DRDO: Intercontinental ballistic missiles well within
reach
Advanced
Systems Laboratory (ASL) is the deceptively bland name that obscures from
public view the Defence Research & Development Organisation’s
(DRDO’s) most glamorous laboratory. At the DRDO missile complex here in Hyderabad , ASL develops
the ballistic missiles that, in the ultimate nuclear nightmare, will carry
Indian nuclear weapons to targets — thousands of kilometres away. Foreign
collaboration is seeping into many areas of R&D, but ASL’s technological
domain
— the realm of strategic ballistic missiles — is something that no country
parts with, for love or for money. No foreigner would ever set foot in ASL.
But
Business Standard has been allowed an exclusive visit. The erudite, soft-spoken
director of ASL, Dr V G Sekharan, describes the technologies
that were developed for the DRDO’s new, 5,000-kilometre range Agni-5 missile,
which was tested flawlessly in April. He reveals nothing except restraint stood
between India
and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could strike a target
anywhere on the globe.
ICBMs have
ranges above 5,500 kilometres, a threshold that the Agni-5 already sits on. For
India , a more strategically
relevant range would be about 7,500 kilometres, which would cover the world
except for the Americas .
“Going up
from 5,000 kilometres to, let us say, 7,500 kilometres requires only
incremental changes, which we have already assessed. We would need a more
powerful booster, which we could make ourselves at ASL; and we would need to
strengthen some of the systems, such as heat shielding, that are already flying
on the Agni-V,” says Sekharan.
For now,
however, ASL is not developing an ICBM. Instead, its focus is on
“operationalising” the Agni-V, which involves putting it into a canister and
conducting three to four test-launches from the canister. When the Agni-V
enters service with the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), which operates India ’s nuclear
deterrent, it will be delivered in hermetically sealed canisters that safeguard
the road-mobile missiles for over a decade, while they are transported
and handled.
Launching a
ballistic missile from a canister is a technological feat that ASL has
perfected with smaller missiles, and will now modify for the bigger Agni-V.
Since the missile’s giant rocket motors cannot be fired while it is inside the
canister, a gas-generation unit at the bottom of the canister, below the missile,
generates a massive boost of gas that ejects the missile from the canister.
“The gas
pushes the Agni-V out, like a bullet from the barrel of a gun. In less than
half a second, the 50-tonne missile clears the canister by 15 metres, and that
is when the rocket motor can safely ignite. In 30 seconds, the Agni-V breaks
the sound barrier and, in 90 seconds, it has left the atmosphere,” explains
Sekharan.
The DRDO
has promised the armed forces that the Agni-V will be test-fired from a
canister in early 2013. ASL is on track to achieve that target, says Sekharan.
Within a couple of months, a “pop-up test” will be conducted with a canister,
in which the gas generator ejects a dummy missile. Meanwhile, the actual
missile is being integrated with the canister.
The Agni-V
project funding has already been cleared by the political council of the Union
cabinet, a fast-track procedure for strategic projects that eliminates
cumbersome MoD sanctions. This allows ASL to place orders for the materials and
sub-systems that will go into the first few Agni-V missiles, taking care of
production lead times. ASL scientists recount that “maraging steel” for the
canister takes two years to be delivered by specialist defence PSU, Midhani.
The rocket motor casings take another one year.
On the
question that exercises strategic analysts the world over — is ASL
developing “multi independently-targetable re-entry vehicles”, or MIRVs —
Sekharan remains ambiguous: “I can say we are working on MIRV technologies. The
key challenge — the “post-boost vehicle”, which carries the multiple warheads —
is not a technology
challenge, merely an engineering one. DRDO will acquire and
demonstrate the capability for MIRVs by 2014-15. But the decision
to deploy MIRVs would be a political one.”
MIRVs are
multiple warheads, up to ten, which would be fitted atop a single Agni-V. These
would be a mix of nuclear bombs and dummy warheads to confuse enemy air
defences. Each warhead can be programmed to hit a different target; or multiple
warheads can be directed at a single target, but with different trajectories.
Interestingly,
Sekharan reveals that the DRDO does not need sanction to begin work on such
technologies. “The decision-making works like this: we demonstrate the
technology and the capability. Then the government decides, keeping in mind the
big picture.”
“In the
Agni-V, the government didn’t say, ‘we have a threat perception… I need a
long-range missile.’ It was the DRDO that said that we now have the capability
to enhance the Agni-III to 5,000 kilometres, and so the government sanctioned
the project.”
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