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Air defence involves detection, identification, handing the target over to the AD weapons and finally deterrence or destruction of the target, for which in the most countries Air Force is overall responsible for with land and naval systems having role in it
Air Threat
Air defence (AD) or Anti Aircraft (AA) Artillery as it was earlier called, originated with the threat of airborne platforms like airships and aeroplanes being used for supporting warfare. Air power developed through both the World Wars and subsequent conflicts. Some of the early efforts to explore their use in military role took place in Italy in April 1909, when Wilbur Wright was brought to Italy to demonstrate his Military Flyer. Airplanes and airships were used for the first time in warfare during the Italian–Turkish war of 1911–1912 when in March, 1912, Captain Piazza made the first photo-reconnaissance flight in history. Since then there has been no looking back for air power. With the support of technology, it has been becoming increasingly more precise and lethal in an all weather environment.
Battle of Britain is a shining example of the use of airpower in the Second World War when the German Air Force made a sustained effort to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force. The development in aeronautics, avionics and airborne armament has re-defined airpower as seen in the two Gulf and Afghanistan Wars. The role of reconnaissance has become virtually ‘see all’ by day and night. New platforms in the form of unmanned aerial vehicles – both for surveillance, reconnaissance and armed role; cruise missiles, and short range ballistic missiles have added a new dimension to the AD. The stealth platform of Lockheed Martin’s F22 Raptor and also its fifth generation F-35 Lightning II fighter has brought out new challenges to AD. The aerial platform is a complex target to engage as it flies simultaneously in three dimensions, at speeds normally exceeding supersonic, by day and night. The reaction times for the AD gunners is thus in terms of seconds.
Air Defence
AD Guns. The battle between an offensive and a defensive weapon is as old as the history of warfare. As soon as the first military aircraft was seen on the horizon , AA guns soon followed to shoot down the aircraft. Between the WW1 and WW2 there was hardly any development in AA gun technology. In 1928, the US adopted the three-inch M3 gun as a standard AA gun which could not cope up with the advancement in aviation. The Germans selected 88 mm, the British 3.7-inch (94 mm) and the US 90 mm. There was mix of gun calibres ranging from 3.7-inch, 3-inch, 37mm, 40 mm to two-pounder guns. However 40 mm calibre was the clear winner which is still current along with 35mm and calibres around 20 mm.
Radars: Detection of an aircraft was a major problem till the British developed the radar which became a key component in the evolution of AA weapons. The gun laying radar came in service in October 1940. Subsequently, developments brought a generation of surveillance radars like Reporter(Thales), Indra (DRDO) and Giraffe Plus (SAAB) ; and fire control radars like Superfledermaus (Contraves- now obsolete), Fly Catcher (Thales) etc. Some of the fire control radars also had limited surveillance capability which reduced the reaction time by electronically handing over the target from detection to fire control mode.
Surface to Air Missiles(SAMs): Germany is the pioneer in the development of missiles and their V1 and V2 airships are well known. The development of SAMs has greatly improved the effectiveness of surface based AD weapons. Many countries are developing SAMs with US, Europe and Russia at the forefront. The earlier missiles were guided by a command system in which one radar unit acquired and tracked the target, a second tracked just the missile, and a computer calculated missile data for interception. Generally the SAMs fell in three categories: missiles with very long ranges like the Nike series, based on static launchers; mobile missiles systems like the Russian Kvadrat; and the shoulder fired missiles like Raytheon’s Stinger of USA and Igla of KBM – Russia. The first SAM to enter service in Britain was the Bloodhound in 1958. The French worked on the PARCA and the MATRA R422-B missiles. Soviets were also making progress with SAMs which were evolved from German World War II programmes. Russia has been in the fore front of SAM development with about 24 types in the ground version ranging from SA-1Guild to AA-24 Grinch. In the US inventory two missile systems stand out that is MIM-23Hawk (homing-all-the-way-killer) and its latest version Hawk XXI. The modern version is Patriot series of missiles, which is truly a modern SAM and became operational during the first Gulf war. Its variants are Raytheon’s Patriot, Patriot Advanced Capability(PAC-1) PAC-2 and Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3.
AD System
AD is a system which involves detection, identification, handing the target over to the AD weapons and finally deterrence or destruction of the target. In most countries, the air force is overall responsible for the AD of a nation with land and ship based systems having a synergised role in it. It is obvious that the overall AD has to have a battle management system to ensure gap free and integrated AD of the aerospace of the nation.
Indian Perspective
In India, the Indian Air Force is overall responsible for the AD of the country and is jointly executed on ground by the Air Force and the Army. The Army is responsible for the point defence of the strategic assets of the country like nuclear plants, key airbases, radar stations, oil refineries, shore based installations of the Indian Navy like ammunition depots, key choke points like rail cum road bridges and so on. Army is also responsible for the AD of the Field Army and Army’s strategic logistic nodes. Naval ships have their own ship based AD systems which includes guns and missiles like Rafael’s Barak of Israel. The division of responsibility between the Indian Air Force and the Army at times gets blurred as Army holds only guns for the strategic assets and even point defence SAMs are held by the Air Force. Army Air Defence (AAD) is responsible for:
Point defence of the national strategic assets including those of civil areas and the defence forces.
AD of the Field Army, which includes the armour formations, staging areas, surface to surface missile areas, gun areas, choke points and logistic areas.
AAD
The Army inherited the AD system from the British after independence. The complete weapon force consisted of Bofor’s 40mmL/60 guns of WWII vintage. At that time, air power in the region was still in its infancy and the Army did not know what to do with the AD guns but held on to them. As L/60 gun had become obsolete, thus it was replaced by Bofor’s 40mmL/70 gun, which were later on manufactured under licensed production by Ordnance Factory, Jabalpur. The production line is now closed. The gun is radar controlled; earlier with Contraves’ Superfledermaus fire control radar (now obsolescent) and now with Thales’ Flycatcher fire control radar. Superfledermaus was manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and now Flycatcher is also being manufactured by them under licensed production. However, the conversion from L/60 to L/70 took more than two decades. In spite of this handicap, AAD fought 1965 and 1971 Wars most gallantly. Finally the Army got its act together post 1971 and an all out effort was made at modernisation.
The Golden Era: Post-1971 was the golden age for AAD modernisation when most of the current weapon systems held in the inventory were inducted, mainly from erstwhile USSR. The pace of induction of L70 gun system was accelerated. Fire control radar Superfledermaus was replaced by Thales’ Fly Catcher and later by an upgraded version. The ZU23 twin guns and Man portable AD system (MANPADS) Strella (later on replaced by Igla), were inducted for the infantry divisions. The armoured divisions got Schilka four barrelled all weather mobile system for point defence, OSA-AK mobile all weather system to counter the attack helicopter threat and 23 mm twin guns for semi-mobile assets. Strela 10M mobile fair weather system was acquired for independent armoured brigades and Kvadrat all weather system for area AD of the strike corps. All the systems for the Field Army were of Russian origin.
More than a decade later Tangushka was acquired from Russia but for unknown reasons, only a few numbers were imported, barely equipping one unit. This was followed by the long standing void of a tactical control radar by acquiring Thales’ Reporter Tactical Control Radar, which is manufactured by BEL under licensed production.
Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP): IGMDP is India’s missile development programme of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which was started in 1980 and closed in 2008. Apart from strategic missile systems, it included AD and anti-tank missile systems. The AD systems were Quick Reaction SAM (QR-SAM), Trishul and Medium Range SAM (MR-SAM) Akash, both meant to be mobile systems to be successor to OSA-AK and Kvadrat respectively. Trishul was not successful and foreclosed in 2002 and Akash was thrust upon the Indian Air Force in transportable role as it could not operate in mobile role as required by the Army. To be operational in mobile role was of paramount importance to the Army in order to provide AD to the armour formations. Since large amount of funds and time was spent upon Akash, thus Army agreed to accept it in a semi- mobile role. The problem of successor to Kvadrat still remains.
Current Status
It appears that during the post-90s period, time has got frozen for AAD with not an iota of modernisation. The current state of modernisation of AAD System is given in succeeding paragraphs.
40 mmL/70 Gun System. This gun is the mainstay of AAD and has been in service since 1964 which means that it is 50 years old. Its fire control radar has been modernised three times i.e. from Superfledermaus to Flycatcher and currently upgraded Flycatcher. Its rate of fire has been marginally increased and a percent of ammunition has proximity fuse. This gun system is crying for a change but nothing seems to work. The DRDO has not been able to develop a gun and world over gun systems are getting outpaced by the air threat. Skyshield of Rheinmetall AD was a possible successor, having an effective range of 4km and rate of fire of 1000 rounds per minute. Its AHEAD (Advance Hit Efficiency and Destruction technology) ammunition which contains 152 heavy tungsten metal, spin stabilised sub-projectiles and ejected by a time fuse seems very attractive. However, the company has come under shadow of the Ministry of Defence and there is no likelihood of the Skyshield entering AAD. The BEL, jointly with Ordnance Factory, Jabalpur has taken on to upgrade 40mmL/70 gun by replacing its hydraulic drive by an electric drive, an integrated fire control system, an optronic sights and BARCO AMLCD display system linked to the joystick. The electro-optic systems are from Controp of Israel. It is understood that the contract has already been signed last month with BEL and an upgrade will start shortly.
23mm Twin Barrel Gun. This gun was imported in the eighties for the Field Army. It is an excellent gun but purely mechanical with a range of two kms and rate of fire of 2000 rounds per minute. It is also being upgraded by providing it an electric drive, fire control system, optronic sights and Barco display along with a joystick. Electro-optic systems are also from Controp of Israel. Some other Indian companies like L&T, Tata Power and Alpha Technologies are also carrying out the upgrade. Comparative trials are expected shortly.
Schilka System. It is a highly mobile system of Russian origin for supporting armour formations and has been in service, since the early 70’s. Its successor was Tanguska also of KBK Russia, one regiment of which was procured but there was no further acquisition due to some unknown reason.The later system is Pantsir-S1 is a gun-missile system of KBK Russia. At present there seems some lethargy to progress the case for a successor to Schilka, however, BEL along with Israel is working on its upgrade. The upgrade involves replacing the fire control radar from Israeli Aerospace Industries(IAI), optronic sights, air-conditioned cabin and a new Hindustan Powerplus, Caterpillar diesel engine. The four barreled gun with a cyclic rate of fire of 3,400 rounds per minute is still current. At present BEL is jointly working with IAI to make the radar operational and trials are expected in March 2014.
Quick Reaction SAM (QR-SAM) System. The current system is OSA-AK which is a highly mobile system for the AD of armour formations. This system is more than 20 years old and needs to be replaced. As brought out earlier, DRDO’s effort to develop Trishul system did not succeed. A RFP has been issued a couple of times and withdrawn for some reason or the other. Apart from Russia, no country produces self-propelled AD systems. Russia’s TOR M-1(12km range) was a suitable system but somehow Russia falls shy of responding to an open tender. The other option is to select a suitable system and ask the OEM to mount it on a matching mobile platform. Possible choices are Rafael’s Spyder missile system of Israel which has already been selected by the Indian Air Force; Raytheon’s HAWK XXI is a more advanced, and compact version of the earlier version with a swanky new 3D MPQ-64 Sentinel radar. The missiles are upgraded MIM-23K standard with an improved blast-fragmentation warhead that creates a larger lethal zone. Raytheon’s other system is SLAMRAAM, which is the land version of air to air missile however for some reason it has not been selected by the US Army. The MBDA’s Aster-15, with a range of about 30 km which seem to fall in the category of overkill. There are reports that DRDO is having a joint venture with MBDA for Mica missile calling it Maitree (Friendship) under a short range SAM (SR-SAM) system programme for possibly replacing QR-SAM system. The MBDA will help DRDO to fill the technological gaps of Trishul by providing technology of active seeker, propulsion and control systems.
Medium Range SAM (MR-SAM) System. Kvadrat is the current system which is more than 35 years old and has the technology of early sixties thus a RFP was issued but later on withdrawn due to poor response. The DRDO’s Akash has not succeeded in mobile role, thus the Army has procured it in limited numbers for a sort of static role. Only Russia produces self-propelled AD systems for which the possible contender could be Russia’s BUK-M1. Other systems like Aster30, Israel’s Barak ‘Next Generation’, MBDA’s MICA and Patriot Advance Capability -3 (PAC-3) have to be mounted on a suitable mobile platform. Patriot is the obvious front runner as it is war proven; has hit to kill technology; can engage aircrafts, helicopters, UAV’s, cruise and tactical ballistic missiles and deployed with 10 nations including the US. The DRDO had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel to jointly develop a MR-SAM systems but there seems little progress on it. This project was to be built on Barak next generation, and have a range of about 70 km. The future thus seems uncertain.
MANPADS. The current system is Igla, which is also in service with the other two services. There is a successor to Igla called Igla-M. Media reported that during the summer of 2012, SAAB’s RBS70 Next Generation was tried out along with MBDA’s Mistral and a system from Russia (probably successor to Igla), but no decision has emerged so far. MANPADS is employed by all the three services and the combined order could be quite large amounting to over than $5 billion.
The above analysis clearly brings out that there is some degree of paralysis in the process of procurement. The large degree of obsolescence, voids of equipment and shortage of ammunition has made the task of field commanders very difficult. A well trained modern army acts as a deterrence during peace. A very strong and resolute leadership is required to steer the ship of defence modernization through the maze of rules, regulations and the quagmire of alleged corruption.
Three Decades of Status Quo - Defence and Security of India
Air Threat
Air defence (AD) or Anti Aircraft (AA) Artillery as it was earlier called, originated with the threat of airborne platforms like airships and aeroplanes being used for supporting warfare. Air power developed through both the World Wars and subsequent conflicts. Some of the early efforts to explore their use in military role took place in Italy in April 1909, when Wilbur Wright was brought to Italy to demonstrate his Military Flyer. Airplanes and airships were used for the first time in warfare during the Italian–Turkish war of 1911–1912 when in March, 1912, Captain Piazza made the first photo-reconnaissance flight in history. Since then there has been no looking back for air power. With the support of technology, it has been becoming increasingly more precise and lethal in an all weather environment.
Battle of Britain is a shining example of the use of airpower in the Second World War when the German Air Force made a sustained effort to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force. The development in aeronautics, avionics and airborne armament has re-defined airpower as seen in the two Gulf and Afghanistan Wars. The role of reconnaissance has become virtually ‘see all’ by day and night. New platforms in the form of unmanned aerial vehicles – both for surveillance, reconnaissance and armed role; cruise missiles, and short range ballistic missiles have added a new dimension to the AD. The stealth platform of Lockheed Martin’s F22 Raptor and also its fifth generation F-35 Lightning II fighter has brought out new challenges to AD. The aerial platform is a complex target to engage as it flies simultaneously in three dimensions, at speeds normally exceeding supersonic, by day and night. The reaction times for the AD gunners is thus in terms of seconds.
Air Defence
AD Guns. The battle between an offensive and a defensive weapon is as old as the history of warfare. As soon as the first military aircraft was seen on the horizon , AA guns soon followed to shoot down the aircraft. Between the WW1 and WW2 there was hardly any development in AA gun technology. In 1928, the US adopted the three-inch M3 gun as a standard AA gun which could not cope up with the advancement in aviation. The Germans selected 88 mm, the British 3.7-inch (94 mm) and the US 90 mm. There was mix of gun calibres ranging from 3.7-inch, 3-inch, 37mm, 40 mm to two-pounder guns. However 40 mm calibre was the clear winner which is still current along with 35mm and calibres around 20 mm.
Radars: Detection of an aircraft was a major problem till the British developed the radar which became a key component in the evolution of AA weapons. The gun laying radar came in service in October 1940. Subsequently, developments brought a generation of surveillance radars like Reporter(Thales), Indra (DRDO) and Giraffe Plus (SAAB) ; and fire control radars like Superfledermaus (Contraves- now obsolete), Fly Catcher (Thales) etc. Some of the fire control radars also had limited surveillance capability which reduced the reaction time by electronically handing over the target from detection to fire control mode.
Surface to Air Missiles(SAMs): Germany is the pioneer in the development of missiles and their V1 and V2 airships are well known. The development of SAMs has greatly improved the effectiveness of surface based AD weapons. Many countries are developing SAMs with US, Europe and Russia at the forefront. The earlier missiles were guided by a command system in which one radar unit acquired and tracked the target, a second tracked just the missile, and a computer calculated missile data for interception. Generally the SAMs fell in three categories: missiles with very long ranges like the Nike series, based on static launchers; mobile missiles systems like the Russian Kvadrat; and the shoulder fired missiles like Raytheon’s Stinger of USA and Igla of KBM – Russia. The first SAM to enter service in Britain was the Bloodhound in 1958. The French worked on the PARCA and the MATRA R422-B missiles. Soviets were also making progress with SAMs which were evolved from German World War II programmes. Russia has been in the fore front of SAM development with about 24 types in the ground version ranging from SA-1Guild to AA-24 Grinch. In the US inventory two missile systems stand out that is MIM-23Hawk (homing-all-the-way-killer) and its latest version Hawk XXI. The modern version is Patriot series of missiles, which is truly a modern SAM and became operational during the first Gulf war. Its variants are Raytheon’s Patriot, Patriot Advanced Capability(PAC-1) PAC-2 and Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3.
AD System
AD is a system which involves detection, identification, handing the target over to the AD weapons and finally deterrence or destruction of the target. In most countries, the air force is overall responsible for the AD of a nation with land and ship based systems having a synergised role in it. It is obvious that the overall AD has to have a battle management system to ensure gap free and integrated AD of the aerospace of the nation.
Indian Perspective
In India, the Indian Air Force is overall responsible for the AD of the country and is jointly executed on ground by the Air Force and the Army. The Army is responsible for the point defence of the strategic assets of the country like nuclear plants, key airbases, radar stations, oil refineries, shore based installations of the Indian Navy like ammunition depots, key choke points like rail cum road bridges and so on. Army is also responsible for the AD of the Field Army and Army’s strategic logistic nodes. Naval ships have their own ship based AD systems which includes guns and missiles like Rafael’s Barak of Israel. The division of responsibility between the Indian Air Force and the Army at times gets blurred as Army holds only guns for the strategic assets and even point defence SAMs are held by the Air Force. Army Air Defence (AAD) is responsible for:
Point defence of the national strategic assets including those of civil areas and the defence forces.
AD of the Field Army, which includes the armour formations, staging areas, surface to surface missile areas, gun areas, choke points and logistic areas.
AAD
The Army inherited the AD system from the British after independence. The complete weapon force consisted of Bofor’s 40mmL/60 guns of WWII vintage. At that time, air power in the region was still in its infancy and the Army did not know what to do with the AD guns but held on to them. As L/60 gun had become obsolete, thus it was replaced by Bofor’s 40mmL/70 gun, which were later on manufactured under licensed production by Ordnance Factory, Jabalpur. The production line is now closed. The gun is radar controlled; earlier with Contraves’ Superfledermaus fire control radar (now obsolescent) and now with Thales’ Flycatcher fire control radar. Superfledermaus was manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and now Flycatcher is also being manufactured by them under licensed production. However, the conversion from L/60 to L/70 took more than two decades. In spite of this handicap, AAD fought 1965 and 1971 Wars most gallantly. Finally the Army got its act together post 1971 and an all out effort was made at modernisation.
The Golden Era: Post-1971 was the golden age for AAD modernisation when most of the current weapon systems held in the inventory were inducted, mainly from erstwhile USSR. The pace of induction of L70 gun system was accelerated. Fire control radar Superfledermaus was replaced by Thales’ Fly Catcher and later by an upgraded version. The ZU23 twin guns and Man portable AD system (MANPADS) Strella (later on replaced by Igla), were inducted for the infantry divisions. The armoured divisions got Schilka four barrelled all weather mobile system for point defence, OSA-AK mobile all weather system to counter the attack helicopter threat and 23 mm twin guns for semi-mobile assets. Strela 10M mobile fair weather system was acquired for independent armoured brigades and Kvadrat all weather system for area AD of the strike corps. All the systems for the Field Army were of Russian origin.
More than a decade later Tangushka was acquired from Russia but for unknown reasons, only a few numbers were imported, barely equipping one unit. This was followed by the long standing void of a tactical control radar by acquiring Thales’ Reporter Tactical Control Radar, which is manufactured by BEL under licensed production.
Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP): IGMDP is India’s missile development programme of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which was started in 1980 and closed in 2008. Apart from strategic missile systems, it included AD and anti-tank missile systems. The AD systems were Quick Reaction SAM (QR-SAM), Trishul and Medium Range SAM (MR-SAM) Akash, both meant to be mobile systems to be successor to OSA-AK and Kvadrat respectively. Trishul was not successful and foreclosed in 2002 and Akash was thrust upon the Indian Air Force in transportable role as it could not operate in mobile role as required by the Army. To be operational in mobile role was of paramount importance to the Army in order to provide AD to the armour formations. Since large amount of funds and time was spent upon Akash, thus Army agreed to accept it in a semi- mobile role. The problem of successor to Kvadrat still remains.
Current Status
It appears that during the post-90s period, time has got frozen for AAD with not an iota of modernisation. The current state of modernisation of AAD System is given in succeeding paragraphs.
40 mmL/70 Gun System. This gun is the mainstay of AAD and has been in service since 1964 which means that it is 50 years old. Its fire control radar has been modernised three times i.e. from Superfledermaus to Flycatcher and currently upgraded Flycatcher. Its rate of fire has been marginally increased and a percent of ammunition has proximity fuse. This gun system is crying for a change but nothing seems to work. The DRDO has not been able to develop a gun and world over gun systems are getting outpaced by the air threat. Skyshield of Rheinmetall AD was a possible successor, having an effective range of 4km and rate of fire of 1000 rounds per minute. Its AHEAD (Advance Hit Efficiency and Destruction technology) ammunition which contains 152 heavy tungsten metal, spin stabilised sub-projectiles and ejected by a time fuse seems very attractive. However, the company has come under shadow of the Ministry of Defence and there is no likelihood of the Skyshield entering AAD. The BEL, jointly with Ordnance Factory, Jabalpur has taken on to upgrade 40mmL/70 gun by replacing its hydraulic drive by an electric drive, an integrated fire control system, an optronic sights and BARCO AMLCD display system linked to the joystick. The electro-optic systems are from Controp of Israel. It is understood that the contract has already been signed last month with BEL and an upgrade will start shortly.
23mm Twin Barrel Gun. This gun was imported in the eighties for the Field Army. It is an excellent gun but purely mechanical with a range of two kms and rate of fire of 2000 rounds per minute. It is also being upgraded by providing it an electric drive, fire control system, optronic sights and Barco display along with a joystick. Electro-optic systems are also from Controp of Israel. Some other Indian companies like L&T, Tata Power and Alpha Technologies are also carrying out the upgrade. Comparative trials are expected shortly.
Schilka System. It is a highly mobile system of Russian origin for supporting armour formations and has been in service, since the early 70’s. Its successor was Tanguska also of KBK Russia, one regiment of which was procured but there was no further acquisition due to some unknown reason.The later system is Pantsir-S1 is a gun-missile system of KBK Russia. At present there seems some lethargy to progress the case for a successor to Schilka, however, BEL along with Israel is working on its upgrade. The upgrade involves replacing the fire control radar from Israeli Aerospace Industries(IAI), optronic sights, air-conditioned cabin and a new Hindustan Powerplus, Caterpillar diesel engine. The four barreled gun with a cyclic rate of fire of 3,400 rounds per minute is still current. At present BEL is jointly working with IAI to make the radar operational and trials are expected in March 2014.
Quick Reaction SAM (QR-SAM) System. The current system is OSA-AK which is a highly mobile system for the AD of armour formations. This system is more than 20 years old and needs to be replaced. As brought out earlier, DRDO’s effort to develop Trishul system did not succeed. A RFP has been issued a couple of times and withdrawn for some reason or the other. Apart from Russia, no country produces self-propelled AD systems. Russia’s TOR M-1(12km range) was a suitable system but somehow Russia falls shy of responding to an open tender. The other option is to select a suitable system and ask the OEM to mount it on a matching mobile platform. Possible choices are Rafael’s Spyder missile system of Israel which has already been selected by the Indian Air Force; Raytheon’s HAWK XXI is a more advanced, and compact version of the earlier version with a swanky new 3D MPQ-64 Sentinel radar. The missiles are upgraded MIM-23K standard with an improved blast-fragmentation warhead that creates a larger lethal zone. Raytheon’s other system is SLAMRAAM, which is the land version of air to air missile however for some reason it has not been selected by the US Army. The MBDA’s Aster-15, with a range of about 30 km which seem to fall in the category of overkill. There are reports that DRDO is having a joint venture with MBDA for Mica missile calling it Maitree (Friendship) under a short range SAM (SR-SAM) system programme for possibly replacing QR-SAM system. The MBDA will help DRDO to fill the technological gaps of Trishul by providing technology of active seeker, propulsion and control systems.
Medium Range SAM (MR-SAM) System. Kvadrat is the current system which is more than 35 years old and has the technology of early sixties thus a RFP was issued but later on withdrawn due to poor response. The DRDO’s Akash has not succeeded in mobile role, thus the Army has procured it in limited numbers for a sort of static role. Only Russia produces self-propelled AD systems for which the possible contender could be Russia’s BUK-M1. Other systems like Aster30, Israel’s Barak ‘Next Generation’, MBDA’s MICA and Patriot Advance Capability -3 (PAC-3) have to be mounted on a suitable mobile platform. Patriot is the obvious front runner as it is war proven; has hit to kill technology; can engage aircrafts, helicopters, UAV’s, cruise and tactical ballistic missiles and deployed with 10 nations including the US. The DRDO had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel to jointly develop a MR-SAM systems but there seems little progress on it. This project was to be built on Barak next generation, and have a range of about 70 km. The future thus seems uncertain.
MANPADS. The current system is Igla, which is also in service with the other two services. There is a successor to Igla called Igla-M. Media reported that during the summer of 2012, SAAB’s RBS70 Next Generation was tried out along with MBDA’s Mistral and a system from Russia (probably successor to Igla), but no decision has emerged so far. MANPADS is employed by all the three services and the combined order could be quite large amounting to over than $5 billion.
The above analysis clearly brings out that there is some degree of paralysis in the process of procurement. The large degree of obsolescence, voids of equipment and shortage of ammunition has made the task of field commanders very difficult. A well trained modern army acts as a deterrence during peace. A very strong and resolute leadership is required to steer the ship of defence modernization through the maze of rules, regulations and the quagmire of alleged corruption.
Three Decades of Status Quo - Defence and Security of India
