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India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile
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."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-500_Bazalt
Possibly first to deploy, but not the first to build, by a good 50 years.
...Soviets had supersonic air to surface cruise missiles and surface to surface missiles. It's where the Indian tech comes from. Kitchen and Sunburn were the ones that spring to mind immediately.
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The headline says, "India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile". In order to even accurately reflect the article, it should read, "India First To Build a manoeuvrable Supersonic Cruise Missile". But even so, the article is wrong;
from wikipedia, P-500 Bazalt
The P-500 Bazalt (Russian: -500 ; English: basalt) is a liquid-fueled, rocket powered, supersonic cruise missile used by the Soviet and Russian navies. Developed by OKB-52 MAP (later NPO Mashinostroyeniye), its GRAU designation is 4K80[1]. Its NATO reporting name is SS-N-12 Sandbox. It entered service in 1973 to replace the SS-N-3 Shaddock. The P-500 Bazalt had a 550 km range and a payload of 1,000 kg, which allows it to carry a 350 kT nuclear or a 950 kg semi-armor-piercing high explosive warhead (currently only the conventional version remains in service). The P-500 Bazalt uses active radar homing for terminal guidance, and can receive mid-course corrections by the Tupolev Tu-95D, the Kamov Ka-25B and the Kamov Ka-27B.
So many levels of fail in this submission
The summary (and article) are better than the headline. This isn't either: a) the first supersonic cruise missile; or b) the first maneuverable cruise missile. But it is, apparently, the first maneuverable supersonic cruise missile.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hitler's German was prohibited from making weapons prior to WWII (part of the WW1 peace treaty), so he outsourced the industry to Russia
Of course - Schmeisser, Krupp, Junkers, and Messerschmitt are all Russian names :-)
With regard to Treaty of Versailles, it was officially broken in 1932, with implicit approval of many important countries. Development of arms also was done under "dual use" cover.
Weapons like the BrahMos are primarily aimed at ships. Yes, you could also use it as a precision-guided land attack cruise missile, but Pakistan's navy is small and almost irrelevant for conflict with India.
This weapon - and, indeed, much of India's military development - is about maintaining military competitiveness with China, and to some extent the ability to discourage the US from interfering if India conducts military operations in areas it regards as its sphere of influence.
The US Navy is apparently upgrading its cruise missile defences on its ships, replacing the Phalanx gun-based system with a missile-based version, because of missiles like the BrahMos.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It's not the first maneuverable supersonic CM either. Russian P-500 Bazalt missile was both supersonic and maneuverable and it entered service in 1973 (!). Brahmos is an adaptation of previous generation Russian missile technology, and not even the most advanced variant of that. Russians don't export their latest stuff, particularly the kind of stuff that if push came to shove could be efficiently used against them.
I don't think India has ever faced any credible direct security threat from the U.S., well aside from aid to Pakistan, and the threat of war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. India has very strong ties with Britain, vibrant trade with the U.S., developed nuclear weapons early, plays amongst the big boys economically, we idealize Gandhi, etc.
India projecting sea power more effectively definitely impacts China's trade routes however, especially with the middle east. India causing an increase in China's manufacturing costs would benefit industry in India, the U.S., and Europe.. and generally be cheered by all non-tools.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I was watching a recorded Rick Steves episode the other day about traveling in Iran. I'd actually like to go there now. He said the people were more friendly than many European towns. People kept saying "We love Americans" and that they wish our countries governments could get past our disagreements.
During a fundraising break, he mentioned he was sitting in a cab in horrible traffic and the cab driver said "death to traffic." He asked the cab driver what he said, and the driver said they say "death to..." when they are irritated by something. It was at this point, Rick realized when they say "Death to America," what they mean is "Damn America!" And given what we have done to the political situation in the middle east, especially by deposing their democratically elected government in 1953 to keep the oil tap open, it is hard to argue with them.
Here is something to start if you want to educate yourself on the topic: http://www.feldgrau.com/ger-sov.html
Your link says:
"By 1932, and certainly by 1933, the end of German-Soviet military co-operation efforts were in clear sight. Hitler and his Nationalist Socialists were not in a mood to co-operate with the Soviets in secret on military matters. Communism was after all seen as one of the main enemy's of the German people. In the end, it was the Soviet Union, which officially asked the Reichswehr to close all of its facilities and depart the Soviet Union in August of 1933"
Note that Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933. Spanish Civil War started in 1936, with Germany fighting on the Nationalists' side and USSR [covertly] fighting on the Republican side. While it may be correct to say that Stalin didn't see the World War coming, he was probably the only one with such an opinion. For example, this movie was released in 1940, and it is full of premonition of war with Germany.
According to the Wikipedia entry for the BrahMos, its payload capacity is 300kg, 1/10 the missile's mass, giving it about 3/5 of the Tomahawk's payload capacity while weighing twice as much. Its range is also only 290km, while the Tomahawk has a range of 2,500km. So not only do you have to carry around twice as much missile, but you have to get eight times as close to use it. I expect that the primary purpose of the BrahMos is similar to that of the P-270 Moskit (NATO SS-N-22 Sunburn), which is to have an extremely fast missile that passes through the engagement zone of a target too fast to allow effective engagement by hard- and soft-kill systems.
It's a fundamental tracking problem between large and small targets. In order for ships to be reasonably well off sitting on the surface, they need to be able to track incoming warheads and shoot them down with missiles etc. Ships can be made low observable. Missiles can be made low observable. Ships can use gigantic phased array antennae. Missiles have less tracking power, but are looking for a bigger target. The ship might have an excellent radar, but it's trying to direct fire onto a small target.
Putting up a defense will require a lot of devices that, while possibly made small on radar/IR/visual, will still be additional vectors of detection. Couple all that with the possibility of passive terminal phase warheads, and surface ships will have to be constantly blasting away with their phased arrays. So much for low EM emissions.
The situation keeps looking worse as you start considering the possibility of saturation attacks with multi-warhead launch vehicles from long ranges at high speeds. Any defense mechanisms will eventually get overwhelmed. It's as easy as increasing the number of inbound warheads.
Navies can either try to go stealth and battle with the issue of hiding massive targets from increasingly cheap and effective sensors or they can put a little water in between themselves and what might be out there.
In terms of cost effectiveness, Naval vessels will fall behind missiles every time. Especially when you start looking at the cost of constructing small lines of ships in specially equipped dry-docks, like those used to build nuclear powered carriers. Mass-produced missiles packaged in sealed rounds on mobile launchers will drive carriers 3000km from the coast at one hundredth the cost of the carrier.
Few aircraft, and almost no carrier-born aircraft, have the capability to operate at that range without giving up all of their payload weight fraction. Either the Navy adapts to emerging threats fast or the US is going to be trying to negotiate foreign policy with billion dollar paper-weights.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
No, cruise missiles are cruise missiles because of their flight profile. Ballistic missiles travel in a ballistic arc, like rocket artillery, and don't fly like airplanes. Cruise missile, however, do: they fly through the atmosphere like airplanes do, with wings, with a most of their journey being level flight as they cruise to their targets. They are airplanes, in fact, just expendable ones.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.