DRDO and PSU's

[Ayan Barat]

It seems now the Iskander and Oniks have similar weights of around 3.5 ish tons and 600 km range.

• Ballistic Missile usually don't have a fixed warhead, rather a curve of warhead Vs range. For Iskander it's 700kg at 500km to 500kg to 400km.
• For BrahMos it's a fixed 300kg at 850km.

• Iskander not only let's you play in the warhead weight but also supports multiple different warhead types compared to just SAPHE on BrahMos.

Russia or any other force standardize around Oniks considering that both costs nearly same?

• The biggest reason for using Oniks is it's cost. Oniks/BrahMos is an insanely expensive weapon because of things like active radar seeker and ramjet engine. I don't have any hard data but my estimation is it's $5 mil a pop for BrahMos; should be slightly less for Oniks.
• Iskander is an extremely simple missile compared to BrahMos. Just a big solid booster, warhead, a CAS and a rudimentary INS + GNSS in majority of the variants. We again don't have any hard data but a similar ATACMS cost $1.5m per shot.

• This is where simple ballistic missiles shine; you can do a barrage attack with them because you can fire 3x. If BrahMos would haven't been so expensive then we'd have seen more of them on our warships instead of just 16.

What's the special necessity of less survivable quasi-ballistic missile when it goes only to low supersonic at terminal phase bleeding energy

• Every single weapon is for one specific target, we can definitely use it for others but the efficiency would decrease. A full power rifle can go through most of the body armours but this doesn't mean we can replace pistol, SMGs and shotguns with those.
• There are numerous targets like forward staging areas that need multiple missile like and don't have adequate ADS to counter a quasi-ballistic missiles; you can't waste $15 mil for this.

I don't believe on Ramjets being expensive to manufacture. It's just economies of scale problem.

This same applies to Iskander too. If economies of scale is utilised to its fullest then a solid rocket motor would be cheaper than ramjet because before Iskander way more solid rocket motors have been made compared to numbers of liquid ramjet before Oniks.

Again, my whole argument is based on the current scenario. If someone comes up tomorrow with a $2 mil supersonic cruise missile then there's absolutely no need for these short range ballistic missiles, throw them away. But till then this is the most efficient way

 

[ArjunMK1A]

Hansa NG: Hits a "Canadian" Roadblock - alphadefense.in

Hansa NG, India’s first indigenous trainer aircraft, faces a setback as Rotax blocks engine supply. Explore more..

alphadefense.in

Cockblocked by Canada.

 

[Azaad]

Hansa NG: Hits a "Canadian" Roadblock - alphadefense.in

Hansa NG, India’s first indigenous trainer aircraft, faces a setback as Rotax blocks engine supply. Explore more..

alphadefense.in

Cockblocked by Canada.

Good. Gives us an excuse to block the Strykers. It comes from a GD plant in Canada.

 

[Corvus Splendens]

There seems contradicting reports regarding NG-CCM. DRDO developing an NG-CCM. Nothing to do with ASRAAM.

IAF inducts ASRAAM as NG-CCM.

So the weapon will be called as NG-CCM. So the product from DRDO will receive an name.

AFAIK block 6 ASRAAMs are called NG-CCM and older block 5 missiles are just called ASRAAM. Plan was to induct in-development Astra-IR as NGCCM but IAF was in a hurry and Block 6 ASRAAMs were given this nomenclature instead.

 

[Varoon4]

Good. Gives us an excuse to block the Strykers. It comes from a GD plant in Canada.

Or make the purchase of the Strykers conditional on supply of the Rotax engines.

 

[Azaad]

Or make the purchase of the Strykers conditional on supply of the Rotax engines.

Those engines will be available anyway once Turdeau is out of office & Poilievre is in.