the nilgiris cost about 900 ish mlns usd
There are discrepancies on the price and also buzz of it going above the budget.
Mumbai, 11 September 2022 Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd (MDL) launched the third Stealth Fri
pib.gov.in
32 x Barak 8
16 x Kusha SAM
Kusha SAM will be dedicated hypersonic interceptor and shouldn't be used to shoot Fighter jets & sub sonic threats
Kusha will be used to shoot fighter and subsonic threats; it's more or less a 1:1 replacement of Barak-8. It's literally what's it's lowest tier missile is supposed to do.
• People are currently having problems with managing the hot launch of Astra from a VLS and SMART has atleast 3,000kg solid propellant.
• But let's assume you somehow make a VLS for that. SMART is based on the schema of Sagarika/Shaurya/Pralay which is already quite long; 9m to be precise. Replace the small compact warhead with a 3m long torpedo and it gets even longer. If we consider the diameter to be 0.75m (typical for this family) the length becomes almost 13m.
• That's not all; in cold launching the length of the canister is pretty much the length of the missile and the length of the VLS is pretty much the length of the canister. But in hot launching you need an additional plenum chamber below the missile canister so that exhaust pressure can be reduced otherwise the whole VLS would suffer a catastrophic failure. So add a meter or two for plenum chamber.
Vishakhapatnam has a draft 6.5m and already requires a substantial superstructure to accommodate the 9m long BrahMos. We've 6 more metres to account for now.
The only place you can use for this long of a VLS would be adjacent to the hangar but then again you'd have other complications with it. Also this loadout of 16 would decrease, may be even get halved.
Advanced nation's are Re arming Ships in sea....
Not nations, just USA.
USA has approximately 9,000 VLS cell, all interchangeable and dispersed everywhere from Gulf to SCS...yet only in October, 2024 they managed to pull off this feat.
The abysmal cells we currently have are most of the time empty because the production rate and high cost doesn't justify "wasting" missiles by deploying them on ships.
So having at sea replenishment capability for just 40 or so ships, armed with three different types of missiles is bit of a far cry given our current priorities.
By 2032 out GDP would be 10 Tn.....so defense budget of ~250 Bn so navy might get ~80 Bn so cost of missiles shouldn't be constraint.
Well it's bit hard to predict because well...VUCA. Current forecast for 2030 is around 7 trillion, but let's just assume it touches 10 trillion.
But even then, it's not how defence budget works.
• currently defence budget is around 2% of GDP so it'd be just 200bn. For an idea, in USA it's 3.5% and in Poland where the national sentiment is of an immediate war, it's 4.7%
2% is already substantial for a nation where more than half of the population is in villages...bump it to 3% without an eminent war and people would start protesting.
• But for the sake of argument, let's say it's 250bn. Then also it's not as simple as dividing 250 by 3 to get 80 for Navy and now Navy would buy missiles worth 80 billion.
In India typically almost 30% of budget goes to pay, 15% to sustenance, 20% for pensions and in remaining you have things like ECHS, coastal security, R&D...ultimately it's just around 30% for capital acquisition.
45% (capital acquisition + sustenance) of 250bn would be 112bn. This the amount you're left with to both buy new guns and ammunition for existing guns; but it's aggregate. So now we'll do the ⅓ you did earlier...37bn.
tl;dr: It's really heartwarming to see
"bloody civilians" showing interest in DefTech; especially tinkering with ideas because it eans even if 99 of those ideas are dumb; then also there might be one worth filing an IPR. But as I've always said this, please don't ignore SWaP constraints and the capital requirements.
-ER (900 Km)
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