Indian Army says no to Brahmos missile (ah DRDO)

[Screaming Skull]

The last test was a failure because the GPS shut down, Can any one confirm this..

And what modification have been made this time to prevent this ?

I had started this thread some time back, but decided against posting there any further. http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/27277-quite-treat-military-space-tech-lovers.html

There my first post was about BrahMos- here I will re-post it for you. Should answer all your queries-

The BrahMos program​

by, P Venugopalan, Director DRDL, Program Director of Integrated Missile Development Program and Programs PJ-10 (BrahMos) and Chairman, PMB of Astra Program.

• When the project was conceived in 1994, it was estimated to cost about $250 million. Initially the Russians were very reluctant to put in any funds as they already possessed the scram jet tech for the powerplant and the required tech for the seeker. After intense negotiations it was decided that the project cost would be shared in a 50-50 ratio. But in the end India managed to get 50.5% stake to decide on some key managerial and directorial positions.

• The inertial navigation system is a derivative from the Indian Prithvi missile program. It had to be customized for the BrahMos as the reaction time for the system on Prithvi was not acceptable for the BrahMos. The present system on the BrahMos has a reaction time of less than 4mins!

• Each BrahMos missile is cased in a canister. Once cased inside a canister, it needn't be touched for another 10 years. A midlife electrical inspection may be required though.

• The flight path may be altered based on particular requirements. The normal trajectory includes vertical take off-high altitude cruise-inclined dip-low altitude cruise till target. The seeker is switched off till it reaches the low altitude phase and depending on the size of the target, is only switched on at the final phases to avoid detection. With this trajectory the missile can cover its max range of 300 km. The missile can also be operated in terrain hugging low flying trajectory for targets in the range of 130-150 km.

• The terminal homing in the latest BrahMos versions is hybrid GPS and Russian GLONASS enabled. This was done because of a freak incident during testing when the US switched off its GPS. Now, if the GPS is switched off the GLONASS will take over.

• The structural design enables the missile to deflect EM waves, imparting considerable stealth capabilities to it.

• For demonstration to the IN, the GPS was fitted to an IN warship in inclined configuration. A decommissioned IN vessel was used as target. First a BrahMos was fired without a warhead. The video of the launch and final interception was shown to us. The missile hit the dead center of the ship and caused significant damage even without a warhead. Next a missile with warhead was fired. The ship broke into two pieces and the whole vessel sunk in less than 4 mins. By the time a recce chopper reached the site, even the last particles of the ship had disappeared from the site. The navy was convinced completely after this demo and cleared the way for the induction of BrahMos. DRDO has already started integration of BrahMos with the IN warships with each ship getting 12 missiles. In salvo mode the missiles can be launched one after the other with 2sec intervals.

• The land version of BrahMos is very similar to the Naval version except for the fact that they are designed to take on target much smaller than ships. The Army's test target includes a triangular reflector of of roughly 2m edge. The videos showed the BrahMos hitting the dead center of the targets. Another test involved picking up the right target from amongst three different reflectors and hitting it. The BrahMos passed this test too.

• The areal version requires some modifications. The areal version of BrahMos will be fitted on to the MKIs. But bad news is that only one missile can be fitted per MKI. Earlier it was believed that three could be accommodated, but now it appears that the MKI wings can not take the BrahMos. Drastic structural changes will be required to the MKIs, which is not deemed feasible.

• Total order for BrahMos till date is 1500 pcs.

Only so much for now. I l add more if I remember something.

ps: All the talks were for half hour durations.