India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile 319
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "India successfully tested Sunday a 'maneuverable' version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile which it has jointly developed with Russia, news reports said. The vertical-launch version of the 290-kilometer range BrahMos was tested from a warship in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast, the PTI news agency reported. 'The vertical-launch version of missile was launched at 11:30 (0600 GMT) hours today from Indian Navy ship INS Ranvir and it manoeuvred successfully hitting the target ship. It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission,' BrahMos aerospace chief A Sivathanu Pillai was quoted as saying. 'After today's test, India has become the first and only country in the world to have a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory,' Pillai said."
Really? (Score:3, Funny)
The first?
Surprise! (Score:5, Funny)
Tech Support Call (Score:5, Funny)
Missile Owner: Hello. My maneuverable supersonic cruise missile isn't the first.
Tech Support: I do apologize for this inconvenience. Am I correct to understand that your maneuverable supersonic cruise missile is not the first?
Missile Owner: Uh, yeah. I was told it would be the first.
Tech Support: I do apologize. Have you tried flashing the BIOS?
Missile Owner: WTF?
Re:C'mon... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, I dunno, just about anything can blow up if you treat it right.
Q. What's the difference between electrical engineers and civil engineers?
A. Electrical engineers build weapons systems; civil engineers build targets.
Re:C'mon... (Score:3, Funny)
Can we PLEASE start spending all this cash on things that don't blow up?
Seems awfully inefficient to me. After all, it's a lot easier to kill people with stuff that does blow up.
no big deal (Score:1, Funny)
We have the first superkalafragilisticexpialidosious cruise missle in 3D!
Bah (Score:5, Funny)
Bah. Wake me up when they have a maneuverable superluminal cruise missile.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile...
Reading that gave me a vision of the ancient Greeks launching a Polaris missile at one another. Spar-taaaans! You will set 1-MQ to missile firing! Designate target package Athens! Spin up missiles I-VI and VII-XII! Commence hover maneuver and stand by to rain fire on our enemies! HA-OU! HA-OU! HA-OU!
Re:Really!? (Score:3, Funny)
Project Pluto got pretty far - they tested the nuclear ramjet engines for example, and the TERCOM guidance system invented for Pluto was later used by the Tomahawk cruise missile.
http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html [merkle.com]
Pluto's namesake was Roman mythology's ruler of the underworld -- seemingly an apt inspiration for a locomotive-size missile that would travel at near-treetop level at three times the speed of sound, tossing out hydrogen bombs as it roared overhead. Pluto's designers calculated that its shock wave alone might kill people on the ground. Then there was the problem of fallout. In addition to gamma and neutron radiation from the unshielded reactor, Pluto's nuclear ramjet would spew fission fragments out in its exhaust as it flew by. (One enterprising weaponeer had a plan to turn an obvious peace-time liability into a wartime asset: he suggested flying the radioactive rocket back and forth over the Soviet Union after it had dropped its bombs.)
There's an excellent documentary with video of test firing on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e88WtJvSt7E [youtube.com]
Re:Next step? Stealth. (Score:3, Funny)
Wow. Did you take stupid pills or something?
1. We can look at he fallout and see where the original material came from that made the bomb.
2. We have this thing called "Radar", it lets us track things that come toward us in the air. We've only had it for 60+ years, so you might have missed it.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile...
Reading that gave me a vision of the ancient Greeks launching a Polaris missile at one another. Spar-taaaans! You will set 1-MQ to missile firing! Designate target package Athens! Spin up missiles I-VI and VII-XII! Commence hover maneuver and stand by to rain fire on our enemies! HA-OU! HA-OU! HA-OU!
Well, you do remember King Leonidas kicking the Persian emissary into the missile silo in "300", don't you?