Supersonic Missiles.

[su-30mki]

Supersonic missiles:India is the king!!!

Supersonic missiles: India is the king.


The Indian Army will become the first force in the world to field supersonic cruise missiles by operationalising the Indo-Russian 290-km range BrahMos surface-to-surface missile by September 2007.

BrahMos' biggest advantage, according to missile experts, is that if produced in large numbers it could tilt the conventional arms balance between India and Pakistan.

Though Islamabad claims to have tested its own version of cruise missiles, defence experts say both China and Pakistan have access only to subsonic version of the missile.

Artillery officers estimate that around 90 mobile autonomous launchers would be enough for India to create a major strategic deterrence.

According to Army sources, the new BrahMos artillery missile units would be equipped with four launchers that will have the capability of firing twelve missiles simultaneously at twelve different targets within 30 seconds.

DRDO sources said a single launcher can also be detached from the battery to operate independently to give land forces operational flexibility and make detections extremely difficult.

BrahMos, according to experts, could outmatch the subsonic US Tomahawk Cruise missiles as it has three times more dispersion and impact almost six to eight times more.

The anti-ship naval version of the missile has been cleared for deployment on all naval warships and the test trials of the air-launched version will be held in summer next year.

The DRDO scientists have also reached an advanced stage in making a submarine-launched version of the missile.

The air version, to be fired from a modified SU-30 MKI, according to DRDO sources, will be lighter, smaller and also be equipped with the multi-mode seeker.

The army has given its go-ahead for production of the land version. Army chief General J J Singh was present when the surface-to-surface version of the missile was successfully test-fired at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan.

All the three trials of the missile to test its range and accuracy have been highly successful and the army has already dispatched artillery officers to Hyderabad for training to operate BrahMos, a highly placed defence source said.

When raised, the new BrahMos missile units will be the third such missile-formations in the country. The army, under its lone 40th artillery division, has already raised specialised groups to operate short-range 150-300 km Prithvi missile and longer range Agni-I (700 kms) and Agni-II (1,500-2,500 kms).

Buoyed by the successful test-trials of the land version of the BrahMos, Indian scientists are now working on the advanced version of the supersonic missile with longer reach, improved trajectory design, a touch-button-guidance system and capability to carry miniaturised warheads.

"We are aiming for a lighter missile with a small warhead and faster speed, up to Mach 8, to incorporate scramjet technology," a senior DRDO official said.

LINK:http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/23brahmos.htm

 

[su-30mki]

Coyote Supersonic missile!!

Orbital Sciences announced Tuesday that it carried out another successful flight test of the GQM-163A Supersonic Sea-Skimming Target (SSST) system for the United States Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) on August 27, 2004.

The flight test, conducted at the Navy's missile test range in southern California, is part of a series of flights Orbital will conduct under the company's SSST Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) contract from NAVAIR.

Orbital was awarded the EMD contract in 2000 to meet the Navy's requirement for an affordable SSST to simulate supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles for fleet training and weapon systems research, development, test and evaluation.

Orbital is scheduled to conduct several more flight tests of the Coyote target vehicle through the end of the year.

"We are very pleased with the results of the recent flight test of the Coyote target vehicle," said Mr. Keven Leith, Vice President of Navy Programs for Orbital's Launch Systems Group.

"By meeting all the objectives for the flight test, we believe we are well down the road toward moving the program from its developmental phase to providing the Navy with a robust operational anti-ship target system."

The GQM-163A "Coyote" target missile design integrates a four-inlet, solid-fuel ducted rocket ramjet propulsion system into a compact missile airframe 18 feet long and 14 inches in diameter.

Ramjet supersonic takeover speed is achieved using a decommissioned Navy MK 70 solid rocket motor for the first stage.

Rail-launched from Navy test and training ranges, the highly maneuverable GQM-163A Coyote achieves cruise speeds of Mach 2.5+ following the separation of the MK 70 first-stage booster.

The range of the target vehicle system is approximately 50 nautical miles at altitudes of less than 20 feet above the sea surface.

This most recent flight test of the GQM-163A Coyote vehicle was the second consecutive success for the program, following a successful flight carried out earlier this year in May.

The primary objectives for this test, all of which were achieved, included the verification of booster ignition and stable first stage flight, the verification of the transition of the ducted rocket ramjet from booster separation to inlet start, and verification of the ducted rocket ramjet ignition, navigation to waypoint capability, verification of the laser altimeter performance, and initial horizontal weave and vertical maneuver performance verification.

In addition, the test target missile was heavily instrumented in order to collect flight environment data to refine aerodynamic and guidance models for future missions.

Orbital is currently the only U.S. Department of Defense prime contractor to be both developing and operating ramjet-powered missile systems.

In addition to developing the GQM-163A Coyote, Orbital provides the Navy with launch services for the MQM-8 VANDAL SSST.

The MQM-8 VANDAL is based on the liquid-fuel ramjet-powered Talos missile and provides the Navy with a legacy SSST until the more capable GQM-163A Coyote is operational.

Orbital is developing and manufacturing the GQM-163A Coyote at its launch vehicle engineering and production facility in Chandler, Arizona.

Orbital's major subcontractors include Aerojet Corporation in Gainesville, Virginia and Sacramento, California for the solid-fuel ducted rocket motor and CEi in Sacramento, California for the vehicle's avionics system

LINK:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-04zza.html

 

[SABRE]

MOD: Su-30MKI you are just copy pasting things here without your own comments. People, if they are interested, can read it from the actual site. You have done this several times now.

Add you comments so we could know what kind of response you are looking for. Or I might close the thread untill Admin or Super Mods decide otherwise.


-SABRE

 

[sashikanth]

Yeah this is very true, no other country except India,Russia and US have acces to a supersonic cruse missile.It makes it impossible to intercept supersonic cruse missile.BRAHMOS is now a nuclear capable missile and has been inducted into the Indian Navy and the Indian Army and its shorthly gonna be inducted into the airforce.

 

[Gripenator]

USAF definition copied straight onto Wikipedia:

A cruise missile is a guided missile which uses a lifting wing and most often a jet propulsion system to allow sustained flight.

Using this definition, Taiwan has just gatecrashed your "supersonic cruise missile" party with their HF-III AShM/LACM.

What exactly do you mean it is impossible to intercept an supersonic Cruise Missile?

It is possible to intercept any missile provided you can locate, track and destroy it or retard its flight characteristics. The US AEGIS Combat system has demonstated numerous intercepts with the GQM-163A designed to replicate the flight characteristics of the P-800 Oniks which your BrahMos is supposedly based on.

 

[tphuang]

Yeah this is very true, no other country except India,Russia and US have acces to a supersonic cruse missile.It makes it impossible to intercept supersonic cruse missile.BRAHMOS is now a nuclear capable missile and has been inducted into the Indian Navy and the Indian Army and its shorthly gonna be inducted into the airforce.

not true, China has supersonic cruise missiles, so does Taiwan . A lot of countries can get it if they want to.

 

[funtz]

Supersonic cruise missiles, how many of them are there?

i know of these
P-700 Granit
P-270 Moskit.
P-800 Oniks and its improvement BrahMos.

With a 250-300 range and 2M speed i wonder if there is enough time for detecting, tracking, and neutralizing a salvo of these missiles coming from different directions.

As for the BrahMos, the Russians were looking for funds to upgrade the Yakhont, Indians were interested in a 300-500 range supersonic missile that was accurate, and you have
BrahMos: named after two rivers, the Brahmaputra and the Moskva.

The land based version went into mass production for the indian army after Pakistan’s cruise missile tests.

As far as I know a single land based launch platform can fire a salvo of 3-5 BrahMos, and around a 1000 missile will be acquired (for the army and the navy), there was talk of producing a few customized SU30’s to act as air based launch platforms of these missiles however now there is no talk of it, I suspect the Russians are not interested as they already have missiles specifically dedicated for this purpose.

It is not just a missile it is a (as the Russians call it) complex: a combined research team, the director of the team gave an interview on a news channel – they are working on a further evolution of Yankhont-BrahMos, a hypersonic cruise missile, with ability to take evasive maneuvers, better guidance and the ability to be networked, completion date for the project is set at 2012, lets see how much can they evolve this thing.

 

[funtz]

However the importance of BrahMos was not that india got a supersonic cruise missile, India could have bought anything from a long list of Russian below 300 km range missiles, the importance was that the concept of joint production as a effective way of cutting cost, speeding up R&D and acquiring technology was recognized.

 

[renjer]

... there was talk of producing a few customized SU30’s to act as air based launch platforms of these missiles however now there is no talk of it, I suspect the Russians are not interested as they already have missiles specifically dedicated for this purpose.

You mean the Indians have no plans to proceed on their own?

 

[Grand Danois]

With a 250-300 range and 2M speed i wonder if there is enough time for detecting, tracking, and neutralizing a salvo of these missiles coming from different directions.

Well, with airborne radar, e.g. E-2, E-3 it is a couple of hundred miles. Shipborne radar will pick it up at 28-36 km, shipborne IR sensors at a longer range. Super Hornets et al should integrate into CM detection/hunting very well.

There is no LO for supersonics at low level. Not radar, not IR. Supersonic cruise missiles are beacons for attracting attention.

Navies equipped with AEGIS, PAAMS, 'NAAWS' should not have significantly more problems with supersonics than with subsonics.

 

[funtz]

You mean the Indians have no plans to proceed on their own?

I dont think so, many other weapons are available for the same task. justifying a complete platform change and missile production will be hard to say the least, especially when specific weapon systems that preform the same role can be purchased from Russia.

addition:
There is a active program from BrahMos team that is specifically developing a air based version, and ADA is working on design changes to the SU 30 for installation, however the air force will not dedicate a design change in the SU 30's just to accomodate a BrahMos missile.

Navies equipped with AEGIS, PAAMS, 'NAAWS' should not have significantly more problems with supersonics than with subsonics.

Oh yes, there will not be a friendly salvo of two missiles,
at twice the speed of sound and an moving trajectory, i find it highly unlikely that ship based missile defense systems will be able to be that effective.
chasing a high speed missile is not what i will imagine a easy job for the hornets (clueless).
The effectiveness of missile defense systems will remain a well guarded secret, not likely to come out any time soon, again i cannot say anything about them.

 

[Grand Danois]

I dont think so, many other weapons are available for the same task.

Oh yes, there will only not be a friendly salvo of two missiles,

I realise that.

... at twice the speed of sound and an moving trajectory, i find it highly unlikely that ship based missile defense systems will be able to be that effective.

If you can see it you can kill it. Supersonics are not supermaneuverable. Shipbased defense is the last hardkill/softkill perimeter. They don't have much more problems with supersonics than subsonics. ESSM/RAM/Aster15. Even the shipbased alone should be able to deal with it.

chasing a high speed missile is not what i will imagine a easy job for the hornets.

Hornets don't chase supersonics - they intercept i.e. meet with amraams, which btw can be cued by awacs. This is outer perimeter hardkill. Standards can be controlled by awacs for beyond horizon. I expect the Aster30 can/will do the same.

The effectiveness of missile defense systems will remain a well guarded secret, not likely to come out any time soon.

There is abundance to compare concepts.

Supersonics are vastly overrated.

 

[funtz]

"There is abundance to compare concepts."
kindly do, i am interested, and not being sarcastic.

A 5 minute window for 10 missiles at 300 KM, it will only reduce with closing distance,
a dedicated advance towards a well protected carrier battle group will have other dedicated aircrafts for protection to decrease the launch distance and it will be a significant attack, a carrier is a huge prize in a battle, especially a large one.

 

[funtz]

i saw a presentation on this indian russian Brahmos, they showed a hi(initial)-lo(terminal) S shaped path to target, although it was a animation, so again i can not say it actually does that.

I am of course taking about an attack on a us navy carrier group, no other navy has the assets to prevent such an attack in hostile sea.
Take for the sake of discussion two small nations,
If one of them operates destroyers or frigates that have a missile defense system installed, in a hostile situation the ships of that navy will have to operate in area where there is air cover, as otherwise the damage these high speed missiles can cause will be beyond ship based defense, hence the role of this navy will be limited.

 

[Grand Danois]

"There is abundance to compare concepts."
kindly do, i am interested, and not being sarcastic.

Huge subject. First of all there are layered concepts of protection both hard and soft.

I have discussed this expensively and posted approp links here on DT, but darn me if I am going to look all that up once more.

Here is a crude overview of how it works.

Attacks on missile infrastructure - i.e. C4ISR and launch platforms, ships, onshore launchers, aircraft. This envelope is bigger than the supersonic missile envelope. This is the most important part - denial of launch/coordinated attacks.

Outer layer detection/hardkill against supersonics - awacs/fighters. Combined with SM-2 blkIIIB.

Inner area defence SM-2 blkIIB.

Point defence ESSM/RAM.

Not touching upon electronic attack, decoys etc.

It is not much harder to kill a supersonic, if you can see it. So if detection and netcentrics is in place (and it is), and the CMS can handle it (it can), then it is up to the missiles to kill them (they can).

A 5 minute window for 10 missiles at 300 KM, it will only reduce with closing distance,
a dedicated advance towards a well protected carrier battle group will have other dedicated aircrafts for protection to decrease the launch distance and it will be a sigificant attack, a carrier is a huge prize in a battle, especially a large one.

Impressive - but not enough.

 

[Grand Danois]

i saw a presentation on this indian russian Brahmos, they showed a hi(initial)-lo(terminal) S shaped path to target, although it was a animation, so again i can not say it actually does that.

I am of course taking about an attack on a us navy carrier group, no other navy has the assets to prevent such an attack in hostile sea.
Take for the sake of discussion two small nations,
If one of them operates destroyers or frigates that have a missile defense system installed, in a hostile situation the ships of that navy will have to operate in area where there is air cover, as otherwise the damage these high speed missiles can cause will be beyond ship based defense, hence the role of this navy will be limited.

I agree that the comprehensive defence is only one that the USN is capable of. F.i. European navies are so far restricted to shipbased defence, which is much more limited - and thus putting some constraint on employment of task groups in a supersonic environment.

Against a less sophisticated opponent, the question arises if the same result could not be achieved with cheaper subsonics.

I do think that supersonics have virtue as a land attack missile.

 

[tphuang]

"There is abundance to compare concepts."
kindly do, i am interested, and not being sarcastic.

A 5 minute window for 10 missiles at 300 KM, it will only reduce with closing distance,
a dedicated advance towards a well protected carrier battle group will have other dedicated aircrafts for protection to decrease the launch distance and it will be a significant attack, a carrier is a huge prize in a battle, especially a large one.

let's put it this way, Goalkeeper has shown in exercise that it can engage two pairs of sea-skimming missiles (travelling at mach1.5) as little as five seconds apart. How is 10 missiles at 5 minutes going to be that much harder? Remember, with a carrier group, there are other layers of defense. With numerous assets, you can always count on the missiles to be detected early, especially a high flying targets like Brahmos, which can probably be encountered while it is still in high flight altitude.

That still does not eliminate the need to be able to target ships from that far out. How are your launch platforms going to detect ships at over 300 km out?

 

[funtz]

"Attacks on missile infrastructure - i.e. C4ISR and launch platforms, ships, onshore launchers, aircraft. This envelope is bigger than the supersonic missile envelope. This is the most important part - denial of launch/coordinated attacks."

that might be a better defence. The launch distance will be outside the SAM envelop (what will that be?)
the Awac/fighters will have to face other aircrafts too.

"It is not much harder to kill a supersonic, if you can see it. So if detection and netcentrics is in place (and it is), and the CMS can handle it (it can), then it is up to the missiles to kill them (they can)."

how many incoming will the radar be able to detect, track, and engage, the missiles have to be guided towards the target or will they be able to acquire it on there own within a certain radius, after this the time for tracking and engaging the next missile/missiles will have to be considered. higher speeds will put more strain on this system.

 

[funtz]

"That still does not eliminate the need to be able to target ships from that far out. How are your launch platforms going to detect ships at over 300 km out?"

That is the range which is advertised on most radars for ship sized targets,
Again not my platforms(i have none), and not specifically BrahMos, that missile will never fly against such a dedicated naval force.

Furthermore the missiles themselves will not be 5 min apart, they will be fired with in quick succession.
The aforementioned goalkeeper will have to do a lot.

 

[Grand Danois]

that might be a better defence. The launch distance will be outside the SAM envelop (what will that be?)
the Awac/fighters will have to face other aircrafts too.

Outside of the SAM envelope, but not outside the defence perimeter which consist of many items.

OPFOR air is part of the picture.

how many incoming will the radar be able to detect, track, and engage, the missiles have to be guided towards the target or will they be able to acquire it on there own within a certain radius, after this the time for tracking and engaging the next missile/missiles will have to be considered. higher speeds will put more strain on this system.

The radars (plural) can detect and track targets in the hundreds. If you look at the specs for AEGIS/PAAMS/'NAAWS' their radars can deal with a very large number on their own, and the CMS has an integrated picture from all sensors in the area.