NEW DELHI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0India’s equivalent of the United States’ Tomahawk Land Attack Missile\u00a0\u2014 the\u00a0Nirbhay cruise missile\u00a0\u2014\u00a0has received an extension of 16 months for further development, despite failing its fourth test.
Nirbhay faces problems “with TERCOM, or terrain contour mapping. It\u00a0tends to\u00a0rise up periodically while following the predetermined route. It could\u00a0be that the radar altimeter and the computer are not talking on a regular basis,” the scientist added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been repeated component and hardware failures as well.\u00a0“Stability of the flight over long range has been the main problem,” according to the DRDO scientist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The subsonic nuclear-capable cruise missile boasts a range of\u00a01,000 kilometers and has been under development since 2004 by DRDO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nirbhay was to be inducted in 2016, but testing so far has not gone as expected.<\/p>\n\n\n Bhupinder Yadav, a retired Indian Army major general and defense analyst, said that although development projects have “no surety of positive outcome,” DRDO projects ought to be put up for review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In our context, most of the DRDO projects are similar exercises to reinvent the wheel over stretched timelines and resources. It is time someone questions the logic in continuation and decides to put a break to non-performing public monopolies and seek alternatives,” Yadav said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An Indian Army official, however, argues that the Nirbhay project should not be scrapped. “Turbofan technology, which still has not been mastered, needs to be refined by India and used for this missile successfully. If we could develop the cryogenic technology for Geostationary [Satellite] Launch Vehicle, then we certainly can master this turbofan technology also, given some more time,” the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nirbhay is a two-stage cruise missile developed by the Aeronautical\u00a0Development Establishment laboratory of DRDO. It can carry nearly\u00a0two\u00a0dozen different warheads, per the requirements, and can be launched\u00a0from multiple platforms including air, land and sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another DRDO scientist, while making a case for not scrapping Nirbhay, said its the laboratory that should be changed.\u00a0“Good program with wrong laboratory.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Nirbhay can carry a nuclear payload and is designed to reach its target by flying on tree-top level, as opposed to the\u00a0Indo-Russian BrahMos cruise missiles, which flies at high speed but not as low as the Nirbhay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n India has already decided to increase the range of Indo-Russian supersonic\u00a0cruise missile BrahMos from 290 kilometers to 600 kilometers, which\u00a0could be one of the considerations for scrapping the Nirbhay missile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, some consider the Nirbhay program of prime importance,\u00a0especially because both China and Pakistan have already\u00a0inducted such a system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “India has ballistic and tactical missiles of different\u00a0capacity, but not land-attack cruise missiles [to counter] Pakistan and China, that have such systems with range varying from 400-1,500 kilometers, respectively,” Yadav said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India’s equivalent of the United States’ Tomahawk Land Attack Missile \u2014 the Nirbhay cruise missile \u2014 has received an extension of 16 months for further development, despite failing its fourth test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":115393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,45,11,12,14,49,16],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3390],"class_list":["post-57539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-asia-pacific","category-global","category-industry","category-land","category-techwatch","category-naval"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ZB2P3DDKBBFGBBPU4LSRRPH5TU","arc_canonical_url":"\/naval\/2017\/01\/11\/india-extends-homemade-missile-program-despite-failed-test\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n