hi my dear friend,
Thanks for tagging me in a very interesting debate,i would like to present my views(and do tag me more in such questions!).
Firstly i would like to cast some light on some of the potential ways to reduce drag during re-entry-
1)blunted nose- it is the most common method of reducing drag and temperature of a RV.Now why does it work?
it works because when you have a blunt nose the shock wave is detached from the nose and hence that helps reducing the temperature vis-a-vis a sharp nose.This happens because in blunt RV you're essentially transfering the renetry energy to the air flow field and hence lesser energy is available to be transfered to the surface.
This was proposed in early 50s by an american aerodynamicist by the name julian allen for which he was awarded sylvanus albert reed award in '56.
Kindly refer to the picture below (picture courtesy:Anderson)
View attachment 260588
2)second method is known as "ablative coating"- thats what you just mentioned.
3)Third method is a very novel method known as "telescopic spike".It is a telescopic structure protruding from the nose .It helps to keep the shock wave away from the nose-popularly used in american trident D5. Thankfully this aparatus will be used in our K-5 SLBM.
My dear friend,the range of brahmos is in reality 600kms but due to MTCR the range has been compromised to 300kms.Now i am not at the liberty to discuss "how" that has been achieved.But lets just assume that once we have bought the technology of liquid ramjet,then we can morph it into our projects,but till then we are bound by the MTCR regulations.
Coming to the issue of LR-SAM,i can again not comment because the of the sensitivity of the information.However i would write what has always been written and published in public domain and that is,with a "bigger" booster,you can very well increase the range of LR-SAM. The dual pulse motor(basically a two stage solid missile) that is our own is a very very good technology that gives the missile an extra push during the end game- well one would ask,why is such complex arrangement required?The answer to this question lies in the fact that the thrust drops off rapidly in the end stages and hence the missile doesnt have enough punch during the end game especially when the target is manouvering and the missile is bleeding energy at an alarming rate.
A lot of people dont know that we painstakingly designed the dual pulse motor,we ran into what is known as "acoustic instability" during the initial phase- and that is a huge pain in the *** job! They optimized a lot of things to remove that and the end result is very very promising- our propulsion and their electronics!
I dont know how come pakistan doesnt run into these kind of engineering challenges while designing their missiles- i am afraid their missiles are designed in beijing or nanjin etc(nothing to offend my pakistani friends but a reality)
@The Deterrent
I'd suggest you to go through the thrust vs time plot of usual solid rocket