A factual Comparison between India's Brahmos Missile and Pakistan's Babur and Raad Cruise Missiles.
(A Re-post)
You may have seen
#Indian netizens bragging endlessly about their private corporate co-production missile Brahmos.
The missile is a Russian company NPO and Indian private venture joint production. It is a rearranged P-800 from Russia. The P-800 in use with Russia has a range of 600 Km, but due to international regulations a country cannot export missiles of over 300 km range and cannot export nuclear missile of any range. Russians had to limit the Brahmos range to 295 Kilometers. All versions of Brahmos in use with India won't go beyond 295 kilometers. But there is a problem with this stated range.
The missile can only travel the full 295 kilometer if flying at 14 Kilometer altitude. Lower the flight altitude, lower the range. At low altitude the missile has lowest range of only 120 kilometers. That's because the missile is a supersonic missile and on paper being supersonic looks good but high speed has it's demerits. Once anything crosses the speed of sound it creates a shock wave or wall of compressed air in front of it which it has to keep pushing to move forward. That's because air simply can't get out of the way fast enough to make way for the missile , and accumulates. Higher the speed above sound and denser the wall of compressed air and more energy needed to push it. At higher altitudes air is thin and this effect is less pronounced. At lower altitude air is dense and the problem is magnified. That's why reduction in Brahmos range with reduced altitude .
For a missile flying that high to increase range, the stealth is compromised and enemy sees it from far away.
So in Brahmos case two main requirements for a cruise missile, range and stealth are compromised because it's supersonic. Other problem is invulnerability. Brahmos cannot make tight turns and cannot go round the mountains and buildings same as subsonic cruise missiles do to avoid detection and increase accuracy. It's just too fast to do that and can only make gentle adjustments to it's flight path.
No wonder most advanced armies prefer using a subsonic cruise missile, such as European Storm shadow, American Tomahawk and Pakistani Babur and Raad.
The other problem is cost and weight to range ratio. Brahmos being supersonic has to endure high levels of stress and heat due to air friction .Also the engine used to obtain supersonic speeds is called Ramjet engine, and it is, not fuel efficient. So the missile also carries far more fuel than a Subsonic missile.
For that reason it needs to be made of better and expensive alloys ,increasing cost and weight.
At 3 million a piece and weighing 3 tons for ground and naval version, the missile goes only 295 km, or less than half as far as Pakistan's babur.
Babur cruise missile only costs a few hundred thousand a piece and goes more than twice the range of Brahmos, while weighing less than half at 1.4 tons.
The bulky missile also cannot carry much explosives and only has a warhead of 250 Kg compared to Babur's 350 Kg.
It is argued that the missile compensates for carrying less explosives by kinetic energy of impact which is very high and can cause substantial damage.
But we did calculate kinetic energy of impact for Pakistan airforce's anti ship missile CM-400AKG and it was 200Kg equivalent of explosives when the CM-400AKG impacts target at Mach 5.
Brahmos impact speed is about half that.
Stipulating by theses known parameters Brahmos will have total destructive power of 250kg warhead and another 100 kg equivalent of warhead power, making its impact and warhead explosion equivalent of 350 kg of chemical explosives. That's same as Babur albeit at much lower costs.
Every missile needs a launcher and so does Brahmos. It wasn't difficult or expensive to fit a few trucks with Brahmos land version tubular launchers, the problem arises when India wanted to introduce sea and air versions of Brahmos. The missile was just too big in length and breadth to be able to be fitted on any Indian naval platform without major modifications to the ship or submarine. A total of 13 Indian Navy ships have been fitted with Brahmos Ship to Ship and Ship to shore missiles. But the problem of range remains as it is. To fire the missile in sea skimming mode or a Combination of High altitude and low altitude flight the Indian Navy ships will have to come within less than 200 Kilometers of enemy Ships or coast. That will be well within range of Pakistan Navy's C-802 Missiles. The Brahmos will also lose stealth as mentioned earlier and very much likely to become a target of Pakistan Navy's 5000 Rounds per minute CIWS automated guns.
However it can be argued that anti ship capability is the only viable characteristic of Brahmos. Pakistan is using much cheaper options such as C-802 and now home made Zarb Missile.
About Submarine Launch of Barhmos. A submerged pontoon test fire of the missile was conducted in 2013 and hailed successful. But the missile needs special Launch tubes or Vertical Launch system VLS, as the missile is too wide for Submarine Torpedo tubes.These special wide vertical tubes will have to be retro fitted on existing Indian submarines. that is an extremely expensive undertaking and the time frame needed to do the job is many months taking the submarine out of service. No such attempts have been made and no Indian submarine is even undergoing any conversion for Brahmos launch.
On the other hand Pakistan built Babur Cruise missiles keeping in view Submarine design and dimensions. A standard Submarine Torpedo tube is 533 Millimeters in diameter. Babur Cruise missile was kept narrow at 520 Millimeter diameter,so that it could be fitted in an existing Pakistani submarine Torpedo tube without any significant and expensive modification to the submarine. The capability was first demonstrated on 09th of January 2017 when an unspecified submarine launched a Babur cruise missile from Torpedo tube. The only modification required to the submarine was to the software of fire control system.
About Air launch Brahmos. The Private firm Brahmos corporation did modify the missile for air launch. Reducing the weight from 3 Tons to 2.5 Tons and developing a special rail to be fitted to Indian jets.
Trouble was that Indian air force had no jets capable of lifting an 8 meter long 25000 Kilo missile. The largest Indian airforce jet the SU-30MKI simply doesn't have enough structural strength to hang 2.5 tons on a single hard point.
The solution was to modify the jets specially for Carrying Brahmos. Again an expensive undertaking. But Indian Government did agree to pay for the project. A total of 40 IAF SU-30 had to be structurally strengthened for carrying a single the missile under the belly . Additional metal frames had to be welded to the jet to increase strength,making it heavy and effecting overall performance,reducing range. So far only one such jet has been handed over to IAF and completing modification on 39 more will take many more years.
So in effect so far only one IAF jet can carry and fire a Brahmos. It's another thing that even that hasn't been done yet and the project is still experimental .But IAF jets are not ready as explained above,and no deliveries have been made by Brahmos manufacturer.
On the other hand the whole fleet of Pakistan's Mirage jets can carry and fire one Raad cruise missile from under the belly hard point. Thus making
#Pakistan air force Nuclear capable,while no such capability exists among Indian air force.No According to reports India has made arrangements with Russia to increase the range of Brahmos.. For doing that, all existing Brahmos missiles in the Indian arsenal will have to go back to the factory and refitted and reprogrammed. Whenever that happens, the missile will attain a maximum range of what Russian version of P-800 had, a maximum range of 600 kilometre at altitude, decreasing to less than 200 kilometre if the missile is sent on sea skimming or low flying mode.. However work hasn't started on the project yet.
#IAF has put a requisition for 200 Air launched versions of
#Brahmos.
On the other hand, being subsonic, both babur and Raad maintain the range in all flight profiles. 700 + km for Babur and 350+ Km for raad. The Pakistani air launched cruise missile Raad also carries much heavier warhead of 450 kg than Brahmo 250 kg
No wonder India is trying to make a subsonic cruise missile now, the Nirbhay, which is a few years away from induction.
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