The main objectives of India’s defence policy are to promote and sustain durable peace in the subcontinent and to equip the defence forces adequately to safeguard the territorial integrity of the country against foreign aggression. Keeping these objectives in mind India is bound to update its defence technology as well as missile programmes. There are various futuristic missile programmes are going on such as:
(i) Brahmos:
It is the world’s best supersonic cruise missile which has been developed by joint efforts of Indian and Russian scientists. This missile is the leader in the family of cruise missiles and is unique to fly at speed of 2.8 times the speed of sound. It is anti-ship missile with 300 km range and 300 kg payloads. Brahmos can be launched from submarine, ship, aircraft and land based Mobile Autonomous Launchers. Primarily it was an anti-ship missile but now. It has identical configuration for land, sea and sub- sea platforms.
The air launch version has a smaller booster and additional tail fins for stability during launch. This missile has two advantages! It is highly accurate and can be guided to the target mainly with the help of on-board computers. It travels at supersonic speed, in a sea-skimming profile. Another advantage of this missile is
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(i) Shorter flight times leading to lower target dispersion and quicker engagement.
(ii) It has varieties of flight trajectories with fire and forgets principles.
(iii) Higher destructive capability aided by the large kinetic energy of impact.
(iv) Higher effectiveness against ship defences.
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First ever vertical launch of Brahmos missile from moving warship has also been conducted in December 2008.
(ii) Astra:
It is air to air missile, beyond the visual range class that would be capable of beating radar eyes and hitting enemy targets. It can be located upto range of 80 km. The missile can be launched after receiving a signal from the far away target and is also able to seek the target by using a complex-range of on board maneuvers based on radio frequency. The Union Government has cleared this futuristic project, which will be guided and led by Hyderabad based Defence Research and Development Laboratory.
(iii) Shourya:
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It is a Supersonic missile that can reach a velocity of six times the speed of sound even at low altitudes. It is surface to surface missile and has the capability to reach the target upto 700 km. away. It is a two stage missile and both its stages are powered by solid propellants with flight time of 500 seconds to 700 seconds. It can easily be transported by road. The missile, encashed in a canister and mounted on vehicle is itself is the launch platform.
This single vehicle missile cannot be easily detected by satellites which makes its deployment also easy. The centre piece of new technologies incorporated in Shourya is its ring-laser gyroscope and accelerator. The ring-laser gyroscope is a sophisticated navigation and guided system. Advanced countries have denied this technology to India. In Shourya’s flight its function is to monitor the missile’s position in space when it flying.
Another important feature of the missile is that the missile functions akin to human body with the gyroscope acting like the eyes, the computer on board like the brain and the actuators like the hands. Shourya has also a trajectory that is non-ballistic. This gives Shourya a big advantage in a combat environment of interception by a ballistic missile defence shield.
It flies at low altitudes with even reaching Mach 6 of speed. This is the crux of matter in terms of technology development. The first successful test of surface to surface Sourya missile was conducted from integrated test range at Chandipur, Orissa in November 2008.