Hi dear
@Oscar !
You are absolutely correct here,brahmos is a JV and the most important part of brahmos- the liquid ramjet is russian designed. Interestingly the true range of that system is 500+kms.But the range is restricted to 300kms(thanks to certain mechanism)! The prime reason why india hasnt been able to increase the range of that system to itz true 500-600kms is simply because of the fact that india doesnt own the IPR of that engine.DRDO however is working on their own liquid ramjet which is in very advanced stages of development- once ready they would be able to increase the range of the system to 600kms. If you ask indian contribution in the brahmos project then i would say that india's contribution is limited to seeker,actuation systems,flight computer,more recently they have also developed the launcher and casing of the missile,yet the most important aspect of brahmos still happens to come from russia- the liquid ramjet!
On a related note i would like to point out that DRDL has demonstrated the scramjet engine by firing it for 20seconds back in 2011,the main challenge is to extend the endurance of the engine to at least 2minutes!You can find plethora of research papers coming out of india in the field of scramjet engine,in fact i know one of my colleague who is working on scramjet engine.Quite recently india has also established a hypersonic test tunnel at IISC bangalore(~1m diameter) to analyze the stability of the HSTDV.It helps in finding out derivatives of Cx,Cy and Cz with respect to alpha or velocity(popularly known as stability derivatives)! However for more realistic tests india still have to go to israeli/russian labs that have way higher diameter and can measure a lot more parameters(it is just not sufficient to have a wind tunnel lab,it is also important to have set up that can faithfully measure all the flight parmeters that we are interested in).In this regard DRDL is working on a hypersonic test tunnel with "bigger" diameter(bigger than 1m)!
I am attaching a couple of pics taken from various indian publications on scramjet research- hope that helps!
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Finally coming to the question of nirbhay ,well I would like to elicit your response on
(a)What exactly does one mean when he/she say cruise missile x is better than cruise missile y?
(b)What exactly does it take to design "superior" systems?
I would like to shed some light on nirbhay - i wont go into the comparison as i want the members to arrive at some conclusion themselves!
Firstly one can find a decent amount of research and publications on nirbhay's research and development right from it's miniaturized gas turbine to seekers- that shows how transparent indian R&D in general is- unfortunately same logic cant be applied to pakistan and that coupled with very immature state of industry in pakistan casts some serious doubts regarding "how" and "from where" pakistan develops/procures its sub-systems!
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Anyways nirbhay in it's 2nd trial covered a distance of close to 1050kms and the director general confirmed that the range would be increased and that the air launched version will have a range of 1500+kms! The 1st and 3rd failure has something to do with GNC(guidance navigation and control) . There is no instability in the design as such(CG not lying aft of aerodynamic centre). india currently has two miniaurized gas turbine programs going on
(1) first one is from HAL that has already test fired their GT and is in very advanced stages of development.Its specifications are as given in the picture above!
(2) GTRE is also developing miniaturized gas turbines for strategic applications however they havent test fired their engine.
Finally I would like to conclude by saying that a country with higher research spending/output and "relatively matured industries" will eventually prevail!