Indian Military SAM Systems

The first tests of the new Indian anti-aircraft missile system QRSAM

As Jane's Defense Weekly reported in the article "Indian DRDO-designed QRSAM successfully tested" by Rahul Bedi, the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) at its testing ground in Chandipur on June 4, 2017, performed the first successful tests Developed by the Indian QRSAM (Quick-Reaction Surface-to-Air Missile) surface-to-air missile system. During the tests an air target was hit.



http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2664747.html

A test of India’s fleet of Akash surface-to-air medium-range missile has provided discouraging results, as many as 30 percent of the missiles failed basic tests of accuracy, speed and functionality. The missiles are considered key to the defense of India’s mountainous border with China.

A report from the nation's office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) claimed that the Akash missiles "fell short of the target, had lower than the required velocity, and there was malfunctioning of critical units."

"Out of 80 missiles received up to November 2014, 20 missiles were test fired during April-November 2014. Six of these missiles… 30 percent, failed the test," the report added.

These deficiencies pose "an operational risk during hostilities."

This must be discouraging news for Indian defense — not only were the missiles a massive project, valued at 36 billion rupees ($561 million), but they were made in India as part the country's "Make-In-India" initiative, which seeks to reduce Indian dependence on foreign-made goods, including weapons. Worst of all, the missiles were approved as part of a tougher stance against China — and this report comes in the wake of decades-high tensions between the two nations.

The Akash missiles, manufactured by the state-owned defense corporation Bharat Electronics, are meant to be used against fighters, drones and helicopters attacking air bases. They have been a centerpiece of the defense wing of Make-In-India, as the vast majority of India's surface-to-air missile arsenal are of Russian or Soviet production. The Akash impressed during tests in 2008, leading to the highly lucrative contract in early 2010 to produce 750 missiles across six air force bases.

Seven and a half years later, none of the systems have been fully installed.

The CAG blamed the lack of progress on a lack of necessary infrastructure at the air force bases, which "could not be completed till October 2016 at any of the sites." The report added that while the work was nearly completed at two of the six sites, the Indian Air Force "had not taken over these buildings because of defects in the construction, which rendered them unsuitable for strategic missile system storage. In other stations, the progress was below 45 percent as of October 2016."

There was more bad news. The lifespans of about 260 of the missiles were reduced by improper storage while they sat around, waiting to be installed. This means they will soon need to be replaced, threatening to turn the Akash program into a money sink with no tangible defense gains.

New Delhi can't be happy with this report, as territorial disputes between India and both China and Pakistan have generated significant friction in the region. Indian and Pakistani forces have been trading fire in the disputed territories of Kashmir and Jamma, with over 4,000 people displaced by the violence in July alone.

Meanwhile, India and China have been brought to the brink of war over Doklam, a disputed mountain pass along the three-way border with Bhutan. Both nations have began a military buildup along the border, and the stand-off continues to deteriorate.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201707281055979682-indian-domestic-missiles-test-failure/

Ιndia will acquire US the air defense missile system NASAMS 2



On the bmpd side, recall that the medium-range NASAMS (originally Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, now called National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System), is jointly developed and produced by the Norwegian group Kongsberg (its integrator) and the American corporation Raytheon. The system is based on the combination of the AN / MPQ-64F1 Sentinel radar and the use of air-to-air missiles with active radar homing of the AIM-120 AMRAAM family. The range of the system in the modern configuration of NASAMS 2 is 20-25 km, and reach in height - up to 14-15 km.

Initially, the NASAMS system was created in the interests of the Norwegian Armed Forces, and to date it is armament in Norway and in small quantities in the US (where the SAM was used since 2004 for the air defense of Washington). The system is also acquired by the Netherlands, Spain, Chile, Finland, and recently ordered also by Oman, Lithuania and Indonesia. In April 2017, the government of Australia took the decision to purchase the NASAMS 2 SAM.

Apparently, the Indian Defense Ministry's decision to purchase the NASAMS 2 SAMs means the final rejection of more than a decade of plans for large purchases of the Israeli SPYDER missile, which has similar characteristics and construction principles, negotiated by India for more than a decade. (So far, only six SPYDER batteries started shipping to India in 2018 year).

https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3290095.html

Air defense on Aero India-2019

Akash air defense system. Let not the Indian comrades be offended, but this is a long-suffering complex, forced from the Soviet square-to-ground air defense system. DRDO spent a lot of money, but it was even more effective in the 90s to buy the Buk-M1 air defense system in Russia, which for India was called the Gang, or later the advanced Buk-M2. But the stars did not agree ... And if in Russia the Buk-M3 series is already underway, its Rosoboronexport is even promoting for export under the name Viking, the Indian comrades are proud to present self-propelled launchers with beautiful 3M9 missiles developed in the 1960s in GosMKB "Vympel"







The MRSAM or Barak-8 medium-range air defense launcher is the fruit of Israeli-Indian industry collaboration under the auspices of DRDO.





https://saidpvo.livejournal.com/803532.html

For those not understanding... the Akash is basically an SA-6 and has specs even a new model Pantsir-S can outperform sadly... but then the new model Pantsir-S outperforms the NASAM-2 as well and doesn't need expensive ARH missiles either...

Tests of the new Indian anti-aircraft missile system QRSAM

The Indian Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), on its test site in Chandipur, on February 26, 2019, carried out another successful test of the developed Indian short-medium-range-to-Air Missile anti-aircraft missile system QRSAM.

As bmpd colleagues previously reported, QRSAM SAM in its current performance is being developed by DRDO in conjunction with Indian state-owned companies Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) for the benefit of the Indian army since 2014 in exchange for the discontinued development of Maitri SAM (also originally designated QRSAM) , a long time created by DRDO in conjunction with MBDA France.

In the modern look, the QRSAM system is used as an anti-aircraft missile, a modified version of an Astra class Astra air-to-air missile drilled by DRDO with an active radar homing head. Astra solid-propellant missile in the missile version must have a firing range of up to 25-30 km. The SAM, in addition to the active radar GPS, is also equipped with two-way datalink for correction in the middle part of the trajectory.

The six-container launcher of the sloped launch of the QRSAM SAM system, first demonstrated by DRDO in May 2017, is located on the chassis of the Indian car Ashok Leyland Super Stallion HMV with an 8x8 wheel formula. The QRSAM ADMS battery should include four fire platoons, each of which will include a control vehicle with the X-band BMFR (Battery Multi-Function Radar) X-band and two launchers created by the DRDO multi-function radar. Also, the battery should include one C-band BSR (Battery Surveillance Radar) early warning radar, created by the DRDO, and the BCPV battery command center. Both types of radar use AFAR and will also be placed on the chassis Ashok Leyland Super Stallion HMV (8x8).

In 2012, the Indian Army planned to purchase the QRSAM system to equip eight anti-aircraft missile regiments of a three-battery, assessing the cost of the acquisition program at 12 thousand crores of rupees (about 2.1 billion dollars). However, the deadlines for development and the cost of the system now can not be determined.









https://bmpd.livejournal.com/3547845.html

Most Indian and probably Asian missile systems are outdated. But why is this Indian missile system Akash being compared with Pantsir-S? Two different types of systems.

Akash probably can be compared with legacy model of the BUK 1

I compared it with Pantsir SM because they both offer similar flight range...

In many ways it is an SA-6 with about 100kgs of extra fuel which increases the flight range by 10-15 kms to about 30-35km or so.

Honestly... India has been working on this missile for the best part of 30 years and it is comparable to the first model BUK that entered service 40 years ago.

Their latest version does away with the ramjet motor... like BUK did...

Outdated yes. More importantly they lack enough SAM regiments. Syria brought down an Israeli F-16 with Soviet era S-200. If you lack state of the art SAM systems you can manage that to a certain extent with large numbers. India lacks both.

Their main problem is that they essentially tried to reinvent the BUK without looking at the reasons why the BUK is the way it is...

I think India would be better advised to just buy SAMs off the shelf and pay for production licences to make their own missiles and then make them in enormous numbers.
The made in India idea is a good one but they need to pick technologies to make for themselves things that need to be made in enormous numbers that India needs a lot of... assembling a few hundred planes or missiles is a waste of the programme concept...

Buying Pantsir and getting a licence to make 5 million missiles for it would be of enormous benefit for Indian air defence for example...

The whole point of made in India is to acquire skills and production capabilities... the problem is that the Indian people would benefit from a lot of other technologies much more than taking an ancient Soviet SAM and making it with new upgraded bits.

It would be like developing a new ATGM and starting with an AT-3 as the basis... new motor, new warhead, improved guidance, new flight control system that replaces the wire guidance with an IIR seeker.

It might turn out to be an OK system, but you are wasting a lot of money and time upgrading something that is totally obsolete... if they had started with something much more modern they would have a much more capable product much faster.

In SAMs a few of the lessons include ramjet/rocket powered missiles are interesting but have some issues too, while solid rocket fuel has improved quite a lot over the last few decades.

Experience with the SA-6 in the middle east was that once the main radar is taken out by an anti radiation missile the TELs are vulnerable to F-16s carrying dumb bombs... the TELs have no way of engaging targets on their own. They also only have three missiles per vehicle.

Until the weaknesses were worked out they were quite potent and killed quite a few aircraft, but once it was analysed it was realised that ARMs could defeat its radar making the whole system vulnerable and I am sure the Chinese are aware of that too.

The upgrades the Soviets made were to drop the rocket/ramjet design and just go for an all rocket missile, but put tracking radar on each TEL and backup optical guidance. This improved range so aircraft with ARMs could be engaged before they launch their missiles, and you would have to take out each individual TEL because each can engage aircraft separately even after the main tracking radar is down. ARMs were not effective against the tracking radars so you would have to go after each TEL individually which will probably cost you planes.

The next upgrade... SA-17 could engage ballistic targets and high speed anti radiation missiles like HARM and Shrike, and of course the upgrades after that add a launch tube which protects the missiles in handling and from atmospheric conditions and weather and it also means 6 missiles can be carried on the standard TEL and 12 on the TEL/loader...

ATGMs went through similar evolutions... compared with AT-3, an AT-5 is faster, longer ranged, more powerful warhead, easier to use and aim. Kornet takes that a step further because its laser beam riding design means it is much much faster... supersonic... which is obviously faster than any wire dragger missile could ever achieve, which means it is more practical against targets at longer range too.

It really isn't a question of technical expertise... it is more managerial... they tried to do it on the cheap thinking a simpler older missile will be cheaper and much easier to upgrade with new stuff. Put new fuel in it and a new warhead and new seeker and we can show how much better out SA-6 is than the original.

The problem is that BUK is rather better still and the new Indian missile adopts the solid rocket only design of BUK so after 40 years of their own work and testing and developing, they are looking at a design that the Soviets had in the 1980s.

What they should do is look ahead and say OK we missed the boat on the solid rocket fuel design of BUK... why don't we do a joint venture with the Russians to create an SA-6 like missile that uses square intakes instead of four small round ones and make it a rocket/scramjet... that would be state of the art... and go a step further and say lets make a naval and an air launched version too... a mach 2.4 SA-6 to 35km is one thing, but a mach 6 SA-6 with a range of 120km from a ground launch is something else... from air launch, perhaps 200-300km range at very high speed... it becomes interesting... and further development will only make it better...

I think capacity of Indians could be the best seen, when comparing with Iran. In contrary to Iran, which is 40 years under sanction, India have free Access to any technology in the east and the west. Iran start with small steps and start with reverse enginiring of spare parts and learning and developing technical inteligence. When they produce all spare parts for their SAMs, planes, etc, they start producing new ones, the same as original ones, like Hawk and Crotale. When they fully mastered original technology, they start to modernizing them to modern standard like Mersad, which is Hawk only visualy from outside, but inside is totally new, as missiles have ARH radars, complex have new PESA/AESA radars, digital electronics, etc. After that they start developing their own new SAM systems like Bavar-373 and Khordad-3, which prove itself with shoting down US Global Hawk. Iran is also producing domesticaly new Kowsar modernized multirole F-5E/F jets.

India on the other hand made their start very laudly with big steps andf take developing help from around the World and after long time, they produce nothing on their own. Let see, Arjun tank is Leopard 2 tank with Israeli FCS and they got under average tank. Tejas is fully foreign, engine is from US, radar and armament are from Israel, radome and ejection seat is from UK, avionics is from France,... India also claim codeveloping Barak-8, but it is fully Israeli SAM complex. Akash is fully Indian project of modernization of old SA-6 Kub. it seems it is a failure, as India went to buy NASAMS and in development of new Medium range SAM with Israel (Israel developing it).