Hypersonic Missiles

LETHALFORCE

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For me personally, I'm looking forward to the Hypersonic Brahmos which I hope will be unveiled soon... why I'm so excited is the amount of kinetic energy that the missile will generate...

I mean, of course there's the warhead for detonation on the target, but the Kinetic Energy of something flying at Mach 6+ will be so high, that it could easily puncture underground bunkers and weapons storage facilities by the force of its KE alone... so, it can be easily used to take out well buried targets...

I mean, I saw on the Brahmos website that a missile travelling at Mach 6 will have 36 times the Kinetic Energy of a missile travelling at Mach 1....

Just imagine !!! hehehehehe....

this test may have been just what we are waiting for?, ballistic missiles have enough kinetic energy to cause a mini earthquake if you will, i think BRAHMOS will pack the same punch since rail guns do something similar at MACH 5 without a warhead just a projectile.
 

Singh

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To react with an ABM system, the enemy needs to track a missile on their ABM radar...
ABM systems track missiles, calculate expected ballistic trajectory, launches ABM, guides to the BM trajectory and lines the ABM for a kinetic or proximity kill.

in the case of cruise missiles, they fly at very low altitudes (generally about tree-top height) and hence getting them on the radar scopes of ABM systems is very difficult.
So, in conclusion, you can't shoot what you can't see !!!
CM doesn't follow a ballistic trajectory nor flies at hypersonic speeds(mach5-25+) hence no need to employ sophisticated ABM systems to take 'em out.
To take out CMs, one needs a ground radar preferably augmented by an airborne radar(UAV, balloons, planes, choppers), a network of manpads and low level SAMs.
Russians claim Mig31s could've taken out 80% of CMs fired by US on Iraq.
 

EnlightenedMonk

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Didn't know that... thanks... but I guess that doesn't deter from the fact that shooting down a cruise missile is much more difficult... especially for our neighbours...
 

Singh

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My point is that a cruise missile so swift (with a flight duration of 3.6 min or even lesser) to reach its target the enemies wont get enough reaction time to retaliate with their Anti missile system
This missile imo cannot be used to target maneuvrable objects, or targets in a cluster (for eg putting a missile through a window in a building amongst buildings).. it can only be used to target fixed clearly marked targets...
 

LETHALFORCE

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Didn't know that... thanks... but I guess that doesn't deter from the fact that shooting down a cruise missile is much more difficult... especially for our neighbours...
there is no defense against BRAHMOS, the hypersonic one there will never be, also BRAHMOS can change course if needed, no defense at all from BRAHMOS.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/brahmos-fails-the-test-but-its-no-dud/83366-11.html

Brahmos fails the test but it's no dud

New Delhi: Is the Brahmos a dud? Or is everyone panicking about a mere glitch in the world's deadliest cruise missile?

For the first time in almost 18 tests, the supersonic cruise missile Brahmos didn't hit its target during user trials at the Pokhran range on Tuesday.

DRDO sources in Pokhran said an advanced version of the missile was being tested, with new software to identify very small, multiple targets.

The software malfunctioned causing the missile to fly over the target.

This variant of the missile was being fine tuned for the army. The navy already has a land attack variant while an airforce version is still being worked on.

The Brahmos family of missiles does not carry nuclear warheads. Like America's Tomahawk, which became famous during the Gulf war, the Brahmos flies below enemy radars, can instantly change course even in mid flight and usually, has pin-point accuracy.

At three times the speed of sound, the Brahmos is the fastest cruise missile on the planet. It can hit targets almost 300 km away.
 

Singh

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Didn't know that... thanks... but I guess that doesn't deter from the fact that shooting down a cruise missile is much more difficult... especially for our neighbours...
Nepal, B'desh, SL, Maldives, Indonesia, Astan, Bhutan, Myanmar cannot take out any of our airborne assets.. :blum3:

Shooting down Brahmos is practically impossible for China and Pakistan in the near future

Though taking out a subsonic cruise missile will not be too difficult for China and Pakistan if they are able to develop a credible & robust SAM and radar network.

Pakistan at present has 400km+ radar from US, Spada 2000 from Italy, Crotale from France and supposedly HQ9 from China and hundreds of stingers and Anzas. On paper this air defence looks credible against a Subsonic cruise missile or subsonic UAV. Though, these systems are deployed to protect designated areas in particular cities leaving rest of Pakistan without an air cover.
 

LETHALFORCE

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Singh also the course changing feature of the sub-sonic Brahmos would make any defense very difficult to almost impossible.
 

Singh

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Singh also the course changing feature of the sub-sonic Brahmos would make any defense very difficult to almost impossible.
Sir the trademark Brahmos terminal phase velocity of around ~3 mach coupled with violent S shape maneuvers thwarts any and every defence ever made to date (claimed :))

Mid-course correction helps accuracy when targeting mobile target(ships) or target amidst clusters(as claimed in the Mar 29 test) or when targets have to be changed etc..

Basically mid course updates can be received via awacs, ships, choppers, sats, ground based laser pointers etc.. and can correct or help brahmos maintain its optimum target track..
 

LETHALFORCE

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Singh- Brahmos is a killer but expensive, the one I think which may be work horse will be NIRBHAY?
 

Singh

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Singh- Brahmos is a killer but expensive, the one I think which may be work horse will be NIRBHAY?
Sir till the time Nirbhay or ADM is not operationalised, Brahmos will be the workhorse. Nirbhay, will be our trump card when it comes to power projection and China.

Though, in a war with Pak it makes sense to employ the lethal Brahmos as the primary LACM. Pakistan geographically is narrow and most of its assets(human, economic and military) are based with a few hundred miles of our borders. And Brahmos is practically undefeatable.

Further, India is going in for a joint venture with Israel to manufacture an ALCM/PGM of 600-900km(not sure of the exact figure) range for the IAF.

(Indian Navy too is going for all sorts of CMs and BMs like Klub,Brahmos, Dhanush, K15, Agni SLBM etc )
 

Supersallu

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To react with an ABM system, the enemy needs to track a missile on their ABM radar... in the case of cruise missiles, they fly at very low altitudes (generally about tree-top height) and hence getting them on the radar scopes of ABM systems is very difficult.

So, in conclusion, you can't shoot what you can't see !!!
I think S-300 with great difficulties can take out BrahMos if they are fired within the S-300s range.

S-300 and Akash take out multiple subsonic cruise missile after detection easily.
 

LETHALFORCE

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Super I would not agree with you, one Brahmos would have to be detected ;not very easy, if detected by radar the speed and everything would have to be exact down to microseconds to deflect it, not easy for one missile; and a barrage of Brahmos would be a challenge but Akash would be more effective than S-300.
 

LETHALFORCE

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BrahMos to Develop Hypersonic Missile says Dr. Pillai

http://www.india-defence.com/reports-4318


BrahMos to Develop Hypersonic Missile says Dr. Pillai


BrahMos Aerospace, the Indo-Russian joint venture, has embarked on initiatives to go in for hypersonic versions of missiles, a top official of the company said.

"Having successfully inducted supersonic versions, which can travel at 2.8 Mach (2.8 times the speed of sound), plans are on to go in for hypersonic versions, which can touch Mach 5 or 7," chief executive officer and MD of the company, Dr.A. Sivathanu Pillai, said.

He said that fuel for these versions would be a combination of aviation kerosene and atmospheric air,mixed at a proportionate volume. "The resultant propulsion thrust could be so heavy that a missile could be projected at terrific speed," he said. Pillai said that lab tests had already commenced and that modules for these versions would be ready by 2010. The test missiles would be flown over rocket motors injected into space.

"After the successful 'Block II test' last week, the company and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had fulfilled all parameters prescribed by Army and was poised to go in for mass production for inducting these into the Army. As Naval ships are all equipped with BrahMos missiles, the next focus would be to address the needs of the Indian Air Force (IAF)," he said. He hoped the final induction of the air version of BrahMos missile to IAF would take place before the end of 2012
 

Daredevil

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Do we have any other confirmed customers lined up for Brahmos, apart from India and Russia?.
 

LETHALFORCE

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Israel,Argentina,South africa,Afghanistan,malaysia, have been mentioned
 

LETHALFORCE

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New hypersonic missile to be 'uninerceptable'

New hypersonic missile to be 'uninterceptable' | Top Stories from 2008-09-29 | RT

BrahMos-2
September 29, 2008, 19:32
New hypersonic missile to be 'uninerceptable'

A joint Russian-Indian company has started the development of a cruise missile capable of flying at Mach 5, which will make it 'impossible to intercept'. BrahMos-2 will be the next generation of the highly successful the BrahMos missile already used by Indian military.
The news came from the head of BrahMos company, Sivathanu Pillai during the visit of Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdiukov.

The BrahMos missile (the acronym stands for Brahmaputra-Moscow) has been in development since 1998 and had its first successful test launch in 2001.

Russia provided the design of its P-800 Oniks missile as the basis of the project while India developed its guidance system. It has a maximum speed of Mach 2.8, making it is the world's fastest cruise missile.

The BrahMos-2 is expected to have twice the speed of the current version, which, the developers say, will make it practically immune to all existing missile defence systems.
 

LETHALFORCE

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India tests hypersonic interceptor missile

India tests hypersonic interceptor missile
India tests hypersonic interceptor missile
RIA Novosti

06/12/2007 19:10 NEW DELHI, December 6 (RIA Novosti) - India successfully tested on Thursday a hypersonic Advanced Air Defense (AAD-02) interceptor missile, part of the future multi-layer Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, national media reported.

The new interceptor missile was fired from a mobile launcher at the Integrated Test Range on Wheeler Island off Orissa's east coast, and hit a Prithvi target missile, which was fired 70 nautical miles (around 130 km) away, from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur-on-sea.

The interceptor flies at a velocity of Mach 4 and is fitted with up-to-date navigation and homing equipment.

"All the elements of BMD required for control and monitoring performed in a copybook fashion validating the design of the 'endo-atmospheric' layer of BMD system," Newstrack India quoted a military official as saying.

The Indian military also said the "totally new" missile could destroy any incoming ballistic missiles at low altitude.

India's Defense Research and Development Organization successfully carried out a missile interception test at an altitude of 50 km on November 27, 2006.

India, encouraged by a number of successful missile interceptor launches, is steadily moving closer to the exclusive BMD club currently shared by the U.S., Russia and Israel.
 

LETHALFORCE

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Man and War: Brahmos 2: Development Path


Brahmos 2: Development Path
Do a search on ‘Brahmos’ and you will get to know that it is a cruise-missile jointly developed by India and Russia, that it is ‘universal supersonic cruise missile’ and many believe it’s potency lies in its supersonic speed which makes it difficult to intercept. All this is a kind of feel-good news stories given by reporters who have a lot many other things to cover and we will not get into criticising them. We will talk about Brahmos and its future.

Brahmos cruise missile, though one of its kind in Asia, has a very severe limitation – its range. At a mere officially-quoted range of 280-300km, and 120 km in lo-lo-lo trajectory (a flying path in which missile always flies close of ground/sea) it is difficult to use the missile from sea-based systems to land targets without getting dangerously close to the enemy.

Speculations are rife about development of Brahmos-2, a hypersonic cruise missile (mach 7) with a range of about 1000km. This range will undoubtedly gives an upper hand to the navy and army over at least Pakistan because cruise missiles are relatively cheaper than ballistic missiles and can be used for carrying conventional war heads; this essentially translates to having a very high lethality without the fear of involving nuclear weapons. However, we must not be jumping with joy because firstly Brahmos was hugely successful because Indians had got the technical know-how about propulsion and guidance from Russia, this will not be the case for Brahmos 2 because Russia is a signer in MTCR which limits transferring missiles having range greater than 300km to other countries.

What might be the development of path of Brahmos 2 or, to quote President Kalam - Brahmos Mark-II? Assuming Brahmos 2 will indeed have the capabilities of flying at hypersonic speeds then at this point of time India does not have any system capable of cruising at this speed either in military or civil domain. Development of hypersonic plane Avatar is in progress by ISRO which will, technically speaking, give India the capability of developing a hypersonic cruise missile but ISRO is a civilian agency and as such does not have anything to do with defence organizations and it is not advisable to make ISRO serve a dual purpose because of two reasons:
1. ISRO is gradually making an entry into commercial satellite launch market and a majority of countries will stop using ISRO’s services, even though cheaper, for the fear of funding India’s defence establishments. In fact, many analysts feel that USA should dissuade other countries from using ISRO’s launch vehicles even now (page 18, http://www.npec-web.org/Essays/060207SpeierICBM.pdf).
2. ISRO will stop getting any assistance or special materials for the construction of its satellites, which will gravely limit India’s civilian satellite usage including weather-prediction.

Given these facts, it will be fair to assume that Indian government will dare not transfer the technology from civil agency to military agency. Unlike what was done in 1980s when ISRO’s SLV was converted into missile, because ISRO’s stakes were very low at that time. Having said this, there are many covert methods of transferring technology such as, at the very basic level, transferring ISRO scientists to DRDO.
Coming back to the development path Brahmos 2 might take, reports suggest that Avatar will make its test flight around December, 2008. Moving ahead from December, 2008 I feel that another 10 years will go in development of Brahmos 2 (given the dubious track record of DRDO this is a very optimistic estimate) because I wonder if Russia will ever agree to providing technology which will breach MTCR, such technology if at all transferred will be done undercover. And then from test-flight to induction into armed forces again may take 5-6 years (as it did in case of Brahmos).
Given the scenario, we are still about 16 years away from having a hypersonic cruise missile, it is likely that many other countries would have acquired cruise missiles by that time, India too may have joined the group of developed countries and Delhi Police may start accepting credit cards for taking bribes!
Posted by Vinay Pandey at 10:52 AM
 

Dark Sorrow

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Is it just me or other also think that the range of Bramhos is low?
I with it had range of about 750 km to 1000 km.
 

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