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."
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Really!? (Score:5, Interesting)
This one is supersonic. Most others aren't, because it is not obvious what advantage supersonic cruise missiles have over ballistic ones.
BTW in the sixties the USA developed but never tested or deployed a nuclear powered supersonic cruise missile.
Re:Thanks, India (Score:5, Interesting)
Riiight, because until today, they really weren't interested
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're targeting ships, especially carriers, over water there isn't a lot of terrain to get in the way, and not too many people to hear the sonic boom. Carriers on the other hand, are generally the best protected ships in a fleet, with things like anti missile missiles and metalstorm batteries, not to mention other ships, to protect them.
If you're coming in towards a carrier, the faster you're going, the harder you are going to be to acquire as a target and then hit with defences.
Re:Bad for Pakistan (Score:1, Interesting)
Pakistan already operates the Yingji-83/C-803 which has a supersonic terminal stage and more than adequate missiles in her bag to act as a huge deterrent.
Pakistan has nothing to fear.
Anyways India has a no first use nuke policy. Pakistan has no such policy.
Re:Bad for Pakistan (Score:3, Interesting)
Cruise Missile? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Really!? (Score:1, Interesting)
The US had Project Pluto, never got beyond the development stages as ICMBs proved to be feasible, and eliminated the need. Was slated to be able to fly unrefueled for 6 months. If it looked like the big one was coming, they'd be launched and orbit over the ocean for months until the final attack order was transmitted, or they finally died and fell into the sea.
Re:Headline wrong, as is the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, AFAIK the Bazalt is maneuverable only during its cruise phase, once it reaches the terminal guidance track and goes supersonic, it isn't really more than marginally guideable.
I'd guess that the Indian one is supersonic most of its range (thus the puny 300km) and will accept course guidance during supersonic flight.
So no, I'd guess that the title is only misleading, not grossly wrong as you imply.
Re:Bad for Pakistan (Score:3, Interesting)
But subsonics are cheaper, smaller, more reliable, better in every way except they are slower.
The speed is of no account for surprise attacks because you just do ToT Time on Target calculations to stagger the launches. Besides alternate delivery is much cheaper (UPS, fedex, the local trucking company)
So, a SS CM is only useful for very fast delivery, very low latency missions... more the response to the surprise attack than the surprise attack itself.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole point of a 'Cruise Missile', is that it maneuvers... i.e it is not 'Ballistic'
I believe there were at least 14 models of Cruise Missiles before this that were SuperSonic.
Mod me 'redundant' again, and again...
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Headline wrong, as is the article (Score:3, Interesting)
A maneuver is a large deviation from the initial flight path
Ok, does the P-700 [wikipedia.org] qualify then?
The missile, when fired in a swarm (group of 4-8) has a unique guidance mode. One of the weapons climbs to a higher altitude and designates targets while the others attack. The missile responsible for target designation climbs in short pop-ups, so as to be harder to intercept. The missiles are linked by data connections, forming a network. Missiles are able to differentiate targets, detect groups and prioritize targets automatically using information gathered during flight and types of ships and battle formations pre-programmed in an onboard computer. They will attack targets in order of priority, highest to lowest: after destroying the first target, remaining missiles will attack the next prioritized target.
P-700 was deployed in 1980, per that Wikipedia article.
Re:Thanks, India (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the hardliners in the mid-east will consider nuclear because of Iran. Iran is not in the mid-east. Syria has an identity crisis coming. They are run by the Alawites (sp?) which are considered a branch of Shi'ism. However, the pop. is about 80% Sunni. The Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni gang, managed to get a foothold in Syria and Papa Assad leveled the city Hama, which the Muslim Brotherhood had taken over, in 1982. Then he invited the press in to get his point well made. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are mainly worried about Iran, Israel doesn't directly threaten them unless it is to get the rank and file Muslins upset and when they get upset, those governments get nervous. Jordan is caught between the Palestinians living within the country and the rest (more or less evenly divided or a 60-40 split but I cannot recall which has the edge). In any case, they aren't Shi'ite.
The main threat the Sunnis see is the Shi'ites. The U.S. fucked the Sunnis over royally by giving them the Shi'ites their first Arab country, Iraq, which could make a difference. Syria doesn't count because they will be hamstrung by their Sunni majority. And the Shi'ite in Iraq are one pissed off bunch. They've been screwed by the Sunnis under Saddam for 30 years. Then they got double crossed by the U.S. after the first Gulf War and Papa Bush encouraged them to rebell. They did, the U.S. didn't help. They got fucked.
The Iraqi religious (not the political) Shi'ite leadership, which al Sadr is not a member of (some wag called him the Al Sharpton of the Shi'ites), is not sympathetic to Iranian influence since they are mainly Arab and consider themselves THE Shi'ite authority. They are working behind the scenes to corral Iranian influence in Iraq. No one knows if the Iraqi Shi'ite religious leadership will prevail.
So right now, the Persian regime is promoting themselves as the Jew-Killers, the successor of the Nazies in an effort gain an edge over Sunni Islam. This is anathema to the Sunni who like dead Jews just as well as the next Muslim but would rather die than have Shi'ism become the dominant face of Islam. And Iran is in the ascendancy. It scares the heebie-jeebies out of the Sunnis and if Iran gets nukes, they will find a way to get them too.
Re:Not about Pakistan (Score:4, Interesting)
The phalanx has been going away for decades. In fact, it was conceived as a stop-gap system that was only supposed to be around a few years because the Rolling Airframe Missile was (badly) late.
Personally, I don't see why something like Phalanx wouldn't be the right system to use against really fast missiles. The energy released when a DU bullet hits a missile coming in at mach 2.8 (or mach 5.2 for Brahmos II) must be absolutely enormous. Sure, you'll get crap all over the deck, but that's not the end of the world.
Re: Death to... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/vigil/
Re:Cruise Missile? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is this any different from a short range ballistics missile, other than the trajectory?
That's one big difference right here. The path of the ballistic missile, once the engine stops, is predetermined (some newest warheads excepted.) The fixed path makes it easier to shoot it down. Another fact is that the ballistic missile is high in the sky, where your radar can see it clearly. The cruise missile does opposite to all of that: it is always powered, it can change course at any time, and it hugs the ground (or sea,) where returns from the ground and from the missile are hard to tell apart; it can hide in the terrain if necessary.
A Tomahawk can be fired from a huge standoff range and hit its target.
This gives ground forces plenty of time to detect it, guess its destination, and (as crude as that) launch airplanes to intercept it. Being slow and blind, it will be a sitting duck for any fighter airplane.
With this missile, the attacker has to get relatively close to its target, thus making it vulnerable to defenses.
It may be designed for scenarios where you are *already* close to the target. Then the speed and random path of the weapon makes it much harder to defeat on approach to the target.
A big part of the value of a cruise missile is that the attacker can stay relatively safe.
I'm not so sure about that. This particular missile that they tested was a vertical launch model, which probably means you can launch it from a submarine. Also, in war it may be worth losing a small battleship to take out a carrier battle group.
Re:Bad for Pakistan (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh pakistan has enough ways to deliver the nuke - US has been actively selling them F16s for quite some time.
Pakistan is not exactly a worry for India on conventional warfare... only in asymmetrical warfare with terror outfits (again terror outfits indirectly supported by the US as recently as 2007). US generally feels that terrorism is only things that go against US... so.... we indians were screwed. So sympathy for 9/11 is understandably pretty low in India.
Re:Cruise Missile? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most cruise missiles are designed to be really hard to detect once they've been launched (the Stark, for example, saw incoming Iraqi aircraft but didn't pick up the Exocet missiles they launched). The Brahmos (and earlier versions like the Russian P-800 Onyx) have a different strategy - it's a lot easier to pick up on radar and IR, but you don't have a lot of time to knock it down.
The advantage of a flat trajectory over ballistic is two-fold: 1) cruise missiles are easier to make than ballistic missiles. Your problems with heat, guidance, and vibration are magnified in a ballistic trajectory. And 2) cruise missiles tend to be much smaller. A ballistic missile with the same size warhead is almost ten times as large.
And yeah, the relatively short range is a big drawback.
Re:It's the unrecognized irony that kills you... (Score:4, Interesting)
The difficult situation humans face, IMHO, is that we have risen above "lesser" animals, and therefore our survival strategies, in that we have achieved self referencing consciousness and the ability to act based on abstract and irrational values rather than only survival strategies, but still have knee-jerk habitual patterns of fear of other and hyper self preservation. Oh and the newfangled ability to construct WMD. Exactly as Einstein said, we've left the cave in terms of ability to manipulate the outer environment, but haven't caught up in our value systems nor our maturity. Whether we just cannot see the forest for the trees and therefore even our modern abstractions of values and worldviews are extensions of the original survival of the fittest trait generation is to be seen but is perhaps irrelevant in that we now are capable of a conscious choice, irrational or not.
To choose to act toward the benefit of all mankind or even all sentient life may not seem rational in a closed system.
Like the prisoners dilemma, the issue is that the power to destroy is within reach of those who still have the fight and horde reaction of our ancestry.
There are reprogramming techniques that you mention: it's called Religion, Spiritualism and Philosophy; or perhaps just a damn EDUCATION as to the suffrage of our past - things not so heavily respected in consumer culture, and unfortunately when mentioned, the majority of these seem to have been created with and populated by people driven with the same motivations that lead to short term gains at the cost of long term evolution. Just my 2 cents. I'll go back to doing whatever stereotypical behavior that will marginalize my opinion.
Re:Cruise at supersonic speed? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Thanks, India (Score:2, Interesting)
Most Iranians, at this point, are conflicted by their government. They want freedom of speech and expression. They want to be able to discuss issues openly, without having to worry about disappearing one day.
Bottom line is, don't blame a whole country because a misinformed and misguided government is oppressive. Don't send your troups either, you'd be amazed at how powerful a people can be when provoked sufficiently, even if that means putting an end to their own government. The Iranian people are a good people, with honest beliefs, good schools and diverse, however oppressed political opinions.
I'm sure you'll notice that only the last point is a problem, all the rest are good things.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
What about those nifty anti-missile gatling guns on American ships? Can they or any other tech reliably intercept these things? I've seen the sentiment that America spending billions to build carriers may be foolish if a few $200,000 "Sizzler" missiles can take one out. I don't how severe that threat actually is but it is an argument I've seen either as the merits of a supersonic cruise missile or questionable investment in expensive capital ships vulnerable to them.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Torpedos hit submarines. When missiles try to hit submarines they explode on the surface. And it is a lot harder to go supersonic underwater (for two reasons).
Someone forgot about the ASROC and the SS-N-16. Both use Missiles to launch either a torpedo or a depth charge at an enemy ship or sub.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
The main defense for any aircraft carrier is the billions of dollars of support ships floating around it, such as hunter-killer submarines, destroyers, and guided missile cruisers.
In particular, the AEGIS system is designed to counter missile and aircraft threats. The SM-3 missile used in the AEGIS system recently shot down a satellite, and is being considered for deployment as an anti-missile shield against Iran and North Korea. Aircraft carriers may be big targets, but they're not just sitting around alone waiting to get blown up.
If you manage to get through all that, a carrier can lob a few of the new RAM anti-missile missiles at incoming targets, but honestly, if it gets that close you're pretty much fucked from the momentum of the debris anyway.
Meanwhile, the great advantage of an aircraft carrier is the hundreds of airplanes it can send into the air to perform all kinds of missions. Time and again, we've seen the value of the American aircraft carrier fleet in force projection. Even if they were the most vulnerable ships in the universe, they'd probably still be worth building for that reason alone.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Beat me to it. The more interesting question is, whose standard launchers will it fit in? Actually, that isn't that interesting, because I guess we know whose standard launcher it fits in. Meaning, the Russians now have a supersonic cruise missile on all their missile cruisers and submarines. Goodbye, missile defense shield. Modern warfare, thy name is mobility.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not Quite, the Development of longer ranged CIWS like Laser CIWS, RAM block 2, ect are making the chance of killing systems like BrahMos harder to wield effectively.
The Range of the Missile Defense systems varies from things like GBI which cover whole continents down to Irondome which cover villages. To say that this makes missile defense obsolete is disingenuous at best.
Not a First - Re-Emerging Trend (Score:3, Interesting)
Using modern technology (higher temperature alloys, ceramic composites, and CFD optimization) it would be easily possible to build a cruise missile in the 1000nm range. In fact, because subsonic cruisers have to combat with launcher dimensions, their form factors are ill-suited for subsonic drag reduction and supersonic missiles might have an aerodynamic advantage.
ATK is currently developing a hypersonic cruise missile for the 800km range, which is an important gap filler between what artillery, short-range missiles, and ballistic missiles can hit quickly. This range is currently filled by subsonic cruise-missiles which can take over an hour to reach the target. Time-critical-strike it's called.
The issue with a supersonic cruise missile is that it needs even more than a subsonic cruiser to fly at high altitude in order to achieve satisfactory range. Aerodynamic heating is difficult, perhaps limiting at low altitudes for more than a short terminal phase. Flying at high altitude means they are easier to detect (not that look-down-shoot-down isn't standard, but ship-based phased-array radars won't be looking down) albeit harder to intercept due to their higher velocity.
What's really scary are the Chinese developed anti-ship ballistic missiles [wikipedia.org]. Stealthy re-entry vehicles that can perform course changes. This is an interception nightmare and likely driving the US Navy ballistic.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
My mom (dead of pancreatic cancer this Christmas) worked at Boeing/SVS in Albuquerque and perhaps spoke too much of what they were doing there before she passed, bless her soul. I know a fair amount, for an amateur, about what our current and future projected capabilities are in regards to directed energy weapons. A supersonic standard cruise missile is a potential game changer, and I'll stand by that.
Re:Bad for Pakistan (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tech Support Call (Score:1, Interesting)
How the eff is that funny? There are already a dozen call call center jokes out there.
PS: the reason the tech support asks such stupid questions is because the users (you) are really dumb at times
Re:It's not the first maneuverable supersonic CM e (Score:1, Interesting)
Ya, the only way it can be considered the first supersonic "manueverable" (emphasis on the quotes from the article) cruise missile is if you define "maneuverable" to mean "controlled entirely by on-board systems".
The P-700 Granit is considered "probable" when it comes to "mid-course correction" which seems to imply it's not very 'maneuverable'.
The P-500 Bazalt is considered to be able to make mid-course corrections, but relies on a controlling craft in order to do so, it doesn't do it on its own.
And I have this sneaking suspicion that both the Russians as well as the US already have such capability, but neither country's military is known for publishing full technical capabilities of the advanced weapons systems which they have available.
Supercruise (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess you have never heard of the term supercruise [wikipedia.org] then. If it's ok for airplanes to cruise at supersonic speeds, then it's also ok for a cruise missile. And general consensus [google.co.uk] on the net does not agree with you.