Agni & Prithvi Ballistic Missiles : News & Discussions
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Small test sample of the rocket motors under various test phase for qualifying. These are rubber bonded, see the de-bonding in some places ? that is what the criticality is among other defects.
(pic: ASL)
(pic: ASL)
credit - shirobarks
from where to read reports like these to know the our capability. coz according to drdo our agni 5 has max range of 5000 km which is we all know a lie to have good relations with other countries.
from where to read reports like these to know the our capability. coz according to drdo our agni 5 has max range of 5000 km which is we all know a lie to have good relations with other countries.
It is not like that at all. What we cite is a govt stated policy officially. That is Govt cite A5 is a WSC for use till 5k km or more. They do say more, while drdo figures state 5500km+ . Now how much of the + value is up to anyone. Point is if govt say policy is not to strike no further than 5000km then its a policy , not the LV capability limitation. I have a car that can theoretically go to any place but I use it only for a limited area journey, that does not limit the car capability/reach. We have also made it clear that should the need arise we will use all the capability we have ie leveraging our space industry knowledge.
The think tank/confidential reports are always for the western much gullible audience. Purpose has always been to either create panic to justify their own spending or just provide complete gibberish written by someone from a complete different field to science/rocket science. If you let a social science graduate prepare a scientific report on ballistic missiles, most likely quoted source will be wikipedia or such. That is exactly what the above is, so they can make a case for trade restriction for dual use critical stuff like a specific ceramic glass , coating , some electronic lru etc.
India mastered nuclear warhead integration on missiles in the 1990s, according to revelations from the book " Weapons of Peace" by Raj Chengappa, who interviewed Abdul Kalam, Homi Sethna, Raja Ramanna, R Chidambaram and many other key people of the Indian nuclear programme. We first worked towards making nuclear weapons deliverable by air by mating a bomb to a Mirage 2000, which was successfully validated in 1994. Then we made the warhead of Prithvi nuclear capable in 1997, and then we tested an Agni 2 with a full nuclear configuration (without the plutonium core) successfully in 1999. Since our Agni 3, 4, and 5 can carry much higher payloads than Agni 2, we can easily say we have successfully mated our nuclear weapons on all of our strategic missiles.
As for the range, it depends on the warhead type and yield. These are top secret details, we do know India has 100% attained mastery and weaponisation of the atomic bomb and likely the boosted fission bomb. And although there are doubts, I firmly believe we have attained mastery over hydrogen bombs of up to 200 kilotons. The weight of these bombs is unknown, but for thr hydrogen bomb, it's likely a lot less than the 2 tonne maximum that the Agni 5 can carry. Thus, Agni 5 can deliver any atomic weapon we have over it's full range and likely more even.
I highly recommend you to read "Weapons of Peace" by Raj Chengappa. It is an extremely detailed book on the Indian nuclear bomb and missile programme. It revealed that we tried to make a 8,000 km ICBM way back in the 1970s!!! You can read thr book here: Weapons of peace : the secret story of India's quest to be a nuclear power : Chengappa, Raj : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
I have also attached some screenshots of specific pages in the book which details what I have said.
Attachments
@Rajput Lion @randomradio @Parthu @marich01 @FenicromovCW and others, the first ever Agni missile being assembled before being test fired in 1989. Image from Weapons of Peace by Raj Chengappa.
The first ever Agni firing picture from May 1989, with RN Agarwal the project director at the consol. RN Agarwal also worked on our MIRV capability and wanted to test it as far back as 2004:
Abdul Kalam explaining a basic trajectory of the Agni missile. See how it is quasi ballistic:
The first ever Agni firing picture from May 1989, with RN Agarwal the project director at the consol. RN Agarwal also worked on our MIRV capability and wanted to test it as far back as 2004:
Abdul Kalam explaining a basic trajectory of the Agni missile. See how it is quasi ballistic:
The Chinese say A5 has a max range of 8000km. They probably have telemetry tracking data. India may have understated the range to soothe jittery Western capitals.
Yes, successive govts in their unparalleled wisdom chose not to test MIRV tech, according to Bharat Karnad who was a former member of NSAB.
Karnad is a bit of a fanatic. He's hellbent that we should do a megaton range atomic test. We don't even have an area where we can do it, even Pokhran test range has a village barely 5 km away. A test shaft of even 1 km depth would not be sufficient to hold the fireball. But his point on the idiocy of Indian political and bureaucratic class is true.
And after reading the book from where I posted those pictures (Weapons of Peace by Chengappa) I can tell you some of our great scientists were flawed people with big egos, their squabbles hindered our atom bomb and nuclear programme a great deal. And don't even get me started on the level of ego the armed forces displayed! Truly every 5 pages the book had details of another ego clash between army and PMO, or between scientist and scientist, or between laboratories like ISRO and DRDL. It's really sickening to read.
Do you know DRDL didnt want to make Prithvi 1 as a solid rocket because they didn't want ISRO (which had the most experise in solid propellant at the time) to "take over" the programme? By making it liquid powered, they made Prithvi 1 such a weapon it needed like 15 supporting vehicles and over 12 hours needed to make it launch, meaning India's reaction time to any nuclear strike would be no less than 12 hours!!!!
Karnad may have his quirks but he does share some insider info in his posts, having been a former member of the NSAB.
Turf battles are par for the course in all PSUs and govt depts. Seniority over merit is the norm. The IA is no better. Rank comes first. To give you an example, they still wear the collar tabs, epaulets, lanyards and other regalia with their digital camo uniforms, including in forward areas. Low visibility be damned. As an anecdote, the only other country I've seen doing this is Sri Lanka (The late LTTE Chief Prabhakaran to be precise)
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@Hydra i want you especially to read this book that I have mentioned and see how the US tried to *censored* over India's missile and nuclear programme at every turn.
No, they say it due to the S band tracking radar (Kama-N radar, mobile) used for tracking the test article & also gather telemetry data. In test phase as well as in practical, the only way you can know if your guidance control scheme work is by tracking the missile after launch then correlating the test data with expected simulated data, basically why they say data is investigated after to see if test success or not. Same radar chinese also got from Rus & use for their own tracking & testing. That radar has a transponder mode range upto 8000km. We upgraded the telemetry & tracking system at ITR before the A5 class article test in before 2012 or so.
Their logic is such, why do you have 8000km tracking radar if you test only at 5000km.
Same case also for their ranges quoted.
Automated path planning for near shore trials are done like this way in the sea area from Kalam Island. For the bigger tests ships are placed in mid range and near the splash down zone to track the vector.
Yes, Dr VKS talked about it in an interview prob with Gaurav Arya, all the national committee investigating it and only after giving clearance they did proceed. It was Dr Kalam not being keen on it initially which was natural.
Hence I reserve a view that even with all the nuke posturing about prithvi, the user would mostly use it as a heavy strike weapon non nuke purpose and only the makeshift naval version launched from a platform enemy will not suspect about was the makeshift naval part of nuke delivery that too if and only if.
During Kargil war 4 nuclear Prithvis (on land), nuclear Mirage 2000 and even 1 nuclear Agni were readied to strike back Pakistan.
An interesting thing to note here is that we only tested a fully nuclear capable Agni in 1999 after the war which means our scientists must have done some jugaad in a panic and matted a nuclear warhead on Agni 1.
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A statement which can not be verified with definitive proof. Besides, mine is just a theory and the case cited above is only a precautionary arrangement for immediate response.
Please note that I am not doubting or criticising , just that such event and statement are unlikely to be admitted officially. Of course we know at heightened tension we take things very seriously & counter + response are both kept prepared. But the final call is not entirely in the user hand.
Possible. However, Chinese spy ships were reported to be loitering off the East coast, even changing course each time we issued a NOTAM for A5. That may be how they got the data. I suspect India may have gone ahead with the tests to send them a message.
Did i said that they didn't?
Question is why they had tried to do that? Reason is our affection towards USSR.
And what made us go towards USSR? The problem with US is their expectations that they should be the one to whom everyone should give something. We never wanted to take a side, but they simply favoured the Pakistanis constantly thus forcing us to go towards USSR. If they hadn't meddle in Indo-Pak affairs, India would never had gone close to USSR.
Explain why they *censored*ed over Taiwans nuclear weapons programme? Oh right, Taiwan was part of the communist block and hosting Soviet subs perhaps. Probably Hydra baba with his infinite temporal vision sensed the Taiwanese hiding Soviet subs and told the Americans who stopped their program.
Americans didnt even spare Sweden and had their program stopped in advanced stages, Sweden the infamous girlfriend of Soviet Union
