Indian weapons systems were a success during Operation Sindoor when India struck Pakistan during its 100-hour aerial battle, damaging enemy airfields, drones, and air defence systems.
BrahMos, Akash surface-to-air missile, the D4 anti-drone system, and other systems designed and developed by the country's premier defence research and development body, DRDO, performed exceptionally well. The chief of DRDO, Dr Samir V Kamat, spoke to NDTV about the future of BrahMos, India's quest to develop a hypersonic missile and the lessons learnt during Operation Sindoor.
The Future of BrahMos
The world's fastest supersonic cruise missile, BrahMos, was developed in partnership with Russia and struck Pakistani airfields during the conflict. BrahMos is universal - It can be launched from land, sea and air platforms. Dr Kamat shared an update on the developments in the BrahMos programme and said the scientists are looking at extending its range and having a smaller version capable of attaching to other fighter jets apart from the Su-30MKI.
The BrahMos air version can be launched only from Su-30MKI, which is already a smaller version of land and sea variants.
"We are increasing the range of the BrahMos missile. We are also looking at making it smaller so it can be mounted on all our air platforms. Today's BrahMos can be mounted only on the Sukhoi 30. But we are working on making a smaller version of BrahMos, which we are calling BrahMos-NG, and then it can be mounted on any of our platforms," Dr Kamat said.
India's Hypersonic Missiles
The ongoing Iran-Israel aerial battle started with drones, long-range ballistic missiles, followed by Tehran using hypersonic missiles (capable of flying at speeds five times more than the speed of sound) that are manoeuvrable and evade enemy air defences.
India is not behind in its development of hypersonic. Last year, the DRDO test-fired a long-range hypersonic missile from the APJ Abdul Kalam Island off the coast of Odisha.
Dr Kamat spoke about the hypersonic missile system and said the agency is developing Hypersonic Cruise Missiles, meaning missiles that can travel consistently at hypersonic speeds and Hypersonic Glide Missiles or Vehicles (HGVs).
"The hypersonic glide missile is in a much more advanced stage. We have done one development trial, and we expect that in the next two to three years, we will complete all the development trials, and then it will be inducted," the DRDO chief said.
"In hypersonic cruise missiles, we have recently proven scramjet propulsion for more than 1000 seconds, which is a major breakthrough. We hope the government will sanction a program to convert this scramjet propulsion into a hypersonic cruise missile weapon system. I estimate that it will take about five to seven years before it can be inducted," he added.
Iran recently used the Fattah-1 hypersonic missile against Israel in the ongoing conflict. These warheads can glide, with a booster, at hypersonic speeds at low altitude toward the target, making it difficult for air defences to neutralise them because of their manoeuvrability.
The DRDO chief further spoke about India's other weapon systems that are in development.
Dr Samir V Kamat took over as the chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in August 2022.
"We are working on a variety of air-to-air missiles. We are going for higher ranges than our present Astra, which we now call Astra Mark 2 and Astra Mark 3. We are looking at air-to-ground missiles, which are known as Rudram 2, Rudram 3 and Rudram 4, which will have increasing ranges. These are air-to-ground missiles. Then we are looking at a variety of surface-to-air missiles for air defence applications. You are aware of our program KUSHA. We are also working on a directed energy weapon for anti-drones. So, this will be based on both lasers and high-power microwaves," he said.
Dr Kamat shared an update on the Zorawar light tank, which was developed in record time by the DRDO. These tanks, intended for deployment in the rugged terrain of Ladakh, Sikkim and other high-altitude areas, completed their development trials, and user trials will start soon. The need for light tanks arose when India was engaged in a direct military engagement with the Chinese PLA in Ladakh in 2020, and the latter deployed its ZQ-15 Light Tanks to counter India's T-72 Ajeya and T-90 Bhishma tanks.
The 25-tonne combat platform, Zorawar, was developed in record time by DRDO.
"Our pipeline is quite strong and in the next two to three years, several of our weapon systems and sensors will get inducted into our services," Dr Kamat said.
Stealth Fighter Programme And Lessons Learnt During Op Sindoor
India recently took a step forward in the direction of building an indigenous fifth-generation stealth fighter jet. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approved the "execution model" for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) that will be developed by Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) in cooperation with industry partners.
"We have started work on it...Earlier, all our platforms, such as LCA Tejas Mark 1, LCA Mark 1A and LCA Mark 2, were done together, partnering with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) as our production partner. But in the AMCA's case, we are looking at an expression of interest to identify a partner. This partner can be HAL, can be a private sector, or it could be a joint venture between HAL and a private sector or between two private sector companies," he said.
To a question about what lessons DRDO learnt from Operation Sindoor, the agency's chief said, "It is very clear to us now that all our weapon systems have to work in an electronically denied environment. The systems will be denied GPS and will be denied their communication. We have to develop fully autonomous weapon systems, which can work in any electronically denied environment."
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