Brahmos airborne version developed

[p2prada]

Must say his brains are scrambled. What a lovely way to tell the enemy where the launcher is ?

Regards

Ah! so when a F-18 flies back to its carrier after a bombing mission. What a lovely way to tell the enemy........??

 

[Always Neutral]

Ah! so when a F-18 flies back to its carrier after a bombing mission. What a lovely way to tell the enemy........??

Ok so please give me one advantage the re-usable missile has over a F-18 or a drone carrying a missile.

Regards

 

[p2prada]

Ok so please give me one advantage the re-usable missile has over a F-18 or a drone carrying a missile.

Regards

SUPER SPEED
Come back when the F-18 can handle Mach 8 or even if the drones achieve supersonic speed.

Did u forget it will be small, something that even an F-18 can carry, making it stealthy.

Oh! not to mention super manouverability. Almost all missiles in the indian inventory can manouver at hypersonic speed, which includes the Brahmos-1(at supersonic).

It will utilize a scramjet engine making it more fuel efficient.

The risks are less since it is better to sacrifice a missile than a F-18 and the pilot

Cheers

 

[Always Neutral]

SUPER SPEED
Come back when the F-18 can handle Mach 8 or even if the drones achieve supersonic speed.

Did u forget it will be small, something that even an F-18 can carry.

Oh! not to mention super manouverability. Almost all missiles in the indian inventory can manouver at hypersonic speed, which includes the Brahmos-1(at supersonic).

The US still dont have the capability to manufacture manouverable warheads.

Cheers

I love it. India makes one good missile and suddenly they feel they are better than the US.

Regards

 

[p2prada]

I love it. India makes one good missile and suddenly they feel they are better than the US.

Regards

I knew u would end up asking for proof(manouverability et al)...that why i edited my previous post. So that we continue with the Brahmos rather than talk about american and indian missiles. But....

If u note the missile development of russia and the US. The russian missiles are far better. the Brahmos propulsion system is russian and not indian. the Russians(soviets) developed technology that enabled it to manouver their warheads. Americans couldnt do it. American warheads head straight for their targets and their trajectory can be tracked easily. Thats why the Americans invested in MIRVs. Later the Russians were like, "HELL lets make MIRVs with manouverable warheads" and we now know the new missile as the Topol-M.


Links:

RT-2PMU? - Topol-M SS-27 - Russian / Soviet Nuclear Forces

The Topol-M missiles could be transformed into missiles with multiple reentry vehicles [MIRV's], since their throw weight allows accommodating 3-4 warheads on a missile. The warheads could be taken from some of those ground-based and naval missiles which will be withdrawn from the order of battle in coming years. The Topol-M can carry a maneuverable warhead, which was tested in the summer of 1998. Topol-M also has a shorter engine-burn time, to minimize satellite detection on launch.

Topol - M Missile - Defesa@Net

The latest test has shown other possibilities for the Topol-M: The missile was launched for minimum range, but with a new warhead. The missile troops checked a warhead capable of maneuvering along the flight trajectory. Launched from the Kapustin Yar test range, the missile aimed its nosecone in the direction of Balkhash (Kazakhstan). After separating from the missile, at the final stage of its flight the warhead carried out a maneuver (tracked by Russian observation devices) and fell at the designated point. That meant the maneuvering had not worsened the warhead's precision specifications but had misled the missile defense system -- making its interception and destruction virtually impossible. The likelihood that the Topol-M will strike its target has been increased to almost 90%.

 

[p2prada]

The best possible link for a brit.

Washington Times - Politics, Breaking News, US and World News - Russian warhead alters course midflight in test

Unlike current ballistic warheads that do not alter their flight paths sharply once they reach space, the new warhead can change course and range while traveling at speeds estimated at about 3 miles per second, the officials said.

Maneuvering warheads represents a difficult physics challenge because changing course at such high speeds normally would cause a warhead to disintegrate.

Maneuverability would let a warhead thwart missile defenses, because such countermeasures rely on sensors to project a warhead's flight path and impact point so that an interceptor missile can be guided to the right spot to knock out a warhead.

Indian missiles like Prithvi and AGNI are capable of the same manouvers. Brahmos is capable manouveing at supersonic speeds at sea level.


Links

:: Bharat-Rakshak.com - Indian Military News Headlines ::

Mr. Chander said the two missiles were supersonic and highly manoeuvrable

Anymore proof. If not lets get back to the BRAHMOS.

Cheers

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

On the subsonic vs supersonic issue, some very informative posts by Stuart Slade.

The discussion is regarding hypersonic Russian missiles, but since the Brahmos is essentially the Russian Yukhont, the arguments apply to the Brahmos for the most part as well.

Don't hold your breath. Statements like that are an absurd
over-simplification. The Russian anti-ship missiles represent one set of
technical solutions to penetrating anti-missile defenses. They are not
the only set of solutions to those requirements nor are they necessarily
the best.

The Russian attention to hypersonics had its costs. The missiles are big
and heavy. limiting the number that can be carried. Their high speed
causes severe airframe heating that prevents them using infra-red
guidance. It also commits them to a straight run-in course (or, at best,
gentle curves). They have a heat plume that a thermal sight can detect
while the missile is still kilometers over the horizon.

There are such things as adaptive and iterative guidance systems that can
be applied to subsonic missiles that simply cannot be used on the
hypersonics. Subsonics have much lower signatures so can be more
difficult to spot. They don't guzzle fuel like hypersonics so can deliver
equal punch in a much smaller airframe. And so it goes.

For your information; Russian-style hypersonics are known as "streakers",
Western style highly agile subsonics as "dancers". Both have their place
but their relative merits are still being evaluated with great passion.

What is startling is how few of their naval weapons the Russians have
actually sold. P-270 Moskit has gone to China and they have sold 96 Kh-35
Harpoonski to Algeria. Contrary to your repeated assertions, they have
not sold any of their naval weapons to the US. They have sold a small
number of M-31 target drones to the US via Boeing on the simple logic
that it was cheaper to buy the actual missile in question than to spend
money developing a simulator. M-31 is a version of Kh-31, a short-range
air-to-surface missile, roughly equivalent to Maverick.

As a point of factual accuracy, neither the US nor the UK nor any other
major western sea power has adopted or has any plans to adopt any Russian
designed weapons system.

As a point of factual accuracy, according to SIPRI, Russia is now the 5th
largest arms supplier in the world in terms of value of signed contracts
and its relative position is declining.

I would like to revise my first sentence. please do hold your breath
while waiting, you'll find the experience instructive

Stuart [Slade]

Streakers and dancers complicate intercept in two ways. If we take the
intercept window of a crude, basic anti-ship missile (subsonic,
straight-in) as a baseline there are two options. The first is to use the
Russian approach and get the missile to cross that intercept zone as
quickly as posisble. This means adopting the shortest path across it and
flying that path as fast as possible. Hence P-270. This is a perfectly
viable approach.

The second is to stretch the time the CIWS needs to destroy the missile
to the longest possible point. In effect, this (a) reduces the percentage
chance of the system killing the missile and (b)reduces the number of
inbound systems a single CIWS can engage. One way of doing this is to use
an iterative guidance system in the missile. This works by giving the
missile a fine-cut radar receiver which picks up and localizes the
emissions from the CIWS fire control system. The missile knows its own
coure and speed, it now knows the position of the CIWS (and can work out
the course and speed of the target). The computer in the missile knows
the algorithms used by the closed loop tracking system in the CIWS to
correct the aim of the CIWS. it can therefore work out what the firing
correction applied by the CIWS will be and alter the missile's flight
path to be somewhere else. This system is a service reality.

A third method is to physically shrink the envelope. The outer edge of
the intercept window is set by the maximum range at which the inbound
missile can be spotted, the inner edge is the range at which wreckage
from the shot-down missile will still strike the target ship. We can push
the outer edge in by flying the missile lower, by making it more
difficult to spot and by reducing its emissions. We can pull the inner
edge outwards by making sure the shot-down wreckage travels faster.

Putting all this together means that existing streakers fulfill
rerquirement (a) very well at expense of (b). In terms of (c), the
significantly pull the inner edge back (from 1 km to around 2.5) but have
major sacrifices in the outer edge. Their level of airframe heating,
their heat plume, the altitude at which they fly, their active radar
emissions, all mean they can be detected well over the horizon.

On the other hand, dancers make major gains in (b) at cost of performance
in (a). They sacrifice the inner edge of the engagement zone but achieve
major gains in reducing the outer edge by being inconspicuous. Typically,
they come in with their radars off (homing on command or IR), they are
coated with RAM (which streakers can't use since it burns off), they have
little airfrme heating and only a limited plume.

In summary, streakers move fast but have a larger, more distant intercept
zone. dancers move more slowly and evasively and have a much smaller
intercept zone, closer to the target ship. Close your eyes and visualize
it, you'll see what I mean.

This leads to a curious point which comes back to the Soviet's lack of
systems analysis. They designed P-270 to exploit certain weaknesses in
the SPY-1 radar performance. This it does, but by looking at a single bit
of equipment in isolation, they neglected to evaluate the target system
as a whole. Had they done so, they'd have found they'd managed to push
the intercept envelope back into an area where AEGIS works very, very
well. Once Standard SM-2 had been given an IR auxiliary homing system,
it was more than capable of shooting the P-270s out of the sky. Its
essential to think system-to-system NOT weapon-to-weapon.

On average a P-270 weighs about 4.5 times as much as a Harpoon. This
loads the odds in favor of Dancers - remember effectiveness is related to
squares of numbers.

Your comments about Yakhonts containers do not represent new technology
or anything particularly unusual - most western missiles have been
delivered that way since the late 1960s. We treat them as "wooden rounds"
- get them, slip them into the rails, hook them up, run a self-diagnostic
then adjust people's attitude with them.

Sadly, I can deny the Russians are achieving a lot of success; I say
sadly because I thought they were going to do a lot better than they
have. Their equipment has stirred up a lot of interest but relatively
little of that has translated into sales. Where it has, it is usually
because of a lack of any opposition. Malaya represents the only case
where Russian equipment has secured an order in the face of Western
competition.

Stuart

Russian anti-ship missiles (Stuart Slade)

 

[Neo]

Excellent read Am, thanks for sharing!

 

[nitesh]

Must say his brains are scrambled. What a lovely way to tell the enemy where the launcher is ?

Regards

So, r u trying to say that the missile will return to the same point, from where it has been fired? Enemy airbases are well known in today's world, but still we use planes to bombard the enemy position. Can you please enlighten us what exactly the merit/demerit of having reusable missiles. I feel it will only provide merits.

 

[nitesh]

Hey thanks a lot AM. This is good read. thanks for sharing.

 

[nitesh]

I dont have any concrete info as of now, will try to dig some info and post it. But scientists are working on a cruise missile with a range of 1000 km. It is named as NIRBHAY. But it will be subsonic not supersonic.

Here you go some info on Nirbhay. It will be tested nexted year.

DNA - India - Nirbhay to beef up missile muscle - Daily News & Analysis

The missile's design is complete and the technology demonstrator would be ready in early 2009, he said. The ‘hardware’ is under preparation, he added.

Some more info

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Nation

“We have Brahmos, which is a supersonic cruise missile and the need was felt for a subsonic cruise missile that will be capable of being launched from multiple platforms in land, air and sea,” Chander said.

In the schedule drawn up for Nirbhay, a technology demonstrator is slotted for early 2009. Chander said the design for the system is complete and “hardware preparations are on”. He said Nirbhay would weigh around 1,000kg and travel at 0.7 mach (nearly 840kmph) and would be capable of delivering 24 different types of warheads.

I couldn't find any info about the types of warheads, if some can help me......

 

[Contrarian]

I love it. India makes one good missile and suddenly they feel they are better than the US.

Regards

AM, its not about being better or not. They are being given a missile which is good enough for the requirements and it will be used in any conflict, best or not is irrelevant.

And FYI: The US is developing reusable missiles that launch their payload and return back. Incase of naval launches they simply return and fall in the sea, where they keep floating at a predetermined spot till they are picked up.

And secondly, the US is ALSO developing a hypersonic cruise missile. The purpose i think was the capability to attack any part of the globe within the hour. I think Boeing has the contract and is building the prototype, though i might be wrong on the Boeing part.

To add some information here, Nirbhay the subsonic CM is being developed because of the range limitations on BrahMos(though it can be enhanced unilaterally by India, it is a violation of the MTCR, BrahMos has a very short range for a missile its size) and secondly and most importantly its cost. BrahMos is stupendously expensive, it will be used for high value targets only, while Nirbhay is planned to be the missile for the everything else.