Here is another space based weapon India is developing. This is by far th emost ambitious one.
AVATAR: India's space based missile launcher
Hyperplane Avatar will be a reusable missile launcher
The hyperplane Avatar, the most ambitious of all, is already reaching the end of the conceptual stage and entering the planning stage. The kerosene-fuelled scramjet-powered vehicle is claimed to be much cheaper than the design concepts worked out in the US, Germany, the UK and Japan. The idea is to develop a vehicle that can take off from conventional airfields, collect air in the atmosphere on the way up, liquefy it, separate oxygen and store it on board for subsequent flight beyond the atmosphere. In fact, Air Commodore R. Gopalaswami, former chairman and managing director of Bharat Dynamics, India's missile factory, had once claimed that it can be developed even into a commercial transporter.
Incidentally, it was Gopalaswami who suggested the name Avatar. Avatar is primarily intended as a reusable missile launcher, one which can launch missiles, land back and be loaded again for more missions. The vehicle will be designed to permit at least a hundred re-entries into the atmosphere. The vehicle could also act as a satellite launcher at a hundredth of the present cost of launching satellites. A miniature Avatar, which is also being conceived, would be hardly bigger than a MiG-25 or an F-16.
Work has already begun on a hypersonic launch vehicle which would be the forerunner to Avatar and is expected to complete in 2010.
Avatar is expected to hit the skies in 2014.
Cruise missiles may be the currency of power today. But the currency of future would be the Avatar, Durga and the Kali.