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Is Indian Ballistic Missile program overly complicated?

Safriz

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Currently India has following types of nuclear Ballistic missiles either deployed or being flight tested.
Three types of Prithvi , Dhanush .
Agni-1 and Agni-2
Agni-3
Agni-4 and Agni-5
K-15
K-4

These are 11 types of nuclear ballistic missiles India is fielding or flight testing.

Believe it or not these 11 have 6 different types of Maneuvering and steering systems.

Agni-1 and Agni-2 use the jet vanes . Where movable fins are placed inside missile Exhaust and change direction of thrust to steer the missile.

Prithvi series uses small movable fins at the bottom (Shown in picture) to steer, and can only do so while in atmosphere.

Agni-3 uses thrust manipulation by injector nozzle (Shown in the picture) which is a nozzle or set of nozzles at the rocket exhaust, injecting cold or hot gasses in the exhaust on obe side at a time , making it hotter or colder than the other side , creating turning moment by asymmetric exhaust.

Agni-4 and Agni-5 use thrust vectoring by movable nozzle. Both missiles' exhaust nozzle is surrounded by flexible material which allows the nozzle to move for steering by diverting the thrust.

K-15 uses a combination of steering mechanisms.
It too has small movable fins at the bottom for aerodynamic steering. The top cap has rocket motors of it's own which uprights the missile after it comes out of water and then the cap is jettisoned. Later in the flight Agni-3 type fluid injection system may be used once the missile is at altitudes where air is too thin for aerodynamic steering.Or a combination of Fins and jet vanes is used. That's three types of steering system on one missile.
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Shourya_sept2011590hg.jpg


K-4 details are still sketchy but from the only video released it can be seen there are no fins on the missile , but the cap plays a big role in pulling the missile out of water and up righting it and later some other steering system is used.
imagek4.jpg


That's six types of steering systems on eleven types of missiles.

That's an overly complicated missile arsenal which needs far more testing and higher costs of production .

On the other hand all Pakistani Nuclear ballistic missiles use Jet vanes with the exception of Nasr which uses forward fitted moving fins.
Despite the fact that Pakistan uses more types of nuclear ballistic missiles than India, only two types of steering systems are used, keeping things simple, costs low and lesser need of testing
 
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