comes to power.

Not sure BJP leaders are stating this

DRDO conceded that Akash, the indigenous missile system in development since 1984, had been a sub-optimal performer, following which it was decided that IAF would purchase only two squadrons, to be deployed in less-than-strategic airfields.

Not true

[tsarkar]

^^ The Barak-8 statement vis-a-vis AAD is correct. On the same note, Barak-8 will not perform well against BMs. Both were designed for different roles, one is Anti Air and other is Anti Missile. FWIW, DRDO is developing the Barak-8 motor.

UPA targeted Barak-1 deal signed by NDA, so NDA is targeting Barak-8 deal signed by UPA.

Article is dated before Akash repeat order was signed. Akash is replacing Pechora, whose life have expired. I believe first deployed at Gwalior in the hinterland.

[Prem Kumar]

MaRV equipped with terminal seeker when offers very high precision in manoeuvres and can precisely target with near zero or single digit CEP, it is only matter of adjustments & enhacements to be made in seeker and guidance to make it engage a moving target.

Kanson: do we know for a fact that Shourya and other BMs like Prithvi, Dhanush & Agni actually employ terminal seekers? Also, we shouldnt under-estimate the terminal seeking problem. The seeker has to distinguish the target against sea clutter. Brahmos has a slightly easier problem (I think) because it doesnt "look down" to spot a ship against the sea until the last few seconds

[Prem Kumar]

The IIR Seeker by BDL and MMR seeker by DRDO is only recent. I am not sure how long before the IIR local seeker is productionised, all trials before that were using the French IIR seeker. Don't whether IA is waiting to induct NAG is domestic seeker, if that is the case many Jingos here will be very happy.

But for many years the complaint against the NAG was there was no MMR seeker and IIR seeker was imported from France.

Doesnt the fact that BDL produced its first batch mean that its productionized? All the recent Nag tests (for the last year or two) were done using the local IIR seeker, per Ajai Shukla.

[Kanson]

Kanson wrote:

into one that can target moving warships a thousand miles away.

Terminal targeting was never an issue, cueing the missile over 2000 km to place it in the general vicinity of the target within terminal seeker FoV is the challenge.

The purpose of quoting Tomahawk example is to show that not everyone is thinking that targeting a warship 1500 km away is impossible.

From your link -
Kanson wrote:

Raytheon said the company plans to design a technology......increased bandwidth and data capacity to receive and transmit

So networked Recce Surveillance Targeting Assets (RSTA)will feed the missile with data continuously. Is this high rate data transfer possible with BM's today?

Not much data available to deliberate on that.

Kanson wrote:

Range of ~ 500 km for anti ship missile is nothing new during Cold war

Yes, but cueing and targeting was poor in that era. In the last IN missile attack on Karachi, when PN ships were hiding along US & UK merchant ships, P-15 missiles seekers could not distinguish between merchant or warships or oil tanks, for that matter.

That is 40 years back. Technology is improving day by day.

Kanson wrote:
MaRV equipped with terminal seeker when offers very high precision in manoeuvres and can precisely target with near zero or single digit CEP
MaRV presently do course correction and side-step enemy ABM, but certainly do not significantly change course. The low CEP is against fixed land targets.

If a capable MaRV is launched from Karachi targeting say Jaipur, on its decent, it can be reprogrammed to attack Agra, or even Delhi, Ajmer or kota. That much is the significant course correction it can do. Topol-M is a MaRV. So are various ICBMs.

Kanson wrote:

it is only matter of adjustments & enhacements to be made in seeker and guidance to make it engage a moving target.

How can adjustments & enhacements in seeker improve a missile's flight characteristics. Assume a human mind has understood how a bird flies, but with wings absent from a human's physical body, can a man fly?

I'm not talking about flight characteristics. I'm only saying that to engage a moving target missile should be equipped with appropriate seeker which can identify and track such moving targets and capable of generating necessary signals to home the missile onto the target.

Kanson wrote:

Shourya does terminal manoeuvre on reaching its target similar to that of Brahmos LACM.

We know it can spin, skid or sidestep. Can it loop or weave like Brahmos without any moving control surfaces. I noticed in photos that its fins were fixed.

MARV with flex nozzles and gas thrusters are an improvement, but not as manoeuverable as an airframe with control surfaces.

From the latest test held in 2011, it was reported, Shourya did a terminal maneuver. Sir,earnestly, how you reached the conclusion that it cannot do such maneuvers and which photos you are referring to? As far as i know, there is no photos that are close enough as that of Brahmos missile exhibited in MAKS to draw any conclusion.

[Prem Kumar]

1. Cueing at that range - Assume A2 is fed with initial target coordinates before launch, by the time it arrives, say after 20 minutes, the ship may well have moved x km from initial position and out of seeker FoV. How does one datalink information to a BM? Which leads to second challenge

2. Missile control - Flight control at high speed with control surfaces is next to impossible. At that speed, movable flight control surfaces & joints will heat and shear off. Hence BMs use gas thrusters like A3 or Shourya. Or use thrust vectoring. Check this missile which flies at speeds up to Mach 4.5 http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zUe7sq7m3h0/S ... 110826.JPG The control surfaces are fixed with control via thrust vectoring.

Thanks for the insights tsarkar. Point (1) & the issues in fundamentally detecting a CBG at sea (without getting shot down in the process) is the key challenge IMO. Arun_S had mentioned in the India Forum that A2's had the option of getting mid course correction signals from a ground station to correct for INS errors. Not sure if that option (either from ground stations or airborne/satellite ones) is possible in an ASBM scenario. Without this, we need highly accurate detection assets & highly accurate missiles to get them into the kill-box. We also have to consider that the "smarter the missile" (i.e. with seekers), the more susceptible it is to spoofing by electronic counter measures, which the CBG is sure to deploy. Here, the missile is at a disadvantage because a CBG's would have much more powerful jammers.

I dont think Point (2) is much of an issue, since we are dealing with non-agile targets. In this sense, an ASBM has an easier job than an ABM. However, the ABM has the advantage of a powerful ground based radar to guide it & also to re-acquire the target, a luxury an ASBM does not have.

[Kanson]

MaRV equipped with terminal seeker when offers very high precision in manoeuvres and can precisely target with near zero or single digit CEP, it is only matter of adjustments & enhacements to be made in seeker and guidance to make it engage a moving target.

Kanson: do we know for a fact that Shourya and other BMs like Prithvi, Dhanush & Agni actually employ terminal seekers? Also, we shouldnt under-estimate the terminal seeking problem. The seeker has to distinguish the target against sea clutter. Brahmos has a slightly easier problem (I think) because it doesnt "look down" to spot a ship against the sea until the last few seconds

It is reported in our regular news paper and its internet editions about the presence of terminal seeker for Prithvi and Agni missiles. Yes, as you said, sea clutter could be problem. We only know that these missiles do have terminal seeker but we dont know about the types and its capabilities.

[Badar]

The Chinese objective is Sea Denial and not precise targeting. Sea Denial is preventing any ship - merchant or naval - any access.

The Chinese believe with a large flotilla of ships, their ASBM will pick some target.

Could you please share the source about the seeker details?

if RCS is the determinant of which target to pick. it will home in on the carrier or tanker, followed by the DDGs - exactly what we want.

Or the offboard floating decoy dumped by the escorting destroyer that creates the largest radar reflection of them all. Creating such an expensive missile and equipping it with such a dumb sensor would be silly.

[chackojoseph]

I have not read the entire debate, just skimmed it.

A2's can be used for a ASBM role as A2's are not the kill vehicle. They are the delivery vehicles. This is how Chinese are using BM's. They probably might have decided the radii of action (maybe 500 nautical miles) and covered it with required assets. So, a BM re-enters, ejects the kill vehicle which is expected to be subsonic. Upon release of the kill vehicle, the spread assets will guide them to the nearest possible point and release the munition.

India can also do it for desired radii of action from Indian shores. For example, the farthest possible distance a carrier can operate to launch air assets.

It cannot kill a carrier beyond the radii of action.

[SSridhar]

Link

India and Russia also concluded negotiations on obtaining military and strategic communications from the Glonass constellation of satellites being put into orbit by Moscow as an alternative to the West-controlled GPS system.

[negi]

Iirc some time back RahulM had made an interesting point on Chinese anti ship BM i.e the extreme nature of the re-entry would put constraints around the kind of sensor fit which the missile will need to track and home on moving targets.

[Singha]

thats why we shall use shourya not a pure balistic a2. at mach6 the optical sensors should still work....some abm kill vehicles have that speed.with optical we can pgm photos of ships and easily skip rafar decoys. but if cloud cover is there perhaps sar mode snapshot will pick up a real ship from floating decoys. tri mode seekets are becoming std on khan mextgen weapons lol

we would essentially get a 1500km range mach6 brahmos3 if you want to retain name...

[chackojoseph]

Shaurya is better placed to do this role. With 700 kms range, and radii of 300 to 400 kms, where our painting assets (UAV or aircraft or sats or spread over beacons that can communicate with the ASM), the fligh time is enough to target a CBG where ever it can move in 20 minutes.

it will all depend upon the warhead and the datalink.

[vic]

http://www.military-today.com/artillery/9a52_4.htm
9A52-4 Tornado

It is lighter version of Smerch, I think that we should modify our Pinaka also to get something like this!

[Singha]

> With 700 kms range

if I recall the old arun_s graph correctly, 700kms is with a 1000kg warhead but can be stretched up beyond 1500km with a 250kg (brahmos sized) warhead...onlee thing being it will hit with twice the brahmos1 speed.....no doubt such a hit will penetrate from deck level down to the keel of the ship if not beyond, ripping up the structure, cutting hundreds of pipes and cables, starting huge fires and ofcourse a 250kg bomb inside a ship sure packs a huge punch.

[chackojoseph]

^^^There is something called "Confidence levels" and that determines the range and operational radii.