Slashdot Mirror
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."
The first?
I didn't hear that coming.
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.
Loading...
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
I doubt Pakistan can be happy at all about this development. It's one thing to have a nuke, another to be able to deliver it. This makes a first strike weapon from Hell. About the time you figure out the war is on....it's over.
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.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Riiight, because until today, they really weren't interested
Tech Support: Thank you for calling Maneuverable Supersonic Cruise Missile tech support, my name is Tom, how may I help you?
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?
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.
Hard-liners in the middle east don't give half a shit about what India does. The Pakistanis do sure, but they already are nuclear. The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Oh, don't give him a hard time.
Personally, as a guy from a military background, and enjoying military strategy games, etc, I agree with him completely, I don't see much advantage of SS cruise missiles over a ballistic missile, at least for most countries and most situations.
The advantage a subsonic cruise missile has over a ballistic, is primarily payload fraction. Consider a tomahawk that weighs 3000 pounds of which 1000 pounds is warhead. Put another way, if you want 1000 pounds of boom on target, and want to use a subsonic cruise missile, you get to haul an additional 2000 extra pounds of missile around, instead of an additional 2000 pounds of aircraft fuel or food on a submarine or whatever.
In comparison, lets consider an ancient ballistic missile, a Polaris carrying a W47. A W47 only weighs 700 pounds or so, in comparison to 1000 pounds of "boom" on a tomahawk. Yet, a Polaris weighed freaking 28000 pounds. So, you can VERY QUICKLY deliver a mere 700 pounds of boom on target, if you're willing to haul around an extra 27300 pounds of missile.
Supersonic missiles combine the fuel efficiency of a ballistic missile, with the simplicity, reliability, and low cost of a cruise missile. Note the slight sarcasm. Pretty much a total failure EXCEPT that they can deliver extremely quickly.
If you dominate the air land and sea, you get quick delivery by stationing a boring old fashioned B-52 directly over the target and dropping a simple iron bomb straight down. Or, if you're not planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike, you simply don't need that capability to reach your goals. India, on the other hand....
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
Isn't this just a really fast surface to surface missile? The operational range is 1/10 of a Tomahawk. How is this any different from a short range ballistics missile, other than the trajectory? I don't mean to criticize an impressive achievement but I foresee it being very different in use from something like a Tomahawk. A Tomahawk can be fired from a huge standoff range and hit its target. With this missile, the attacker has to get relatively close to its target, thus making it vulnerable to defenses. A big part of the value of a cruise missile is that the attacker can stay relatively safe. I think this weapon is much more defensive in nature and this is perhaps a reflection of India's strategic outlook.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
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?)
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.
The hard-lines in the middle east want to go nuclear because of Israel.
I'm guessing by 'hard-liners' you mean Iran and Syria, since no one else really seems interested in acquiring nuclear weapons in the middle east, and I'm further going to suggest that they aren't so afraid of Israel (who doesn't really have a history of aggression) as they are of the United States (who definitely has a history of aggression, in particular against Iran).
I don't even particularly blame them, either. If I were Iran, I would be working very hard to build nuclear weapons as a defense, it's only logical. On the other hand, I am not Iranian, I am American, and I don't particularly favor a country who has an official chant "Death to America" getting nuclear weapons. I am aware that it is not entirely 'fair' for America to have nuclear weapons and Iran not, but in this case my self-preservation instinct over-rules any desire for fairness.
Qxe4
Bah. Wake me up when they have a maneuverable superluminal cruise missile.
Slashdot: news for Apple. Stuff that Apple.
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.
> If I were Iran, I would be working very hard to build nuclear weapons as a defense, it's only logical.
A lot of the Arab world looks up to Iran as a country willing to defy the US. As for nukes, they sometimes make sense as a deterrent, but almost never as a defense. Setting them off in almost any circumstance is also a violation of international law.
Biggest problem in Iran isn't so much the Iranians as it is the government, AFAICT. (As far as I can tell.) If they could get a government in power which weren't run by a couple of psychopaths, then maybe having a nuclear deterrent would make sense. But as long as the government is threatening to wipe other governments off the face of the earth, NOBODY should let them NEAR a nuke. Same holds true for every other government. You should not get a nuke if you're someone who would seriously consider using it when there were less than a few million lives at stake.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
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
It is ironic that the technology that goes into such a missile, from the computers and materials to the social networks that plan and test such things could instead bring abundance to everyone in the world. Yet people still build such things from a scarcity-based mindset, not recognizing the total irony. The tools of abundance all around us now (robotics, computers, networks, biotech, chemistry, nanontech, nuclear technology, and so on) are so powerful -- we will destroy ourselves if we use them from a scarcity mindset. If used from an abundance mindset, we could instead make the world into a much happier place.
As Albert Einstein said, "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind."
We need to change our hearts towards providing abundance for all, before we all die of the unrecognized irony.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
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.
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.
After 9/11 Iran was one of the few countries where candle light vigils were held to mourn the tragedy.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/vigil/
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You move from the false assumption that Iran's official and national chant is "Death to America". The truth is, they don't really care about you. They just want to live a peaceful and long life, as most human beings are trying to do.
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.
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
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
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
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.
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.
The first?
This is incorrect. In the late 1950's the US developed the 'Hound Dog' AGM-28 (GAM-77/GAM-77A under the designation system at the time). In Service in 1960, the Hound Dog was unique in that the turbojet that it carried could be run off of the carrying B-52's fuel, practically allowing the use of the engines on Both Hound Dogs during takeoff. While not as fast as BrahMos, the Hound Dog could fly Three and a half times further, and could carry a nuclear weapon (no doubt in my mind that the Indias have a nuclear BrahMos in the works).
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-28_Hound_Dog
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.
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.
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?
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.
Firstly, most of Irans ruling council is not actually Persian, they are Arabs mostly originating from southern Iraq (hence the large Shia influence in Iran). The Persians and Arabs don't exactly get along, this is why the Islamic Republic maintains a large well equipped private military, the Basij (religious police and republican guards fall under the Basij) which is almost exclusively comprised of Lebanese (Hezbolla) and Palestinian (Hamas) Arabs.
Also there have been a lot of protests against the Iranian government recently and things have not gotten better. Huge racial issues are cropping up in Iran fanning the flames of old Persian/Arab hate. The acts of the Iranian government are not representative of the desires of the Persian people.
The biggest reason the Iran will never invade (or try to kill) Israel is because the Persians and Jews get on like a house on fire. There are several Persian members of the Knesset as well as the headquarters of the Baha'i religion being located in Israel (Baha'iism originated in Persia (Iran) in the early part of the 20th century). A lot of the Persians that fled Iran in the 80's did so through Israel. Any invasion would be an unmitigated disaster for the Iranian government as Persians simply refuse to fight or worse yet, get reunited with old friends from before the Islamic revolution. Even today most Iranians who travel east (to Asia) do so through Israel's Ben Gurion airport due to few nations allowing Iranian airliners to land and even fewer international airlines willing to land in Iran.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Russia built a series of supersonic anti-ship missiles with ranges in the cruise category. They were mostly fit aboard submarines and destroyers and designed for saturation attacks, which our missile defense systems were poorly equipped to deal with.
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. Stealthy re-entry vehicles that can perform course changes. This is an interception nightmare and likely driving the US Navy ballistic.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
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.
I guess you have never heard of the term supercruise then. If it's ok for airplanes to cruise at supersonic speeds, then it's also ok for a cruise missile. And general consensus on the net does not agree with you.