Major Indian cities to get missile defence shield

[blain2]

Drill on Akash missiles begins



Finally years of hardwork has paid off

Lets hope so. The proof of the pudding is in the eating...lets see when IAF orders the SAMs.

 

[KENT]

Calm down buddy!

I am not teaching you anything. Simply made a suggestion looking at DRDO's track record.

Pakistan should not wait for you guys to put on a demo/promo/Indian movie around this capability. If she did then it would be complacency and plain old stupidity. I would hope we get a basic MIRV capability so the benefits of a rudimentary Indian ABM shield can be negated. That is the whole idea behind the nuclear deterrence.

Please please, spare us for your suggestion regarding track record of DRDO. You don't need to tell us regarding DRDO activities. We are so fortunate to have defence establishment like DRDO to take care of our country's security needs.

 

[IceCold]

Regarding your usual harping about operational hiccups in Arjun and LCA, it only goes to express about your extreme anxiety with DRDO, as how does it manage to achieve such a landmark success, this is what you can’t accept. Don’t forget DRDO has also running several other ambitious projects and it has managed to excel in it more precisely and this what we proud of themselves.

Hiccups you say. Is that the way you describe decades old projects which even the IAF and IA have serious doubts and are unwilling to induct them. Indeed i'm very qurious about DRDO's land mark success. By the way which success are we talking about? Pardon my ignorance here.

Believe me i'm not at all forgeting DRDO's wishlist of ambitious projects that also includes now the antiballistic system and yes now i fully can imagine how proud you indians must be of DRDO.

 

[IceCold]

We are so fortunate to have defence establishment like DRDO to take care of our country's security needs.

Yes yes! indeed very fortunate.

 

[Spring Onion]

Please please, spare us for your suggestion regarding track record of DRDO. You don't need to tell us regarding DRDO activities. We are so fortunate to have defence establishment like DRDO to take care of our country's security needs.

Oh yeh indeed we shoould not suggest dear
---------------------

FORCES ON REVIEW
- Why is the DRDO stagnating?
Brijesh D. Jayal


For far too long, there has virtually been no accountability within the defence management system to ensure that our fighting forces are equipped with the proper weapons and systems to handle the complex security challenges facing the country. The resultant state of modernization of our armed forces today is therefore cause for alarm. Many major weapons system projects under the Defence Research and Development Organization of the ministry of defence have been stagnating for over a decade or more. Not surprisingly, a recent report by the parliamentary standing committee on defence has been highly critical of the functioning and performance of the DRDO.

Based on its recommendations, the government has now formed a committee to carry out an independent review of the DRDO. The unfortunate fact is that the laudable aims of self-reliance and indigenization have been so misused that, for years, the DRDO and defence public sector units have always had the first call on any operational requirement that the services may project. As numerous examples have shown, these organizations have readily accepted the commitments but rarely delivered. While the armed forces continue to face the adverse operational consequences, no one has been held to account. With 5,000 scientists, 25,000 other scientific, technical and support personnel, 51 laboratories and an annual budget of around Rs 5,000 crore, the DRDO’s vision — as spelt out on its website, of “making India prosperous by establishing world class science and technology base and providing the defence services decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions” — has remained an elusive vision.

The genesis of the parliamentary committee’s ire has been the DRDO’s inability to deliver on the many vital projects that are at hand and the absence of any accountability for gross time and cost overruns. While the composition of the review committee has been announced, one is not aware of the terms of reference. In all fairness, while there is much that the DRDO needs to answer for, both to the armed forces and the tax-payer, it would be unfair to limit the committee’s charter to just reviewing the DRDO. If indeed the spirit of the exercise is to inject efficiency and accountability into the entire system of modernizing the armed forces, then every organization that plays a part in the process needs to be reviewed for its contribution to this sorry state of affairs.

It is understood that both the MoD and the DRDO were firmly opposed to the concept of an independent audit and review. That the alternative view has prevailed indicates that, in keeping with the prevailing spirit of transparent and merit-oriented decision-making, the government is not willing to treat the DRDO as a holy cow. In furtherance of this spirit, one hopes that the terms of reference of the proposed committee will not be limited to the DRDO alone but will extend to the other holy cows that must also share the burden of this state of blissful neglect of national security.

We need to ask ourselves why we have allowed the DRDO to become an omnibus organization, which is involved in activities as diverse as basic research, at one end of the spectrum, to designing and developing complex weapons systems like main battle tanks and light combat aircraft, and on occasion even indulging in pre-production activities. This, when there exist large defence production units with integrated design and development departments, whose primary task is precisely to undertake these latter activities. In the event, the DRDO falls between two stools and has been unable to fulfil, through research and development, what should have been its primary function. That of ensuring that the Indian armed forces are technologically prepared and operationally relevant in the ever-evolving technological and security environment. While the former would be a function of the research being carried out and the advice provided to the MoD and the armed forces, the latter would be through applied research where technology can be developed, commercialized and transferred to the defence industry, which would then apply it to weapons system development.

This brings us to the defence industry, which consists of both defence public sector units and the ordnance factories. Here one must differentiate, between the navy and the other two services, because the former has been far more successful in indigenous design and production; possibly because it still runs its own design department, and shipyards have largely been headed by serving or retired naval officers. The rest of the defence industry has been more interested in keeping its production lines going rather than aggressively contributing to design and development of futuristic weapons systems with applied technology inputs from the DRDO. The industry is far more comfortable with licensed production, with no risks and assured production orders. With the services as captive customers and prices of products artificially fixed, the system is not conducive to a competitive and dynamic culture, where providing the armed forces with technologically current weapons systems at competitive prices carries a premium. This culture has several negative fallouts. It leads to the stagnation of the industry’s own design and development capability, thus making it reliant on further licensed programmes. There is no backwards push to the DRDO to come up with technologies, which can be commercially applied, to future weapons system designs or for weapons system upgrades. And finally, such an industry becomes lethargic and is incapable of competitiveness in the international arms market.

At the end of the day, it is the armed forces that are the ultimate users of the final products of indigenous research, development and production. In any healthy commercial organization, the customer is king. It is only in the existing defence management system that the customer is actually the slave. He is made to feel apologetic about futuristic requirements to meet his operational needs and is often accused of aping foreign sales brochures. He is dubbed as pro-import when he is not convinced that indigenous claims are realistic. The ministry of defence sits in judgment over technical and operational issues, for which it lacks professional expertise. Often it rules in favour of claims made by the DRDO or the defence PSUs, driven by the lofty ideals of self-reliance and indigenization, but, one suspects, also to take the easy route, as the alternative involves imports and the bogey of arms dealers, et al.

The armed forces have only themselves to blame for this pitiable plight. Service leadership, possibly because of a false sense of patriotism, has found it politically correct not to openly criticize these fatal systemic flaws. The few that have voiced concern have done so either in a muted fashion or on the eve of shedding their uniform. In this age of rapidly advancing technology and equally rapid obsolescence of weapons systems, the need is for integrated teamwork across the spectrum of research, applied research, development, testing, operationalizing and productionizing. With so much at stake, the services have also not shown any enthusiasm to establish functional technology and systems commands with delegated authority to work alongside the DRDO and the industry. Part of the existing problem is precisely the absence of such a mechanism.

This brings us to the holiest of holy cows, the MoD. It commands all the authority with no attendant accountability. It stands as arbiter of disputes between the services and the DRDO or the defence industry, without possessing the requisite technical or operational expertise. No incremental delay or cost overrun can be permitted without the sanction of the MoD, yet no questions are asked of it. If indeed the nation aspires to take its place in the forefront of defence technologies, to become a force to reckon with in producing weapons systems to equip its defence forces and to compete in the international market, then it is the entire defence management system that must come under scrutiny, not just the DRDO. Scrutiny not only of performance, but the charter, organization, decision-making hierarchy, authority and accountability within each of the organizations is vital.

Unless we are willing to broaden the charter of the proposed committee to encompass the above weaknesses, the spirit and purpose of our review will not be served. A valuable starting point would be to task the College of Defence Management to produce classified management case studies on the main battle tank, the light combat aircraft and the Trishul missile projects. These studies can form the basis of the ‘terms of reference’ for the proposed committee. The committee will then have its work cut out.

The author is a retired Air Marshal of the Indian Air Force



------------
The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion

 

[Logic note]

well I think to be honest DRDO has done a wonderful job , specially in a situation where most of western nations have refused to share the technology .
even USA have achieved this marvelous achievement in technology and science by importing the best brain and technologies from all around the world

This article is the best way to describe the problems for any third world country to achieve , self reliance in technology .

Finally, the much-maligned and underpaid defence scientists feel vindicated. Having been rubbished by the media and the defence services for long-delayed and aborted defence technology projects, they feel that someone has heard their side of the story, though this story is not that flattering to the Army and the Air Force.

The 14th report of the Balasaheb Vikhe Patil-headed parliamentary standing committee on defence has vindicated THE WEEK's reports (Feb. 19, 2006 and February 18, 2007) that the services are as much to blame for Defence Research and Development Organisation's project delay. The committee has noted that many of DRDO's difficulties are caused by the changing of the qualitative requirements (QR) by the services midstream, and the long and extended trials by them. Said a DRDO scientist to THE WEEK: "When it comes to imported systems, the services are willing to dilute their QR if the supplier can bring down the price. Why can't they extend the same concession to systems developed by our own scientists?"

The committee, too, has criticised the services' phoren craze. "...indigenously developed product is subjected to prolonged and exhaustive trial and evaluation, whereas imported products are not subjected to the same evaluation, but are readily accepted...," it noted.

The committee has listed several instances of the services' changing QR midstream, leading to delay in projects. The Army asked DRDO in September 2000 to develop an air-defence gun system for Rs 17.7 crore. Four months later, the vice-chief reported that the existing L-70 and ZU guns could be upgraded to a level superior to what the Army had asked it to develop. The new QR, issued in May 2001, was so different from the earlier one that DRDO had to short-close the programme after spending Rs 14.5 lakh.

In 1994, the IAF asked DRDO to develop an emergency floatation system for Mi-8 helicopters for Rs 75 lakh, when IAF was negotiating with FPT of the UK. As FPT could not meet the air-worthiness requirement, the system was imported from Kazan in Russia, and the indigenous development programme foreclosed after spending Rs 48 lakh. To DRDO's credit, instead of throwing away the already-developed technologies, it employed them in the indigenous Advanced Light Helicopter.

In 1993, the IAF asked DRDO to develop a mobile balloon barrage system for Rs 45.99 lakh. By March 1998, DRDO was ready with the system. One and a half years later, the IAF reported that it no longer needed the system, as it was based on the 1980s operational philosophy.

The maximum flak on DRDO has been over the delay in the light combat aircraft (LCA) programme. The IAF, too, has to share the blame. It asked DRDO to redesign the composite wings "to cater for weapon definition changes" in January 2004, by which time the prototypes had flown for more than a few hundred hours.

The most intriguing case has been the cargo ammunition development project, sanctioned in January 1998 at Rs 16.35 crore. Initially, DRDO thought it could modify the bomblet developed for Prithvi for the cargo system. When this failed, DRDO attempted to design the bomblet and fuze afresh. That threw up certain technological constraints. Finally, all the "constraints were overcome and the design of 130mm cargo shell, bomblet, bomblet fuze..., packing system and ejection system were worked out."

Hardly had DRDO opened champagne bottles when, according to the committee, "the project was shortclosed [as] the government did not grant an extension of time after spending Rs 2.78 crore." The committee has recorded that it is "not fully convinced with the reply... that due to technological constraints, change in design and development and GSQR, the projects sanctioned were abandoned...."

The services' argument has been that changes in technology and threat perception are making them amend the QRs. (THE WEEK reported in February that the Nag anti-tank missile programme was delayed partly because the Army and IAF suddenly wanted longer ranges than what they had originally asked for.) The committee has observed that several projects "were shortclosed due to change in General Staff Qualitative Requirements by the user, or due to technological obsolescence."

The problem appears to be mainly with the Army and Air Force. The Navy, which has its own design capability, has fewer problems with DRDO. As the committee observes, "Only the Navy has design capability, and... is far ahead of the Army and Air Force in R&D and outsourcing."

Thus, naval engineers and designers seem to have a better working relationship with DRDO. For instance, the Samyukta electronics warfare programme for the Army was launched in May 1994, but is yet to be completed and handed over to the Army. On the other hand, the similar Sangraha programme for the Navy, which was launched a year after the Army programme was launched, has already been completed, and is being happily used by the Navy. This was after the cabinet committee took seven months to sanction the Army project and 13 months for the Navy one.

Similarly, other naval projects like high-speed torpedo Varunastra and anti-torpedo decoy system Mareech, though delayed by two years, are expected to be completed with no cost overrun. A non-official expert put it pointblank to the committee: "The Navy has the best example. So why don't we follow that? All major developments take place as part of the service, under their care and accountability."
The Navy's higher satisfaction level with DRDO is reflected in the naval representative's statement before the committee: "With the help of DRDO..., we have made considerable progress on the electronic warfare systems." According to him, the Navy has stopped buying sonars from abroad for the last five to 10 years; DRDO-developed sonars have been retrofitted even in Russian-built ships; DRDO's electronic warfare systems are being inserted in foreign-built naval aircraft; and systems are being sent to Russia for retrofitting on aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, which is being refurbished in Russia.

Similarly, Garden Reach Shipbuilders of Kolkata has no problem with the special steel developed by DRDO and produced by Steel Authority of India for anti-submarine corvettes. As the Garden Reach representative proudly told the committee, "We are now the first major user of this indigenous steel.... The entire electronics, weapons and sensors in that ship are going to be... indigenous." The only problem, as noted by the committee, is that the Navy is often unable to provide enough ships for trials of warheads.

There are problems within DRDO, too. As many as 1,404 scientists have left it in the last 10 years. As the ministry pointed out to the committee, many of the multinationals' R&D centres are located in cities where DRDO has a cluster of laboratories and establishments. "Some of the scientists selected in DRDO through proper selection process, after training and R&D experience in the organisation, are offered lucrative salary by MNCs and private companies," it said.

Not that the report is a clean chit to DRDO. The organisation has been criticised for its lack of project management culture, reluctance to involve the users in project management and review, lack of trust in the capabilities of private industry, and lack of technological follow-up with public sector manufacturers. But the committee has refrained from blaming DRDO even for US sanctions which delayed the Kaveri engine.

As a DRDO scientist told THE WEEK, many of these technologies are being developed for the first time in the country, and there would be teething problems. "This would happen in any country where strategic technology has progressed far ahead of civilian industrial base. We have been developing extremely complex technologies for fighter planes and warships and electronic warfare, whereas our civilian industry produced the first indigenous car only recently," he said.

The problem, according to him, is not in the development of technologies, but in integrating them into products and weapon systems, which is the job of design engineers. As DRDO chief Dr M. Natarajan has been saying, "We don't have enough design engineers in the country. India needs at least one lakh of them."

 

[Logic note]

Trishul trials

The third successive test firing of the Akash medium range surface to air missile system in as many days, took place this afternoon from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) off Orissa's coast. The firing, at near ceiling range from a mobile launcher against a para-barrel target, was successful -- the third successful test in three days with no major deviations on any account. For those who aren't yet clued in, these are critical tests -- the first with the full involvement of the IAF. The test team will take a breather and complete another three test-firings in the coming week to complete the user trial, which has doubled as an impromptu air defence exercise as well.

 

[kidwaibhai]

i dont think that the US has a fully operational missile shield i think it only stops 90% of the missile. what is the percentage of the indian missile defence shield.

 

[indiapakistanfriendship]

i dont think that the US has a fully operational missile shield i think it only stops 90% of the missile. what is the percentage of the indian missile defence shield

Not sure about the percentage. However a missile shield fielded by the US needs to counter not just IRBMs but ICBMs which attain much higher velocity and are difficult to intercept especially when fired in a volley numbering upto thousands. In India's case the system needs some time to mature but the adversery here is not expected to fire a volley of ICBMs but IRBMs and SRBMs which involve a certain degree of complexity but not to the standards aced by the US. Thus the time frame required to field such a system will be a little less than the US.

Oh yeh indeed we shoould not suggest dear
---------------------

FORCES ON REVIEW
- Why is the DRDO stagnating?
Brijesh D. Jayal


For far too long, there has virtually been no accountability within the defence management system to ensure that our fighting forces are equipped with the proper weapons and systems to handle the complex security challenges facing the country. The resultant state of modernization of our armed forces today is therefore cause for alarm. Many major weapons system projects under the Defence Research and Development Organization of the ministry of defence have been stagnating for over a decade or more. Not surprisingly, a recent report by the parliamentary standing committee on defence has been highly critical of the functioning and performance of the DRDO.

Based on its recommendations, the government has now formed a committee to carry out an independent review of the DRDO. The unfortunate fact is that the laudable aims of self-reliance and indigenization have been so misused that, for years, the DRDO and defence public sector units have always had the first call on any operational requirement that the services may project. As numerous examples have shown, these organizations have readily accepted the commitments but rarely delivered. While the armed forces continue to face the adverse operational consequences, no one has been held to account. With 5,000 scientists, 25,000 other scientific, technical and support personnel, 51 laboratories and an annual budget of around Rs 5,000 crore, the DRDO’s vision — as spelt out on its website, of “making India prosperous by establishing world class science and technology base and providing the defence services decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions” — has remained an elusive vision.

The genesis of the parliamentary committee’s ire has been the DRDO’s inability to deliver on the many vital projects that are at hand and the absence of any accountability for gross time and cost overruns. While the composition of the review committee has been announced, one is not aware of the terms of reference. In all fairness, while there is much that the DRDO needs to answer for, both to the armed forces and the tax-payer, it would be unfair to limit the committee’s charter to just reviewing the DRDO. If indeed the spirit of the exercise is to inject efficiency and accountability into the entire system of modernizing the armed forces, then every organization that plays a part in the process needs to be reviewed for its contribution to this sorry state of affairs.

It is understood that both the MoD and the DRDO were firmly opposed to the concept of an independent audit and review. That the alternative view has prevailed indicates that, in keeping with the prevailing spirit of transparent and merit-oriented decision-making, the government is not willing to treat the DRDO as a holy cow. In furtherance of this spirit, one hopes that the terms of reference of the proposed committee will not be limited to the DRDO alone but will extend to the other holy cows that must also share the burden of this state of blissful neglect of national security.

We need to ask ourselves why we have allowed the DRDO to become an omnibus organization, which is involved in activities as diverse as basic research, at one end of the spectrum, to designing and developing complex weapons systems like main battle tanks and light combat aircraft, and on occasion even indulging in pre-production activities. This, when there exist large defence production units with integrated design and development departments, whose primary task is precisely to undertake these latter activities. In the event, the DRDO falls between two stools and has been unable to fulfil, through research and development, what should have been its primary function. That of ensuring that the Indian armed forces are technologically prepared and operationally relevant in the ever-evolving technological and security environment. While the former would be a function of the research being carried out and the advice provided to the MoD and the armed forces, the latter would be through applied research where technology can be developed, commercialized and transferred to the defence industry, which would then apply it to weapons system development.

This brings us to the defence industry, which consists of both defence public sector units and the ordnance factories. Here one must differentiate, between the navy and the other two services, because the former has been far more successful in indigenous design and production; possibly because it still runs its own design department, and shipyards have largely been headed by serving or retired naval officers. The rest of the defence industry has been more interested in keeping its production lines going rather than aggressively contributing to design and development of futuristic weapons systems with applied technology inputs from the DRDO. The industry is far more comfortable with licensed production, with no risks and assured production orders. With the services as captive customers and prices of products artificially fixed, the system is not conducive to a competitive and dynamic culture, where providing the armed forces with technologically current weapons systems at competitive prices carries a premium. This culture has several negative fallouts. It leads to the stagnation of the industry’s own design and development capability, thus making it reliant on further licensed programmes. There is no backwards push to the DRDO to come up with technologies, which can be commercially applied, to future weapons system designs or for weapons system upgrades. And finally, such an industry becomes lethargic and is incapable of competitiveness in the international arms market.

At the end of the day, it is the armed forces that are the ultimate users of the final products of indigenous research, development and production. In any healthy commercial organization, the customer is king. It is only in the existing defence management system that the customer is actually the slave. He is made to feel apologetic about futuristic requirements to meet his operational needs and is often accused of aping foreign sales brochures. He is dubbed as pro-import when he is not convinced that indigenous claims are realistic. The ministry of defence sits in judgment over technical and operational issues, for which it lacks professional expertise. Often it rules in favour of claims made by the DRDO or the defence PSUs, driven by the lofty ideals of self-reliance and indigenization, but, one suspects, also to take the easy route, as the alternative involves imports and the bogey of arms dealers, et al.

The armed forces have only themselves to blame for this pitiable plight. Service leadership, possibly because of a false sense of patriotism, has found it politically correct not to openly criticize these fatal systemic flaws. The few that have voiced concern have done so either in a muted fashion or on the eve of shedding their uniform. In this age of rapidly advancing technology and equally rapid obsolescence of weapons systems, the need is for integrated teamwork across the spectrum of research, applied research, development, testing, operationalizing and productionizing. With so much at stake, the services have also not shown any enthusiasm to establish functional technology and systems commands with delegated authority to work alongside the DRDO and the industry. Part of the existing problem is precisely the absence of such a mechanism.

This brings us to the holiest of holy cows, the MoD. It commands all the authority with no attendant accountability. It stands as arbiter of disputes between the services and the DRDO or the defence industry, without possessing the requisite technical or operational expertise. No incremental delay or cost overrun can be permitted without the sanction of the MoD, yet no questions are asked of it. If indeed the nation aspires to take its place in the forefront of defence technologies, to become a force to reckon with in producing weapons systems to equip its defence forces and to compete in the international market, then it is the entire defence management system that must come under scrutiny, not just the DRDO. Scrutiny not only of performance, but the charter, organization, decision-making hierarchy, authority and accountability within each of the organizations is vital.

Unless we are willing to broaden the charter of the proposed committee to encompass the above weaknesses, the spirit and purpose of our review will not be served. A valuable starting point would be to task the College of Defence Management to produce classified management case studies on the main battle tank, the light combat aircraft and the Trishul missile projects. These studies can form the basis of the ‘terms of reference’ for the proposed committee. The committee will then have its work cut out.

The author is a retired Air Marshal of the Indian Air Force

Jana I have been reading this forum for the past one year. I have found pakistani members using articles posted by Indian sources to vindicate it.
But I am not sure about WHY WE DONT COME ACROSS SUCH KIND OF ARTICLES CRITISIZING pakistani weapons or system design from Pakistani media or Chinese weapons by Chinese media. Is it because these weopons must be perfect, flawless and upto the standard comparing to the western standards or is it just that your media does not pick up any failures?, becuase is it too patriotic?, or your own military personell or services would not comment because they have to make do with a limited budget and make best use of what they get?
I am sure there must be several failures faced by any country trying to indegeonise their production but the problem here for the good or bad is that we tend to be self critical. The media here tends to see the failures more than success and using it to your advantage to durm up an argument in a forum is unreasonable. However whatever may be the critisizm I am sure neither the ordinary people nor the scientists or the policy makers are going to be disturebed and the work carried on will proceed.

 

[Neo]

The new shield
Raj Chengappa
Wheeler Island, Orissa, December 13, 2007

A A AIn the summer of 2012, the rollercoaster relations between India and Pakistan suddenly go steeply downhill. Terrorists had launched a successful attack on the Indian Parliament, killing two Union cabinet ministers and 12 MPs.

Pakistan’s hand is clearly proven and, after a month, India goes to war. Pakistan threatens to use nuclear weapons if India doesn’t stop the invasion. As Indian troops close in on Lahore, Pakistan launches a barrage of nuclear-tipped Ghauris to strike Delhi.

In the past, such an attack would have meant certain death and destruction for Delhi. But by that year, India is equipped with a sophisticated ground-based anti-ballistic missile system (ABM).

The ABM system’s long-range radar detects the barrage of Ghauri missiles within 30 seconds of lift-off. Five minutes later and 80 km above Delhi, the ABM batteries launch a set of interceptor missiles to strike them down.

Four of Pakistan’s Ghauri missiles are blown up and their fragments fall harmlessly. But two of them evade detection and head for the capital.

The AAD01 lifts off from Wheeler IslandAs they arrive 30 km above Delhi, the Indian Army launches another barrage of interceptors that successfully bring down the remaining two Ghauris. Delhi is saved. India launches a counter nuclear strike that would, as an officer puts it, “make Pakistan not worth living in anymore”.

Science fiction? Not really. With a series of major technological breakthroughs recently, scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) have demonstrated that they are capable of developing an indigenously-built anti ballistic missile shield (See graphic) that could protect not just Delhi, but other major metros and key installations from enemy nuclear attacks, whether they come in from Pakistan or China.

.

Yes, a great scenario for a Bollywood SF movie.

 

[Neo]

India to have missile defence shield in 3 years
NEW DELHI, DEC 12 (PTI)

India will have its own missile defence shield ready in three years, a development that will mark a big leap in securing the country's high value assets and major cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

The two-layered Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system to cope with both threats from ballistic missiles as well as terrain-hugging cruise missile could be ready by 2010.

This assurance came from the country's top missile scientist V K Saraswat in the backdrop of Pakistan building up an arsenal of missiles which would give India hardly a 3-4 minute reaction time.

"An integrated test trial of the interceptor missile and its sub-systems would be conducted in June next year," Saraswat told newspersons on the recent successful test trials of the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missiles in endo-atmospheric mode.

He said three to four more flight trials of the AAD and another four trials of exo-atmospheric missiles were required before declaring the system as "operational".

The missile scientist said the AAD system could also be configured to take care of threats from terrain-hugging cruise missiles.

Asked when BMD could be mass produced to cover the whole nation, Saraswat said that within weeks of the system being validated the production lines would be ready to roll out the system in bulk.

He said there was a "substantial" private sector participation in the BMD development programme.

On the June test, Saraswat said a system was being developed to fire two missiles simultaneously at a single target to intercept it both in exo- and endo-atmospheric zones.

On comparison of the missile with the US PAC-III, DRDO officials said both were essentially interceptor missiles but while the PAC-III has a limited range of 15 km "our missiles can go upto 25 km."

The new system, to be ready by 2010, would be capable of protection against existing threats to the country but "we are developing a system for Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile interception, which could take upto seven years.

He said the country's indigenous AAD system would get a filip when India gets more AWACS, AEW and dedicated satellite-based tracking radars.

While affirming that the country would go ahead with developing its indigenous BMD system, DRDO officials said New Delhi was "keen and looking at" similar systems being offered by the US, Israel and Russia.

"The system has been configured with radars for long range surveillance and tracking, command, control and communication systems for effective control and optimisation of exo- and endo-atmospheric interceptors at altitudes above 40 km and below 25 km respectively," Saraswat said.

Babur has sea skimming and terrain hugging capability, its designed to avoid radar detection whereas BMD was tested against high incoming missile.
And then there's Ra'ad, a stealth CM!

I'm curious to learn how Mr Saraswat can counter two very advanced CM's without radar detection.

 

[Neo]

So let me get this straight, 3 more tests of the AAD and four trails of the exo-atmospheric missiles, india would finally declear the shield operational. Woww now that was quick. All the sudden a country which has absolutely no experience with a system as complex as a anti ballistic system or let me put it this way a country who with all the help they could get couldnt make a jet operational and a tank for their airforce and army, suddenly tests fire a anti ballistic system,moreover just requires 3 to 4 more tests and would be ready to defend against ghori and shaheen system. I must admire DRDO. Finally they did it. Indians can now sleep well. Lol I guess americans were just stupid, deploying all there resources to make their defence system operational, all they needed was to ask DRDO for help.

Really! how convinent. DRDO must be proud of themselves.

US should hire DRDO to complete their Defence Shield which they've been trying to build for atleast 15 years now.

 

[Neo]

Please please, spare us for your suggestion regarding track record of DRDO. You don't need to tell us regarding DRDO activities. We are so fortunate to have defence establishment like DRDO to take care of our country's security needs.

Yes you're very fortunate to have a range of stop-gap purchases due defence establishments like DRDO. She's structurely providing necessity to 'import' weapons to take care of your countries security needs.
Bravo!

 

[Neo]

i dont think that the US has a fully operational missile shield i think it only stops 90% of the missile. what is the percentage of the indian missile defence shield.

PAC-III has a kill rate of 70-75%, I don't expect Indian Defence Shield to even measure that.

 

[overseer]

In doing so, India has become the newest member of the rarified club of four nations— the USA, Russia, France and Israel—having ABM capabilities.

Pardon me for my lack of military knowledge, but I am curious the statement that Indian missile shield's interception range is 25km maximum, isn't that pretty low??
If I remember correctly, S-300 PMU-1 already has 120km interception range, S-300 PMU-3 has range of 400km, while PAC-3's range is 200km. That seems to have a lot of disparity between the Indian ABM.

Don't mind me saying, but even Republic of China (Taiwan) has developed Tien Kung-II (Sky Bow) missile with 200km range with ABM capability, Mainland China has the capability to shoot down object at 865 km (actual interception) range at exoatmospheric environment.

Shouldn't that makes India the 7th country to developed ABM? (As oppose to the stated "5th"... well, some Indian news even stated as 3rd country to have ABM)