Missile Wars


IAF to be armed with ‘air-delivered munitions’


By Prasun K. Sengupta

Back in February 1998 when India decided to co-develop with Russia the 290km-range supersonic BrahMos multi-role cruise missiles (MRCM), Pakistan decided to counter the BrahMos with two distinct types of cruise missiles — the 700km-range land- and sea-launched Babur/Hatf-7 (a scaled-down variant of China’s 1,500km-range DH-10A subsonic cruise missile), and the 350km-range air-launched Ra’ad/Hatf-8 air-launched cruise missile whose design, engineering development and series production tools and processes were reportedly acquired off-the-shelf from South Africa’s Denel Aerospace. 10 years later, while the Babur and Ra’ad have already entered operational service with all three armed services of Pakistan, in India’s case, only the land-launched and ship-launched variants of BrahMos has been inducted into service by the Indian Army and Navy (the latter did so in mid-2005), while the air-launched variant will be service-qualified only by 2008 and that too by the Navy (on board its eight Tu-142M Mod 4 maritime surveillance/ASW aircraft), not by the Indian Air Force (IAF). It is believed that the India-Russia joint venture BrahMos Aerospace Ltd is now no longer pursuing the prospect of qualifying the BrahMos on the IAF’s Su-30MKI air dominance combat aircraft. In a way, this portends well for the IAF as its operational requirements never called for acquiring BrahMos-type MRCMs (it already has standoff precision-guided munitions like the Kh-59MK and Popeye guided air-to-surface missiles and Harpy loitering anti-radar drones), but has instead, since late 1998, called for the acquisition of a family of multi-role supersonic ‘air-delivered munitions’ (ADM) with ranges of between 700km and 1,200km and capable of being armed with both conventional blast-fragmentation warheads as well as 300kT tactical nuclear warheads. The IAF’s reasons for acquiring the ADMs and not the BrahMos are primarily two-fold: the BrahMos’s target engagement envelope is limited to 290km and it can be armed with only non-nuclear warheads due to Russia’s adherence to MTCR guidelines; and weight-cum-payload carriage limitations that have resulted in the BrahMos having the potential to be flight-qualified only on board the Su-30MKI.

The project to develop the ADM, whose existence has yet to be publicly acknowledged by either the Ministry of Defence (MoD) or the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), officially took off in late 2006, with the Hyderabad-based Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL) and Bangalore-based Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) and Defence Avionics Research Establishment (DARE) being the principal DRDO-owned laboratories that are involved in the ADM’s R&D effort. Based on the IAF’s Air Staff Qualitative Requirements, the conventionally armed ADM (carrying a 300kg warhead) is required to have a range of 700km and be flight-qualified on both the Su-30MKI and the Dassault Mirage 2000TH. The tactical nuclear warhead-armed ADM will be required to have a range of 1,200km. Both variants will each be powered by a liquid-fuelled ramjet incorporating integrated accelerators. The ADM will have a maximum weight of no more than 900kg, length of 5.4 metres, diameter of 300mm, width of 0.98 metres, and cruise speed of Mach 2.2 at an altitude of 200 metres, which will increase to Mach 3 in its terminal cruise phase at an altitude of 50 metres. The conventionally armed ADM will use a tri-mode target homing system for precision-strike lethality and will comprise an imaging infra-red (IIR) seeker, a millimeter-wave radar and a semi-active laser homing device. For mid-course guidance use will be made of a ring laser gyro-based inertial navigation system coupled to a GPS receiver. In terms of external appearance, the IAF-specific ADM will bear a close resemblance to Taiwan’s Hsiung Feng (Brave Wind) 3 supersonic cruise missile, which has been under development since 1997 by the country’s state-owned Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST) and the Taichung-based Aerospace Industrial Development Center (AIDC). This cruise missile was first test-fired from Taiwan’s eastern coast facing the Pacific Ocean in December 2004 and the final series of test-firings were conducted in early January last year.