Old videos were cool with proper tracking view. Not like the current 15 seconds clip shared after. Things have gone backwards for the strategic systems video share part.
Agni & Prithvi Ballistic Missiles : News & Discussions
- Thread starter Sathya
- Start date
I think only A5 and A4 have the latest guidance, fuel and fuel tank technology. Giving more surface area for stable burn to harness 97% fuel potential and minimum solid afterburn residue. This helps in building a compact design and increasing thrust to weight ration for max payload.
A1P, A4 and A5 have had concurrent development hence it is easily recognisable what difference is in there as compared to previous gen systems. Reentry vehicle design, manufacturing played another important part, the research done on shape and the plasma effect, how to mitigate.
All aspect improvement, miniaturised avionics, state of the art control navigation & guidance system, reduced footprint, long term storage, fast digital checkout system, continuous monitoring system for early fault detection & health monitoring, launch technique, increased lifetime of the different parts inside canister and its sub parts, test benches, novel indigenous prediction models on supercomputing platform for the design work, launchers, various platforms, their individual comm system, obfuscation, rapid deployment, manpower training. So many things are associated with the development curve.
Back to the basic missile, as Gautam's calculation once showed and now we can understand it more, payload and throwaway distance both have increased. If a recently tested MM3 is quoted with 7000 miles+ sort of distance travel capable with mirv or a 1 ton class payload, a system that has single booster in the A5 rocket motor dia class then 2nd stage with lesser dia motor then the payload stage with another solid motor involved. In comparison the domestic new gen system has 2 solid fuel dia stages with a 3rd stage payload with liquid fuel motor. There is no telling what the throughput it will deliver depending on payload size.
Strategic missiles are handled by DRDO's missile cluster. So BDL, HEMRL, ASL, RCI, TBRL, DRDL etc.
MoD doesn't seem to think so. The prime is supposed to be a part of the dedicated rocket force, whenever that happens. It will probably stay out of SFC's control.
I thought Ap would replace or complement A1, A2 and Prithvi.
I thought so too. But the plan seems to be to keep A1, A2 & Prithvi series active until a sufficient stock of SLBMs & ALBMs/ALCMs are built up. This is both in terms of missile systems & the launch platforms.
When a sufficient stock is built up these older missiles would be retired with no direct successor. Land based strategic missiles like A3, A5, A6 etc. would continue in service & would continue to evolve. Same with the K series. But nuke-tipped SRBMs would probably not continue for long. Instead, all SRBMs would be conventional.
This is just my guess. Take it with a pinch of salt.
All strategic systems are generally in house made via different facilities, CAS ACEM SFC Jagdalpur ASL work center many such are involved. Material , machinery, maintenance all with Govt owned while manpower provided by different service companies including BDL Premier explosives etc. Now it has expanded so some outsourcing is done but via service contract again. This is why you do not see order booking for such. Companies provide the manpower cost. Everything else needed are procured under Govt tenders.
Agni name is synonymous with our land based deterrence so it will always be a strategic system.
They are developing a variant of Agni-P called BM-04 which will be part of the IRF.