Indian Missile Development

[LETHALFORCE]

The Fast Thorium Breeder Reactor (FTBR)

http://www.indianofficer.com/forums/india-world/5579-fast-thorium-breeder-reactor-ftbr.html

The Fast Thorium Breeder Reactor (FTBR)


In order to achieve self sufficiency in energy, India is hoping to boost its nuclear energy development. However, the lack of Uranium resources in our country is a major hindrance to this objective. This was well recognized in our three stage nuclear programme and hence there has been directed effort towards looking for other materials. One such alternative that is blessed in India with abundance is Thorium which can be used to produce the more fissile U-233, which can be used for energy generation. This can be done using a FTBR.

What is a breeder reactor?
The fast breeder reactor is a special reactor type. Most reactors are called thermal reactors because they utilise slow neutrons to trigger nuclear fission. As the name would suggest fast breeders utilise fast neutrons. They also act as efficient breeders of fissionable material, especially plutonium. The idea behind the fast breeder is to produce more fissionable material than is consumed. For instance by bombarding a nucleus of uranium-238, that is natural uranium, one can breed plutonium-239 after two successive beta decays. Plutonium-239 is the isotope of plutonium generally used in nuclear weapons.
Nuclear fission that is unleashed by fast or high energy neutrons produces more new neutrons than that by way of thermal neutrons. Pu-239 with fast neutrons produces 2.9 neutrons per fission, the highest for the various fissile isotopes. If one were to surround the core of a fast reactor with a blanket of ordinary uranium the neutrons produced from the core could turn this material into more plutonium-239 by way of the above reaction again. By placing a very tight fit between the blanket and the core of a fast reactor comparatively few neutrons would be lost and over time thereby the amount of plutonium produced would exceed the amount consumed.

The case of FTBR
==============
The idea with such thorium reactors is to use thorium to breed uranium-233, a fissionable isotope of uranium. This is possible by using a blanket of Thorium around a core of Pu-239.

Thus essentially, we would be able to get Uranium without actually possessing it in large quantity. All that is required is an initial seed of Plutonium which can be provided by reprocessing the fuel obtained from the heavy water reactors.


Economics of the Breeder reactor Programme
============================== ====
Nuclear fuel cycles based on the fast breeder reactor concept have been the holy grail of the nuclear industry but have been dismal failures. But a few countries still are pursuing the dream such as Japan, France, China and India. Most countries have dropped this technique due to its lack of cost efficiency. However, since India lacks natural uranium resources,it is pursuing the program in all its sincerity.

 

[pyromaniac]

Agni-III variants to have MIRV capabilites.

India’s latest strategic weapon

With the flawless flight of Agni-III on Wednesday, a powerful new weapon — and one that can be built upon in the years to come — is practically ready to enter India’s strategic arsenal. While Agni-I can reach places 700 km away and Agni-II can take its warhead some 2,000 km, the all-solid, two-stage Agni-III missile has a range of over 3,500 km. Thus, the new missile will give the country’s strategic forces the ability to strike well beyond the immediate neighborhood. Moreover, adding a small third stage to the Agni-III configuration would produce a missile with a range of 5,000 km or more. Given DRDO’s proven solid propulsion capabilities, this should pose no major problem. Indeed, senior officials of the Defence Research and Development Organisation have stated that design work on Agni-IV has begun. It is noteworthy that Agni-III and its future variants, with a diameter of two metres, will be the first Indian missiles having the potential to be equipped with Multiple Independently-Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV). A single missile with MIRV can carry several nuclear warheads, each of which can target a different place. However, unlike the addition of a third stage, creating MIRV capability could pose significant technological challenges, especially in terms of reducing the size and weight of the warheads.

Across the border, Pakistan has been repeatedly testing Shaheen-II, its missile with the longest range that can strike much of India. Last month, the missile was fired twice in a space of three days. China, meanwhile, is in the process of modernising its strategic forces and switching from liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles to solid-propellant ones that can be launched quickly. Its latest submarine-launched ballistic missile, the JL-2, and the land-based variant of the missile, the DF-31, could soon be operationally deployed. A study published last year by analysts at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore indicated that the JL-2/DF-31, with a diameter of two metres, was in fact a three-stage missile with MIRV capability. The missile’s three warheads might be arranged around a small third stage with a diameter of about one metre. They estimated that the missile in its MIRV configuration could have a range of about 8,000 km. With just a single warhead, the JL-2/DF-31’s range would increase to 12,000-14,000 km. Fortunately, all this activity on the missile front has not dampened overtures of friendship and efforts to reduce sources of tension between India and its nuclear-armed neighbours. Rather, it reflects a strategic mindset that seeks to augment military capability as a way of keeping the peace.


http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/09/stories/2008050954971000.htm

This is old news..about a little under a year ago, but I put this up because it talks about MIRV...which stands for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV). Now, those of you that dont understand what the exactly means.....(MIRV) is a collection of nuclear weapons carried on a single intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Using a MIRV warhead, a single launched missile can strike several targets, or fewer targets redundantly. By contrast a unitary warhead is a single warhead on a single missile.

So you can obvioulsy see the ramifications that such a weapon would have...soooo cool :35:



This a picture of an Peacekeeper(US)

 

[Rage]

Although not immediately relevant, the following article describes how the ability to integrate satellites and effect their orbital dispensation, on the one hand, and the ability to launch multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV's), on the other, are not mutually inclusive. I thought I'd post this here to clarify this [a common lay fallacy] is not the case:

http://www.cdi.org/PDFs/IndiaMIRV.pdf

Document is in PDF format. Take a look, it's worth the read.

 

[screwterrorists]

pictures are damn cool.

would make the missile thrice as deadly.

 

[pyromaniac]

pictures are damn cool.

would make the missile thrice as deadly.

yeah I love the first one; the peacekeeper(ironic name for something so deadly). A few of us were having a discussion about that, this afternoon..this is prbly still very early in development..and knowing India this might take many years to turn into a reality..I guess we will see what happens

 

[screwterrorists]

This is true.

I assume then the missile would be deployed totally separately since if im not mistaken, it would have two very distinct capabilities.

for example, with MIRV: hangers or more importantly, troop formations could be attacked.

with reg missile: air bases, etc.

so either way, any development in the program is welcome.

 

[pyromaniac]

This is true.

I assume then the missile would be deployed totally separately since if im not mistaken, it would have two very distinct capabilities.

for example, with MIRV: hangers or more importantly, troop formations could be attacked.

with reg missile: air bases, etc.

so either way, any development in the program is welcome.

Well this is used almost exclusively for big targets..like major cities and such because they are nukes you see.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Minuteman_III_MIRV_path.svg

 

[Triton]

India's DRDO advances Astra missile test firings

India's Defence Research and Development Organisation has conducted the first five test firings of the indigenously developed Astra beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile. The 154kg (340lb) weapon has a claimed range of 110km (59nm) and a cruise speed of up to Mach 2.2 carrying a 20kg fragmentation warhead.

The Astra missile is expected to be integrated with Indian air force types including the Aeronautical Development Agency Tejas light combat aircraft and Sukhoi Su-30MKI, and potentially also included in upgrades to the service's legacy Dassault Mirage 2000s and RSK MiG-29s.

The state-owned DRDO also plans to jointly develop a short-range air defence system with MBDA using a vertically launched variant of Astra.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Reprocessing request is the first test of nuclear deal under Obama

http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/06/stories/2009030656411200.htm

Reprocessing request is the first test of nuclear deal under Obama

Siddharth Varadarajan

India, U.S. have till August 2010 to work out ‘arrangements and procedures’

DAE is unwilling to accept any future ambiguity

“India must come up with design of new facility”

New Delhi: India has formally asked the United States to negotiate the “arrangements and procedures” under which American spent nuclear fuel will be reprocessed in the country, presenting the Obama administration with its first test of how committed it is to the India-U.S. nuclear agreement.

The request was made last month, senior officials told The Hindu.

Under the terms of the ‘123 agreement’ on bilateral nuclear cooperation, Washington has six months to begin consultations and one year after that to reach an understanding with Delhi. “The clock has started ticking,” an official said. “We have till the end of August 2010 to finalise an agreement.”

The 123 agreement gives India prior consent to reprocess but stipulates that this right will come into effect only when India establishes a new national facility dedicated to reprocessing safeguarded nuclear material under IAEA safeguards and reaches an agreement with the U.S. on “arrangements and procedures under which such reprocessing … will take place in this new facility.”

On February 3, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon wrote to Under Secretary for Political Affairs William Burns invoking this provision and asking the U.S. side to propose dates and an agenda. A similar letter was also sent from the Department of Atomic Energy to Richard Stratford, head of the State Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy and Washington’s pointman for nuclear negotiations with India.

The request is important for two reasons. First, because it will provide the first indication of how President Barack Obama intends to balance traditional American ‘non-proliferation concerns’ about reprocessing with the broader geopolitical interests underpinning the strategic partnership with India. And second, because the prospects of American companies winning a slice of the multi-billion dollar Indian market for nuclear energy depends crucially on India being satisfied that it will be able to reprocess the spent fuel which accumulates from the running of U.S.-supplied reactors.

Last January, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar explicitly told a delegation of the U.S.-India Business Council — which included many representatives of the American nuclear industry — that there would be no reactor purchases without reprocessing.

Shortly after that meeting, Ted Jones of the USIBC told the Washington Post that Dr. Kakodkar had said commercial ties could commence “only after talks about reprocessing rights are concluded.”

If the State Department’s Bureau of Non-proliferation — likely to be headed by Robert J. Einhorn — plays a role in the process of formulating reprocessing arrangements and procedures, the proposed talks could hit an early roadblock. Mr. Einhorn fiercely opposed the nuclear agreement with India ever since it was first unveiled in 2005.

At the same time, the default position bequeathed by the Bush administration is not without problems for India either. In answers to questions from Congress last year, for example, the State Department and the Bush White House said that reprocessing consent rights for India would not be permanent and could be rescinded.

Given the negative experience of Tarapur, where a vast acreage of spent fuel has accumulated following Washington’s decades-long refusal to endorse reprocessing, the DAE is unwilling to accept any future ambiguity in this regard, especially when the U.S. is looking to sell several thousand megawatts worth of reactor capacity to India.

Since Russian and French reactor exports to India come bundled with reprocessing consent, Washington’s failure to conclude an agreement on reprocessing arrangements and procedures to the DAE’s satisfaction would be tantamount to freezing U.S. vendors out a market that the U.S. itself was instrumental in reopening.

Though the 123 agreement treats the dedicated, safeguarded national facility and the reprocessing arrangements and procedures as two separate preconditions, some U.S. officials have argued in the past that India must first come up with a design of the proposed new facility before detailed consultations on reprocessing can begin.

India, however, sees no link between the two.

 

[Singh]

Tomahawk offered to India?

New Delhi, March 7: Three days after India’s military scientists tested a missile that they said took 150 seconds to reach its target, India’s army is still evaluating if it hit the bull’s eye in Rajasthan’s Pokhran desert firing range.

By any standard, 72 hours must be one of the longest periods a supersonic missile — which is touted as the world’s fastest — has taken for an evaluation. The Brahmos Mark II is said to be capable of flying at 2.8 mach or nearly 2.8 times the speed of sound.

The US Tomahawk cruise missile, meanwhile, is knocking on India’s door. Its maker, Raytheon Corporation, has contracted orders for the latest Block IV version of the missile to the UK’s Royal Navy.

Raytheon has also made friendly enquiries in India and has offered to make presentations to the Indian armed forces.

Raytheon has earlier sold through government-to-government contracts six Firefinder artillery gun locating radars to India and is currently supplying equipment to India’s navy and air force apart from the army.

The Indian Army began raising a regiment of the Brahmos Mark I in 2007. The latest Mark II version is claimed to be four times faster and twice as heavy as the Tomahawk.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is also developing a Tomahawk clone, a secret project called the Nirbhay that is being prepared by the Advanced Systems Laboratory in Hyderabad. The Nirbhay is due for testing by end-2009.

The defence research establishment suspects that if Wednesday’s test is shown as a failure, competitors stand to gain.

For Sivathanu Pillai, the director of the Brahmos Mark II project, the Indian Army’s tests on the world’s fastest supersonic cruise missile are a nailbiter.

Brahmos is an acronym from the words Brahmaputra — India’s largest river — and Moskva — one of Russia’s best-known rivers — and is a joint venture between the DRDO and the NPO Mashinostroynia, the Russian Federal Unitary Enterprise.

A test of the Brahmos Mark II on January 20 went awry in mid-flight after a successful launch, missing the target. That test was witnessed by the Indian army chief, General Deepak Kapoor, among others.

The army was smug and, honestly, not unhappy with the failure.

The scientists concluded that a homing device on the Mark II version had failed and the missile missed the target by inches. Pillai had promised it would be set right within weeks and called for a re-test within a fortnight.

After the test on Wednesday (March 4), when Pillai briefly told a local radio correspondent that the test was a success and since then has gone mum, the standard army line has been “we are evaluating if it has met the general staff quality requirements”. The response from the Brahmos project team has been “you will have to ask the army”.

The army team at Wednesday’s test was led by the deputy chief of army staff (planning and systems), Lt Gen Madan. The parameters of the tests have not been made known but two of these are obvious.

First, whether it has hit the target, the bull’s eye, or not.

Second, because it is a cruise missile, whether it has performed an “S” manoeuvre to be able to evade an interceptor.

“We need to study every aspect,” said a senior army officer. “A series of tests have to be performed before we place an order worth Rs 10,000 crore,” he said.

In the 72 hours and more since the test, India’s defence research establishment is still sure about the speed of its missile but is less than sure about the pace of deployment.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090308/jsp/frontpage/story_10642109.jsp

 

[LETHALFORCE]

i hope this dosen't end our indigenous BMD work.

 

[shiv]

hey can they offer tomahawk it has a 1500 kms range and this is banned by the mtcr treaty.....i think the reporter is a nut:drink:

 

[Payeng]

MTCR rules would bar a 300km+ tomahawk for sale to India, and it seems foolish to go for this sub-soinic cruise missile considering it have a range of >300KM rejecting our very own Brahmos.

India would not consider the Tomahawk.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

when you make the rules you can do what you like, but it is classified as a defensive weapon.

 

[Payeng]

when you make the rules you can do what you like, but it is classified as a defensive weapon.

If they respect the MTCR then they should not, MTCR also include 'dual use technology' the reason why we didn't get the cryogenic engine technology from Russia.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

If USA's getting the money it's ok, if Russia is getting the money then it's a violation.

 

[shiv]

no because the range of our very own brahmos is limited to 290 because of the very same treaty.....and we are not fools to buy a downgraded subsonic version of a tomahawk.....

 

[shiv]

by the way what is the status of nirbhay???

 

[EnlightenedMonk]

India plans to test new medium-range missile in 2009

Hyderabad, July 25 (IANS) Indian defence scientists are developing a new medium-range, multi-platform missile, called the Nirbhay or the dauntless, that will add more teeth to its armoury and is slated to be tested by end-2009.

The missile, with a range of 1,000 km, is being developed at the Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), a unit of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under the defence ministry, a top official at the laboratory said.

"Every country needs multiple options. It is a question of survival," explained Avinash Chander, director of ASL, adding preparations were on for the technology demonstrator flight.

"It (Nirbhay) will be better than Babur," Chander told IANS, referring to Pakistan's first subsonic, low-level terrain-mapping missile, developed originally with a 500 km range and later upgraded to 700 km.

The latest in the series of India's missile development programme, the Nirbhay follows the Agni (I, II and III), the Prithvi (I and II), the Indo-Russian joint venture supersonic Brahmos, Akash, Trishul and Nag.

First tested in 2005, the Babur is similar in design to the US BGM-109 Tomahawk land attack cruise missile - the two being roughly the same size and shape. Pakistan is said to be working on a more advanced version with a range of 1,000 km.

The subsonic Nirbhay weighs 1,000 kg with a 1,000 km range and a speed of 0.7 mach. A missile is subsonic when its speed is less than the speed of sound (1 mach).

Nirbhay is six metres in length with a 520 mm diameter. While the missile is being developed in-house, India is looking at partnerships for the engine, said Chander. He did not elaborate whether talks were on with any foreign companies.

The requirement for Nirbhay was anticipated by India's three armed forces. Nirbhay is to have multiple platforms and can be launched from ground, sea and air, scientists said.

Meanwhile Agni III, part of the Agni missile family, is to be tested by the first quarter of 2008. It is seen by the establishment as the mainstay of Indian missile-based strategic nuclear deterrence, said Chander.

Agni III has a range of over 3,000 km and uses a two-stage solid propulsion - usually made up of a steel case containing blocks of a self-burning mixture - that enables it to be launched more quickly and with less logistical support than missiles using liquid propellants.

On the horizon is a 5,000 plus km, three-stage solid propulsion missile Chander is not willing to talk about. Whether it will be called Agni IV, only time will tell.

http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=48826

 

[LETHALFORCE]

This offer to me seems to be fear on the part of Americans of losing their Tomahawk market if India's BMD seems to be more effective than patriots,(which it most likely is) their whole market is in jeopardy.