NEW DELHI: In a big improvement amid the frenetic race amongst China, Russia and the US to develop and deploy hypersonic weapons, India has examined its first long-range missile that’s manoeuvrable mid-flight and flies over 5 instances the velocity of sound to evade enemy missile defence programs.
The hypersonic missile, designed to hold numerous payloads for ranges over 1,500km, was “efficiently flight-tested” from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island off the coast of Odisha at 6.55pm on Saturday, a defence ministry official mentioned.
The missile, which flew at Mach 6 velocity, was tracked by numerous vary programs deployed in a number of domains. “The flight information obtained from down vary ship stations confirmed the profitable terminal manoeuvres and influence with excessive diploma of accuracy,” the official added.
Describing it as “a historic second and stupendous achievement”, defence minister Rajnath Singh mentioned the flight-trial has propelled India into a bunch of choose nations that has the potential to develop such “crucial and superior army applied sciences”.
Former DRDO chairman G Satheesh Reddy instructed TOI the missile is “a gamechanger” with a number of purposes in Military, Navy and IAF. “A missile of this vary with hypersonic velocities will present a decisive edge to India.”
The missile, with the velocity of a ballistic missile in addition to the manoeuvring functionality of a cruise missile, in fact, should be fine-tuned with a number of checks over the following few years earlier than it’s prepared for manufacturing and deployment. The naval model will probably be geared in direction of destroying enemy warships at lengthy ranges with pinpoint precision, an official mentioned.
With their functionality to defeat present missile and air defence programs because of super-fast speeds, high-manoeuvrability and low altitudes of flight, hypersonic weapons have change into a significant focus space for main army powers. The 2 most important forms of hypersonic weapons are cruise missiles which are powered by air-breathing engines or “scramjets” throughout their total flight and “glide autos” which are launched atop ballistic missiles earlier than gliding to their targets at speeds over Mach 5.
China and Russia are forward of the US in designing aerodynamically manoeuvrable hypersonic weapons to be used with nuclear warheads. In July 2021, as an illustration, China’s take a look at of a nuclear-capable missile carrying a hypersonic glide car and warhead had despatched shockwaves across the globe.
In June 2019, DRDO for the primary time examined a hypersonic know-how demonstrator car (HSTDV), which was to function a vital constructing block within the improvement of long-range hypersonic weapons. However the flight trial failed.
A second take a look at in September 2020 was profitable to the extent that the scramjet-powered “cruise car” or HSTDV flew for 22-23 seconds at Mach 6 velocity after separation from the “launch car” of stable rocket motor of an Agni-I ballistic missile at 30km altitude. Whereas one other HSTDV take a look at was carried out in Jan final yr, trials of a for much longer length are wanted on this entrance, as reported by TOI earlier.
Parallelly, there was a plan to develop a hypersonic model of the already-inducted typical (non-nuclear) ramjet-powered BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, which fly at Mach 2.8 velocity with a 450-km strike vary, developed with Russia. However this will probably be an costly proposition and isn’t on the playing cards at current, an official mentioned.
