India is ready for testing First ICBM Missile Agni-V (5000 Km)

India has begun final preparations for the first test of its most-ambitious strategic missile, the 5,000-km Agni-V, which will prove to be a technical as well as logistical challenge. The Agni-V, which will bring the whole of Asia, 70% of Europe and other regions under its strike envelope, will be tested from Wheeler Island off the Orissa coast towards end-March to early-April, defence sources said. The nuclear-capable Agni-V, about 50-tonne in weight and 17.5-m tall, is bound to generate waves. Once the three-stage missile becomes operational by 2014-15 after “four to five repeatable tests”, as promised by DRDO, India will break into the exclusive ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) club that counts just US, Russia, China, France and UK as its members. India could have gone for a higher strike range but believes the solid-fuelled Agni-V is “more than adequate’’ to meet current threat perceptions and security concerns. The missile can, after all, even hit the northernmost parts of China. With a canister-launch system to impart higher road mobility, the missile will give the armed forces much greater operational flexibility than the earlier-generation of Agni missiles. “The accuracy levels of Agni-V and the 3,500-km Agni-IV (first tested in November 2011), with their better guidance and navigation systems, are far higher than Agni-I (700-km), Agni-II (2,000-km) and Agni-III (3,000-km),’’ said the source.

India tests ‘Swordfish’ radar with successful missile defence test

In a third successful test of its ambitious missile defence programme, Defence Research and Development Orgainsation (DRDO) scientists launched an indigenously developed interceptor missile that destroyed an incoming ballistic “enemy” missile at an altitude of 75 km.  The missile firing will have also tested long-range capabilities of its indigenously developed Swordfish radar.

As part of the test, an ‘enemy’ missile was fired from a naval ship in the Bay of Bengal simulating the terminal phase of the flight of a ballistic missile with a range of 1,500 km. As the incoming missile neared the Wheeler Island off the Orissa coast, a Prithvi air defence missile was launched to intercept the ‘enemy’ missile at an altitude of about 75 km and ‘killed’ it, an official said.

The ‘enemy’ missile was a modified Dhanush surface-to-surface missile (SSM), which is the ship-borne, naval version of the Prithvi SSM.

This was the third BMD test in the series and would have involved testing the indigenously developed “Swordfish” long-range tracking radar. The ”Swordfish is an acknowledged  derivative of the Israeli Green Pine long range radar, which is the critical component of that country’s Arrow missile defence system.

India had earlier imported two of these Israeli radars for its own use.

Earlier, in January, DRDO sources had said that a third test of the missile defence shield would involve both interceptor missiles and missile tracking radars.

While two earlier tests, in November 2006 and December 2007, successfully tested the Prithvi Air Defence (PAD -exo-atmospheric) and the Advanced Air Defence (AAD-endo-atmospheric) interceptor systems, the main thrust of the forthcoming tests would have been to validate the capabilities of the indigenously developed ‘Swordfish’ Long Range Tracking Radar (LRTR).

Swordfish is a target-acquisition and fire-control radar designed for the country’s missile defence  system.

“The missile to be hit will be fired from a longer distance than it was in the earlier test. DRDO will test whether the radar can track the incoming missile from that distance or not,” officials had said in January.

The radar will be instrumental in tracking an incoming hostile missile which will be intercepted by the PAD exo-atmospheric interceptor missile at an altitude over 80 km from earth, defence sources had said.

The programme is aimed at providing the country with a credible missile defence shield – primarily against missiles fielded by hostile neighbours Pakistan and China.

The Pakistani Hatf and Ghauri missiles, essentially hand-me-down versions of Chinese and North Korean missiles, have been touted as being India-specific. These tests are meant to simulate trajectories of these family of missiles.

Yesterday scientists had said that the ‘enemy’ missile would be a modified version of the Dhanush surface-to-surface missile and would simulate the terminal phase of the flight of a ballistic missile with a range of 1,500 km, similar to Pakistan’s Ghauri missile.

“As the incoming missile nears Wheeler Island, a Prithvi air defence missile will be launched to intercept it at an altitude of about 80 km and kill it,” the official added.

Scientists had also indicated yesterday that DRDO would need to carry out at least three to four further trials with both the endo and exo-atmospheric versions of the missile shield before declaring it operational.

“The test will mark the completion of the first phase of the programme and it will secure operational clearance by 2012-13,” a scientist said.

Interestingly, though baptised as the Prithvi Air Defence system, the interceptor has now been renamed Pradyumna.

DRDO has affirmed that its system would be superior to the Russian S-300 and the American Patriot systems, both of which systems have been offered to India by its manufacturers. 

India successfully tests Cryogenic rocket engine

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully conducted a test of its indigenous cryogenic (supercooled fuel) engine to be used in the next geosynchronous launch vehicle (GSLV-D3) mission, the space agency said here Saturday.” The flight acceptance hot test of the Cryogenic engine was carried out at the liquid propulsion systems centre at Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu Thursday. This engine will be used in the next GSLV launch in April 2009 for carrying the 2.3-tonne geo-stationary experimental satellite (GSAT),” ISRO said in a statement. Cryogenic engines are rocket motors designed for liquid fuels that have to be held at very low ‘cryogenic’ temperatures, as they would otherwise be gas at normal temperatures. Typically, hydrogen and oxygen are used which need to be held respectively below 20 degrees Kelvin (-253 degrees Celsius) and 90 degrees Kelvin (-183 degrees Celsius) to remain in liquid form. ISRO plans to use its own first cryogenic engine in place of the Russian-made engine in the upper stage of the rocket that will deploy the satellite with navigation and technology payloads into the geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). The cryogenic engine develops a thrust of 73 kilo Newtons (kN) in vacuum with a specific impulse of 454 seconds (7.56 minutes) and can carry 2.2 tonnes. Working on a staged combustion cycle with an integrated turbo-pump, the engine will have 42,000 rotations per minute (rpm). It also has two steering engines developing a thrust of 2 kN each to enable three-axis control of the launch vehicle during the flight mission.” The hot test was carried out for 200 seconds (3.33 minutes) during which the engine was operated in the nominal and 13 percent up-rated thrust regimes. All the propulsion parameters were satisfactory and matched with predictions,” the statement mentioned. The cryogenic engine will be integrated with propellant tanks, stage structures and associated feed lines of the launch vehicle for the flight mission in April next from the spaceport at Sriharikota, about 80 km north of Chennai. The central government Friday approved the development of semi-cryogenic engines for space transportation at a cost of Rs.1,798 crore (approx Rs.18 billion) with a foreign exchange component of Rs.588 crore (Rs.5.88 billion).” This will be an important step towards self-reliance in advanced space transportation technology,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi. Cryogenic engine technology is currently present only in Russia and the US. The semi-cryogenic engines will facilitate applications for future space missions like the reusable launch vehicle, the unified launch vehicle and the vehicle for inter-planetary missions, Chidambaram added.