In a world of delayed defence projects and botched indigenous systems, India's BrahMos cruise missile stands out. Co-developed with Russia, BrahMos is one of the fastest and most accurate supersonic cruise missiles in the world -- and it's made in India.
In this episode, national security expert Sandeep Unnithan and host Dev Goswami deep dive into the BrahMos story:
What kind of missile is BrahMos? How is it different from ballistic missiles?
The origin story: India-Russia partnership and how it all began
Why BrahMos succeeded where so many Indian defence projects failed
How much of it is really Indian? And why didn't Russia ever buy it?
BrahMos II and the future of hypersonic missiles
Is BrahMos nuclear-capable?
How does the upcoming Long Range Land Attack Cruise Missile (LRLACM) fit into India's strategy?
Also: We talk about APJ Abdul Kalam's legacy and his lasting influence in India getting everthing right when it comes to missile development.
Produced by Garvit Srivastava
Sound mixed by Rohan Bharti
In this episode, national security expert Sandeep Unnithan and host Dev Goswami deep dive into the BrahMos story:
What kind of missile is BrahMos? How is it different from ballistic missiles?
The origin story: India-Russia partnership and how it all began
Why BrahMos succeeded where so many Indian defence projects failed
How much of it is really Indian? And why didn't Russia ever buy it?
BrahMos II and the future of hypersonic missiles
Is BrahMos nuclear-capable?
How does the upcoming Long Range Land Attack Cruise Missile (LRLACM) fit into India's strategy?
Also: We talk about APJ Abdul Kalam's legacy and his lasting influence in India getting everthing right when it comes to missile development.
Produced by Garvit Srivastava
Sound mixed by Rohan Bharti
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This is in Our
Defense On this podcast, whenever we have conversations around India's
defense projects, especially projects to build military hardware in the country,
we often focus and talk about delays, cost overruns, quality issues,
(00:50):
things not landing up on time, things not landing up
to the expectation, the forces wanted, projects getting shelved. Over
three seasons of this podcast, we've discussed several such projects.
The Ailis Drew, for example, has faced some uh some
questions many years after the induction. The Arguin battle tank
UH in service with the Army, but Army was not
(01:11):
really happy and projects kind of kind of basically shelved
the INSA's rifle. Just last week we discussed that how
initially there were a lot of quality concerns with that
with that rifle, and of course the program a success story,
but been too many years in the making, so I
faced many many dailiys. Uh. But there's one making India
project that did not go off the rails project that
(01:33):
you know really makes me happy and proud.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
The Brumost missile project. Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
These missiles were used for used with devastating accuracy during
operations that happened a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And UH to talk about how this unicorn really happened
in India's defense space, I have with me. How are you?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah, I'm good, I'm good. They've good to be back, good.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
To have you, uh somethe So, like I was saying,
you know, this is one project, this is one area
of India's defense manufacturing development space that that makes me
really happy, that makes me really proud, that makes me like,
you know, hopeful that you know, if things are done right,
they can actually be you know, done done.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Very very right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Uh. So we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk
about the BRUMO story.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
UH.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
And also something that I was very surprised to know
of just before we began recording this episode, and I
was like, damn you goes my intro, and I was gonna,
you know, put praise on this project and has just
given me something that's gonna spoil that. But before we
get to that, before we get to the brumo's origin story,
before we get to how we ended up going on
(02:41):
this down this path of building this missile and successfully.
So I want to first get you to focus on
the two broad categories of missiles that that are there
out in the world. You have the cruise missiles, of
which Bramos is a tight and of course you have
the ballistic missiles, usually associated with nuclear weapons. But though
in this day and age of war you've seen both
(03:03):
Russia and with the run Is conflict, you've seen ballistic
weapons being used in a conventional miner where they sent
it out with a conventional warhead and cause cause the devastation.
So something you've explained to us, what's a cruise missile,
what's a ballistic missile? How do they differ in terms
of the flight that they take and in terms of
the devastation that they can cause?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah? Sure, great, good question to begin this discussion with them.
And it starts with, of course, where else the Second
World War, you have the Germans, who pretty much invented
every piece of military hardware there is. They started with,
you know, a need to project ordnance on target at
(03:42):
extended distances, and they went to rockets and missiles when
they wanted to strike at Great Britain. So they came
up with two weapons. The first one is called the
Wei one, which was a cruise missile, which is basically
an unguided aircraft, you know, with a with a turbofan engine,
carrying ahead and precisely steered to target right. So it's
(04:03):
like a It was called a variety of names, a
doodle bug, and you know all of that because of
the sound that it made, the droning sound that it made, right,
So that was a cruise missile. Now, a cruise missile
is something that flies entirely to the target. It stays
in the atmosphere. It is powered through the entire duration
of its flight from the launch to the target right.
It is powered by this turbojet engine and it's usually
(04:26):
sub sonic, and it falls on the target, it destroys
the thing. It's got to carries a warhead. A ballistic
missile is something that would be it's a rocket that
goes into space lower, it goes into lower orbit and
then it comes back and it is not entirely powered
all the way to the target, because what it does
(04:47):
is it essentially free falls onto the target, Yeah, uses
gravity and then comes down at tremendous speed. Depending the
longer the range of the missile, the faster it its
descent is. So, for instance, the Ugly five which is
we've been talking about, that has a terminal velocity of
between mark eight and mark twenty, so that goes almost
(05:09):
twenty times the speed of sound the warhead which enters,
So you have a multi stage rocket. It's the Ugly
five is about three stages, and the final stage is
the the the warhead, which is your MERV and that
that goes it exits the atmosphere and then it comes
back in and then uses gravity and then maneuvering thrusters
(05:32):
and goes straight down into the target. And that is
how the warhead hits the target. So that's essentially the
difference between a cruise and a ballistic missile. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Right, So let's get to it. The Brummos project, the
story of how this this missile came together, how the
company came together. Brum was actually a joint venture between
and Russia.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Thirty years this year, thirty ninety five, twenty five.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, and the name Drum stands for the two rivers,
Yamaputra in India and Moscowa in Russia.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So before we.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Began this recording, you told me about a very deeply
personal story, which would I think you should recount for
our Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
My first experience of watching a naval missile. So it's
like the story begins. This is when I was ten
years old, early eighties. My father was in the missile boats.
So he had commanded two missile boats, one in seventy
eight which is the ais Chutuck and one was in
nineteen eighty two which is the irons Pressure. Both of
missile boats OSA two class missile boats. A very interesting
(06:38):
story about the OSA classes that the Indian Navy was
the first world navy to, you know, use missiles on
a scale that had not been used previously. Fourth of
December nineteen seventy one, the India Pakistan War. That first
night of the beginning of the war, you have Pakistani
(06:58):
warships on auto harbor patrol. They suddenly start seeing these
big balls of fire in the sky, great big balls
of fire in the sky and they think that the
aircraft heading towards them, and they start firing with anti
aircraft guns and before they know it, these balls of
fire actually not aircraft. They are P fifteen anti ship missiles.
(07:21):
They are fired by Indian missile boats that have come
in at high speed, launched their missiles, turned around and
gone back to Indian waters. In less than thirty minutes
these missiles something that four missiles were fired. They destroyed
a destroyer, the pens Kiber, the a minesweeper the pens Mohafis,
and destroyed a mine you know, an ammunition carrying ship.
(07:44):
One of the most devastating naval engagements at the literally
the dawn of missile warfare and naval you know engagements.
Three ships all completely destroyed, sunk bottom of the Arabian Sea.
So the Indian Navy actually began that naval missile warfare
chapter in the world. Of course, the Russians the Egyptians
(08:08):
were the first. They used their Russian missile boats nineteen
sixty seven, they fired the first missiles in combat. They
sank and Israeli destroyed the lath the il Israel naval
ship Alat in sixty seven, but the Indian Navy was
the first to use missiles in a large scale. And
the story is which I was telling you, is that
(08:29):
my father called me on his missile boat one day
and I used to hang out with him on weekends
and called me and said, I'll show you something. And
he pressed a button the inside the bridge of the
ship and he asked me to go outside. And I
saw this one of the missile containers open and inside
there was a live missile. You know, it looked like
one of the most amazing things that I've ever seen.
(08:51):
I thought it was an aircraft. It looked for a
ten year old. You can imagine looking at a missile
that big. It's like about two and a half meters,
and I wouldn't call it a missile. I would call
it an aircraft. And I has to go on to
school and tell people that, you know, I have my
dad has aircraft on this. So that was my first
(09:11):
thing at looking at a naval missile. But this was
at the naval missile, the P fifteen missile. These were,
of course P twenty P twenty one termit missiles that
I'd seen half a ton of explosives nearly is what
they carried in their nose. You can imagine the impact
of a missile, a subsonic one, a cruise missile, flying
at literally eight hundred kilometers and are coming there, hitting
(09:36):
a target and exploding with all the residual fuel and
all the explosives, the kind of conflagration. And I understood
much later in like that's how the Pakistani warships were
destroyed in an instant and they just like kind of
broke up and sik.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, wow, fantastic nugget.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Did not know about that at all.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And the reason I was saying earlier that that kind
of you know me, the question should I lead with
the end to that I was going to do on
this podcast is because you've also explained how in Terstad
of lost the opportunity you make the most of having
this missile with it, right, You.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Know that moment in nineteen seventy one where we sang
so many warships. The missile did want it, what had
to do, without any question, just went it sang ships.
After that, there was another operation. This was the first
operation was called Trident. The second operation was called Python.
A few days later, when one single missile boat rained
four missiles on Karachi. It just attacked warships that were
(10:31):
in harbor. And you know that the impact on the
enemy was so much that all warships had been they
had been taken out of harbor patrol, out of harbor
patrol and brought into the harbor because they suddenly realized
they had nothing to you know, defend against naval missile attack,
especially coming at night. You have to imagine how absolutely
(10:53):
terrifying it must be. You are in the age or
you rather you think you're still in the age of
naval gun fire and stuff. You know, big gun ships
were still there, and all of a sudden you see
these balls of fire coming at you, hitting you, and
before you know what your ship is, you know, vaporized.
The kind of fear that that brought in that they
(11:13):
had to defuel these ships, take them inside, hide them
literally in port. And yet you had instances of ships
that the ins I'm looking at the I'm trying to
remember the name of the missile boat that did the Vinage. Yeah,
how appropriately namedus Vinache carried off this absolutely devastating missile
attack the second time around. You know, I would have
(11:36):
imagined that every single service would have come and grabbed
that the Army, the Air Force, and of course the
Navy would have taken this missile apart to try and understand,
how can we build more of this, How can we
build this into an Indian missile? Right, we never did that.
It just remained a naval missile all through its life
till it's still there in a couple of missile boats
(11:58):
and stuff. But of course there have been other more
capable missiles like the Bromos. Yes, but guess which other
country did it, which actually took a P fifteen literally
tore it up, went through it, reverse engineered, and then
built its own range of anti ship missiles.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I have a feeling it's a neighboring country.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
It is a neighboring country to the north, a very
large neighbor. It sits on our borders, right, the Chinese.
You have to give it to the Chinese. You know,
when they are given technology, when they given products, they
look at the technology that goes into making it and
they quickly reverse engineering. We keep making fun of them. Oh,
they still take the reverse engineering, but they absorb the
(12:41):
technology right, and today they are where they are because
of that mindset. We need to get hold of that tech.
We need to make our own Sadly, we didn't have
that mindset then in the seventies, but then you come
down to the nineties and you have a whole new
generation of scientists and these are some of our bright scientists,
like you have the Missile Man of India. You have
(13:05):
doctor Shivdanu Play. These are all the people who the
scientists who have been brought up on the igmd Integrated
Guided Missile Development Program, the Ballistic Missile Program. They understand
what missiles are all about and they want to well,
make India great again. That did come to mind, But
(13:25):
make India a missile part it's important. Right. You're looking
at one mindset which says that we must have you know, aircraft.
You have this, which is right, I mean, the services
are right in what they do. But you have another
mindset which says, why do you need mand aircraft, Why
do you need warships? What do you need tanks? When
(13:46):
we can do all of this with missiles, all of
this and more with missiles. Right. So this is the
different thinking that this new breed of scientists brought in
from the IGMDP school. I call it the DRDOS I
GMDP scientists like you know, fantastic scientists like doctor An
the developer of the the PD of the age, doctor Kalam.
(14:07):
Of course, the overall is sing doctor Stanu, who's the
BrahMos man who identified the BrahMos as our potential first
strike weapons. So that's how the story changed in the
ninete eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Right and correct me if I'm wrong. The Bromos also
initially was meant to be a naval missile, if I'm
not wrong. Correct, Absolutely, it began as as as something
to be built for the Indian Navy, went to the
army and find into the Air Force, which took a
lot of jugard. By the way, if I said not wrong,
because I think you had to juguard, Yeah, we'll get
(14:44):
what what I'm saying. We'll come to that a bit later.
The air Force, because that's the combo that was used
during opsitions in Gours. What we know from governments urces
that it was the fighter jets of Union Air Force
that fired the Brumos and not only the land version
is what we are told.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
But we come to that.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So the big question then for me is that what
is it about this project that we got almost nothing wrong?
Because you know the JA it's like clockwork precision.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
You had your tests.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Happening successfully, So more or less, there's no controversies about quality.
There's no controversy about late at least I haven't read
about it. Maybe it's not come out in the open.
I'm pretty there must have been some disagreements at some level,
but overall it seems to be a fantastically successful project.
So what is it about this particular project that we
got almost everything right?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
You know? Good question again, Dave, And I think my
take on this, from following this project for a long
time and talking to all of their the people who've
made this happen, is a couple of things. You know,
two things. Most important is that this missile, the deal
for this missile, the setting up of this joint venture
was done at the highest levels of government. It was
(15:58):
done at the intergovernmental level for the Russian which is
like President Putin talks to Prime minister, first Prime Minister
Archebay and then of course you know successive prime ministers.
So it's done at the very highest level, right, which
means that there is no level above that. Right that,
of course there is God above, but on earth you
have the heads of government who steer the project, and
(16:20):
every time there was a roadblock, the scientists, the project
teams had direct access to the very top. So I've
spoken to doctor Shift down to play fantastic anecdotes. We
tell you about I had a problem here and I
would go and meet Putin and I'd say, listen, I
have a problem. You've got to help me do this.
And it had something like President Putin's personal intervention on
(16:42):
a number of occasions where he overruled his own people
and said, no, listen, you must give them. So when
you have this kind of guidance, and you have, of
course a very extraordinary bunch of scientists on both sides,
Let's not forget the Russians are the ones who actually
developed them. This we helped. We brought in the money.
(17:04):
You took that missile off the ground. It was a
project which we helped realize with our funding and our
technical expertise. Of course, so it had everything going for it,
so there were no obstacles. It was not a normal
R and D project that you know, there was scientists
who struggling with some kind of technology and all that.
(17:25):
It was literally that these two governments wanted to make
this project happen. It did, and it happens they're at
project levels, at projects like the nuclear submarine project. Yes,
that has also had its share of hurdles, but because
it is so important to the country, and because it's
(17:46):
also being steered from the very top, from the Prime
Minister's office, you typically don't find the normal hurdles that
you would say in aircraft acquisition projects or anything. And
that is why increasingly you must have heard in previous
issues that podcasts that we've done about the engine problems,
where we've spoken about, you know, maybe we need to
(18:08):
get top level supervision for this, We need to get
the Prime Minister's office involved. And you know, because these
are not ordinary capabilities. The Bramos is not an ordinary missile.
There is no missile like this anywhere in the world,
a universal supersonic cruise missile which has multiple variants. No
country in the world has it today, not even the Russians.
(18:30):
They have different missiles for different purposes, but not the
same missile for multiple use. You know, So when you
understand the capabilities of a missile and how important it
is for your armed forces, then the doors automatically start
opening and problems dissolved.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Which then begs the question why did Russia never end
up buying these missiles, and which begs the follow up question,
then what did Russia get out of this?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Well, see, for the Russians, it was firstly, the Russians
have a large arsenal of missiles. They've also used the BrahMos.
They have the original version of it called the ya Kant,
which is the the export version of the Yakhant is
called the Onix. The original version is called the ONIX
(19:17):
three K five five ONIX, and the export version is
called Yakhant. The Yakhan is not you know, being exported
because it's the BrahMos, which is the thing. They have
used multiple versions of the Onyx in the war against Ukraine,
so they're also using it, but they prefer to use
their version of and not the Bramos because then I
think it will mean buying it from US, you know,
(19:38):
buying it from the Indian company. Yeah, so they have
their own stocks and missile but you know, the Russians
are a missile superpower. They've got an enormous range of missiles.
They just have to dip into their arsenal and they
can pull out like literally horses for courses, They have
missiles for targets. They are able to literally in a
(19:58):
couple of months bring out a miss the Rashnik, a
hypersonic ballistic missile. So they have mastered artillery and missileary.
So for them, they had a you know, a lot
of missile options. Bramos was not a very big thing
for them. It was a big thing for engaging with India,
the strategic partnership that they had with India, this joint
(20:20):
venture that they've got going with the Brahmoscorp. Which is
now manifested in a number of sales. Like if you've
seen two Philippines Philippines, they get a chunk of the
you know, royalty for that, like something like fifty percent
of the profits would go to them because they are
co developers. They own the IP for that missile, and
we're also developing variants of the BrahMos which will become
(20:44):
very competitive, and also our own completely standalone indigenous hypersonic
missile projects. Right right, So yeah, I'd like talk about
the Force.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Project because I think that took a I don't want
to use the words you card since you don't like it,
but that took some extra technological leaps that that the
Bromo had to had to make and if I remember correctly,
I think it was you who told me once maybe
on the podcast of Camera that it was their idea
in the first place. It wasn't the Air Force's idea. Therefore,
(21:15):
wasn't going to them and telling them that was there?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Really do it for you, you see.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
If you want to use it. And I love that video.
I love that video of the SUKUOI silently dropping that promos.
It just like it's like frozen in mid air. Suddenly
the jets shoot and it just zooms out of the bitches.
It's a fantastic video on the air launched video, but
one of their videos of the air launched version being
(21:40):
being tested and being used. So tell me about that story.
What what the technical issues not issues, but the technical
challenges of fitting it to the Suquoi uh and slightly
controversial question if I may, considering what you've done during operations,
and would you say that with the Bramos is perhaps
more devastating the rough with the scalpe.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Oh absolutely, yeah, good question. Again, they've run you know,
the thing is that the Bramos see when when you
launch a corporation. It's a profit making body. It needs
to sell missiles right to stay in the game. And
that is when you had Bramos cob which has already
sold surface launched versions of it to the Navy and
to the Army and to the Air Force, the FOCE
(22:22):
at ground launchers. Then they said, hey, listen, uh, we
need to sell the air launched versions to the Air Force.
Air Force said, well, yeah, okay, but how are you
going to find it? It's a three and a half
tun Yeah, it's a massive missile, right, it's how are
you going to launch it? So they said, okay, let's
look at the Sukhoy So thirty is the only platform
that can carry this. Yeah, but you know where are
you going to fit it. It's never been designed to
(22:43):
carry a missile like the Bramos. So that is when
they kind of engineered the Sukoi thirteen. Guard re engineered
the Sukhoi thirty to be able to carry the BrahMos
and three and three three ton missile. So they took
off one the booster section because they the momentum of
(23:05):
the aircraft itself gives it a certain thrust, which so
you could do away with the booster, and so that's
how the missile was born, and they got the Air
Force to give them a couple of Sukois which they
could then convert to carrying this silence on the centerline
of the Uhu thirty. It's got two points from where
(23:27):
the Bromos is held it. Unfortunately, each thirty can carry
only one, but they believe that when future versions of
the BrahMos, like the Ngi the next generation Bromos come,
you can carry something like four to six. Even so
this was something that was entirely a BrahMos caught idea
(23:48):
which then the Air Force wholeheartedly embraced because then they
realized that look, you're looking at a Sukhoi thirty which
is carrying a Bromos with a a two hundred and
fifty kg watered a quarter of a ton. That's a
lot of ordinance, and it's a supersonic strike missile. And
look at the range of the thing. It can go
(24:08):
as far as the Sooth thirty can fly. So you
have a couple of squadrons of this, and these are
like bombers, right, there's strategic bombers almost. So that's when
this whole project was kicked off, and I think by
about twenty twelve they begun the trials and a few
years later it was inducted. The Air Force has one
(24:29):
and possibly going up to three squadrons of tho thirties
which are being retrofitted to fire the Bromos. It's a
devastating weapon and that's exactly what they used during Obsendur.
And look at the beauty of it. You've not crossed
the international border. You fired these missiles from your side
of the airspace and they've literally gone like hot knives
(24:49):
through butter Yeah, nothing, no air defense, nothing, just went
all of them hit their pre programmed targets, air bases, hangars,
command posts, all of the those things, radars, radar stations
and all that. So this is actually that first strike weapon.
Now India has a no first use policy, right, but
(25:09):
that's for nuclear weapons, but for strike this is going
to be the first weapon that you will launch on
the first day of combat against your enemy. When you
want to knock out his air bases, when you want
to destroy his aircraft on the ground, you want to
shatter his radars, his air defense networks. This is your
weapon of choice. This is your first strike weapon. And
this is exactly what the BrahMos brings to the table.
(25:32):
And you know the fact that you have so many
versions of this missile that you have a ground launched version,
you have an air launched version, you have a maritime
version that could come from above the sea or below
the sea. The adversary is completely confused, right, he doesn't
know where that missile is going to come from. And
here's to factor in the fact that I am looking
(25:53):
at an adversary India that has three versions, possibly a
fourth version. Also, if Darian starts firing Bramos, it should
at some point, and these missiles are going to converge
on me from multiple directions and I don't have a
defense against it. So that's a very terrifying disciplinary, induce
(26:16):
discipline inducing tool when you get the enemy to behave
that we have no designs on anyone, right, We're not
an aggressive nation. We're not a nation that uses anything first.
But if push comes to shove, this is going to
be your tool to discipline your badly behaved neighbors.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
It's like the image I have of whenever the US
is a war, they'll have their warships or somewhere near
that country and they'll fire like this bunch of missiles yea,
and that image of like you know, streaks of like
the fire fire basically.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
But you know, this is how it began, is how
the whole development of the Bramos began with that exactly
that Senti scenario that it described Gulf War one nineteen
ninety one, where you have Indian scientists or watching with
wide eyes on CNN as you're seeing one of the
most potent air defense networks in the world, the Iraqi
(27:08):
air defense literally being shredded by tomahawks, the tourmawks flying around.
There's something at fifty or sixty of them that were
fired from offshore, the submarines and warships, and they shattered
the Iraqi air defense networks. I mean, they precisely went
in and at that point, till that point, nobody had
(27:29):
seen cruise missiles literally going through goalposts and you know,
windows and doors and stuff like that. But they started
doing that in Iraq. And when they saw the potential
of a cruise missile, a very very accurate cruise missile,
that's when we woke up to the possibility. You know,
we have an IGMDP with ballistic missiles and cruise missiles,
(27:53):
but we don't have anything with a first strike weapon
like the Bramos. I mean, of course we didn't have
a cruise missile at that point. Came in much later,
but it was all ballistic missiles, and nobody had thought
that we needed a super accurate missile like the Tomahawk.
So that's when they started thinking that do we need
to go down this route? Yes, and if we do,
(28:14):
do we go the hair root or the tortoise route?
The tortoise being the Tomahawk, which is slow and you know,
ponderous move it's sub sonic. Yeah, it maneuvers to target,
and you have the hair Root, which is a very
fast moving thing. You know, a couple of minutes it's
on target, flies at three times the speed of sound.
They chose the super sonic group and they said, look,
(28:37):
let's get this technology which the Soviets have developed, let's
co develop it with them, Let's put money into this project,
let's make this happen. And that's how the BrahMos was.
So it's actually the Iraq War, the nineteen ninety one
desert storm that actually set off that storm in the
minds of the Indian scientists and got them to think about.
You know, we need to have those missiles. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
We'll talk more about this better for quick break.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
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(29:30):
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and other audio streaming platforms.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Welcome back, Santipa. I now want your wanted you to
talk about how the promos was used in operations in
bus civic options, specifically the last day of fighting that
led to the session of fighting between the two sites
because like you were describing, India managed to hit uh
(30:12):
their airfield, their military basis with with precision. That was
that was like you know, uh, it was seen on
the satellite imagery where you know, the the exact building
where these planes were kept, the exact center line of
the runway.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That's like President level Yeah two run with intersection points.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Both runways, right, So I want your thoughts on one,
why was it that we chose to use the Sukhoi
and combo because this is something I think the three
operation chiefs had said in one of the press conferences.
It was the air launched version that was that was
that that had been used, uh, and not so much
the land version. Why did that happen? A second, how
(30:54):
did it all go down?
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Because?
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Uh, unlike with some other controversies that we've had about
did India lose I mean, it's fairly known by now
that India did lose fighter jets, how many we don't
know yet, questions about be the wreckage et cetera. There
has not been a single claim of a single Grummos
being shot down. There has not been a single you know,
even a fake photo of a brumo's wreckage being in
(31:17):
Pakistan somewhere. All you have is the proof of the
strikes itself and that's about it. So my question being
how did these missiles manage to penetrate Pakistan's defense? So
technically speaking, so the first time it's happened, there was
an incident a couple of years ago where it accidentally
ended up in Pakistan was not raced by the.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Pakistan launch ad flew to Yeah, exactly, so tay us
to that.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Night when the military was in you know, hyper super
alert and they planned this mission to launch Bromos at
the Pakistani sites. What must have done been.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Like you know, I think it was basically a response
to the way Pakistan was targeted and civilians along the
international border and the luc And I think that is
when decision was made at the highest levels to launch
the brumos because this is the one weapon that there
is no answer to the enemy cannot intercept this weapon.
(32:13):
So all you have to do is to pull out
your targeting folder and start drawing up the list of targets.
Whether you wanted to be twelve or thirteen, or twenty
or fifty or there are plenty of missiles. It is
how many targets you want to hit to send the
message to Pakistan. And I think that the idea is
(32:35):
to get him to call and you know, tell you
to stop. Right. What happened, which is what happened on
the tenth when the dgmo's phone rang. So what did
it take for that phone to ring? That was the
BrahMos missile Bramos missile force that phone to ring because
when Pakistan saw that massive salvo which came in, you
didn't have any way of intercepting these missiles. So then
(32:57):
it only became a matter of how many more can
you expect? There would be multiple salvos of that, and
we've been producing this missile for fifteen years, right, there's
no shortage of BrahMos missile stocks. I don't know the
exact numbers those are, those are classified, but I can
imagine given the production run of the last decade and
(33:17):
a half, they must be substantial numbers of Brumos. So
there's lots more where that came from. You could possibly
go on for another week or two hitting all his
targets with BrahMos missiles still a point, and he would
not have much of his military machine left or moving.
I think that is the kind of capabilities that the
BrahMos displayed that night, and the reason that they chose
(33:39):
it is that there was nothing else. That we didn't
have anything else in our arsenal which is as deadly
and as precise and as devastating as the Bromos. There's
no way Bramos could go off target and you know,
stray off into a civilian area, because that was the
biggest concern that we did not want to strike any
civilian targets and the government of an ear you have
to give it to this question it the military might
(34:01):
question this. Part of the reason for the loss of
the aircraft is believed to be the fact that we
were not allowed to undertake suppression of enemy air defenses, right,
which is the first thing that you do in conflict.
The idea was only to strike at the terrorist targets,
which is what they did, and Pakistan retaliated when they
(34:23):
saw our jets launching to hit those terrorists launch pads.
So if it had been done, if it had been
left only to the military, my guess is that they
would have first launched with all the drones and dramases,
knocked out all the enemy radars and missile launch sites
(34:43):
before going into you know, before even launching your fighter aircraft.
But this was a decision that was made at the
highest levels to send in the fighter jets, and on
the tenth the decision was again taken to launch the
fighter just with the BrahMos which could not be intercepted.
(35:04):
So very strong message was sent out and the rest,
as they say, is history, but not in Pakistan. Pakistan
has its own version of history. It keeps rewriting its history.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And as always right, so over the years the promos
how much Indian has it become? So you said that,
and first of all, actually to go to sort of
you know, to ask a question before that, what was
that Russian help we need it in the first place,
even though you had some of the practiced minds over there,
(35:35):
even though they were involved with the ballistic may sell program.
What was the need to have that Russian know how?
What was it? The tech?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
The engine? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
As always so, what was it? And over a period
of time, ever since we've successfully tested and launched the
and inducted the first batteries of bromos, if I may
say that, how indian has it become over the period.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Of well, it's the Indian component has been steadily increasing
ever since it was inducted, over the last twenty years. So.
But the biggest concern, I mean this is a concern
for me as well. The fact is that you've not
been able to indigenize the engine so far, the ram jet, right,
which comes back to our old bugbear about engines. Engines engine. Yeah,
(36:21):
so the engine is literally the heart of the BrahMos missile.
I mean it cannot fly as fast as it does
without the ramjet engine. And of course the seeker. That's
a very important part of the miss At least two
things are Russian. Can the speaker is yes, exactly what
homes into the target, right, it's a radar seekert. It's
a very very advanced piece of technology, which is again
(36:42):
Russian in origin. But we are getting there. And with
the hypersonic missile, for instance, the DRDO is hypersonic, which
is entirely indigenous. We are developing our own missile which
is actually faster than the BrahMos. So that is going
to be a proof of the putting. So you know
quickly if you're looking at the evolution of Indian missiles.
(37:03):
Nineteen seventy one, we are a client state. We buy
a lot of P fifteen missiles, we use them, but
we don't reverse engineer them or do anything with it.
We come down to the early two thousands. We find
the BrahMos, we co develop it with the Russian Federation,
we build it, we acquire it in large numbers, but
it's still not entirely Indian. I mean I would want
(37:24):
for a missile to be one hundred percent Indian indigenous. Right.
This is not out of any spite for the Russian
Russian friends. I mean they've been fantastic strategic partners. But
the fact is, at the end of the day, you
need to have your own tech. And that is where
I think you're coming to stage three with the hypersonic
missile program, where the DADO has actually managed to vault
(37:49):
over technology and go from a supersonic missile to a
hypersonic missile. And that is going to be very, very
important for us in the years to come because with
this you are actually get into a very rarefied group
of countries that have hypersonic missile capability, and you need
to feel those hypersonic weapons very quickly because your adversity
(38:11):
is also going to build in countermeasures to the Bramos,
so you have to the next time. It has to
be something else that catches them completely off guard. So
there has been a slow, steady increase in the indigenous component.
Missile is finally assembled over here in India at Hyderba
Bramos facility, but a lot of key components are still Russian.
(38:33):
In origin. And there is a logic to it as well,
because they're looking at if there is nothing, there is
no workshare for the Russians, why would they be part
of the project. Then you will have to kind of,
you know, make sure that you pay extra for the engine,
you get the technology for the engine for the seeker.
(38:54):
That would add on more, you know, make the missiles
a little more expensive for you. The fact is that
my sense is that the Diadio has decided to go
to the hypersonic route. Now Brumos will continue, it will
possibly have its iterations, the BrahMos NG and the Bromos too,
which is the longer range version of the Brumos, a
(39:14):
hypersonic version of the Bromos. But they would want to
get a hygh personic, a pure Indian hypersonic missile. And
there have been some very encouraging breakthroughs like a thousand
and second test of the hypersonic engine. Very recently they
have been tests of the high HSD, the hypersonic glide vehicle.
(39:36):
There have been there's been a full scale launch of
the fifteen hundred kilometer ranged hypersonic missile last year, so
that have been very encouraging, you know, progress. So the
Brumos is I would say, it's one step in our
missile evolution. You know where you've gone from complete missile
(39:58):
blindness to missile awareness to finally, you know, complete missile
indigenous capability. Today we are completely self sufficient missile. We
can build all kinds of any kinds of missile. We
will be able to build radars us. We're still getting there,
but with missiley, I think we've come of age.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, but just sort of an extension to your point,
how does it work when it comes to the IP
over year, Because so, for example, is India allowed to
use the experience it has had with the Brumos development
for its other missiles the ones that you were just
talking about, or is that no, No, you have to
(40:38):
develop it from scratch on your own.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Well, I think a lot of the experience that you've
gained with the Brumos you can use it with other missiles.
But you can't take components out of the Brumos.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
You can't use that the engine basics.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
You can't use the engine is an issue. But I
think if you bargain with the Russians art convince them
about you know, what needs to be done for India's
own missile capabilities. I'm sure they listen, and there is
a very high level India Russia meat that's very shortly
(41:12):
a couple of months, possibly September, when President is coming
here with a big basket of uh, you know, missiles
and submarines and technology and all of that. So it's
it's for us to ask for all of these things.
And I'm sure they would consider this in the spirit of,
(41:32):
you know, India Russia strategic partnership.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Especially when India has sort of, you know, been one
of those rare countries in the world not to take
sides in the Russia Ukraine War and has been sort
of in the middle path. A quick follow up to
your point about hyperstorting missiles, even though I think that's
a that's a topic matter that can be a full episode,
but since you mentioned it, let's just briefly talked about
it and sort of break it down for people and
(41:55):
for even me, because I get very confused when you
talked about hypersonding.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Myself.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I think there is one which would be yours in
the atmosphere hypersonic, which basically five flies fastness supersonic cruise missile,
and there's the other one which seems like a hybrid
between a ballistic missile and a cruise missiles. Just break
down this what is at hypersonic missile and what is
India aiming for?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Well, India is aiming for both kinds of science. One
is of course one that stays within the atmosphere, which
flies at very high speeds over mark five and which
has a glide vehicle which is basically the one that
carries the warhead. So you would have seen some of
those protribes. The Chinese have those capabilities. And the other
(42:37):
one is a full scale hypersonic weapon, which is a
warhead which comes it goes into space and it comes
back at very high speeds hyperson You're talking of like
an ICBM I RBM kind of speed. So that is
a pure all the way hypersonic. There is no you know,
glide vehicle or anything of that. Just a warhead comes
(43:00):
in a yeah, massive speeds. That's a pure hypersonic thing.
But then you're also looking at reusable hypersonic vehicles. This
has been a pet project of the Dado where you
have a hypersonic vehicle that goes that delivers the weapons
on target and comes back. It's like an unguided projectiles. Yeah,
(43:21):
something like that, but in the atmosphere. So these are
the various uh you know programs that is that are
underway and it would come together in the next five
or six years or so. That you're looking at very
accelerated timelines for this because uh, you know, hypersonic missiles
and indeed supersonic missiles as well, like the bromos, they
(43:42):
give you the ability to bridge deficiencies like fighter aircraft
if you don't have enough fighter aircraft squadns. This can
tied over that shortfall of have enough. We yeah, that
that that's a that's a big, big void that we have.
We don't have enough you know, fighter squadrons. We are
(44:03):
ten squadners shot which is almost down a fourth. And
anyone who argues against man fighter aircraft you just have
to look at the Iranian experience where they don't have
control of their airspace. These Riley jets the IF can
fly in whenever they want and do whatever they want
in Iran airspace and not be challenged. So there's no
point of being a drone and a missile superpower if
(44:27):
you don't have man fighter jets to challenge your adversary.
When he comes up in your airspace or even lack
the air defense missiles to shoot him down. So all
of these will be important. You will need your missiles,
you will need maned aircraft, you will have drones. It's not,
you know, either or kind of thing. All of these
(44:48):
are complimentary technologies and they all have to exist side
by side. A couple of last points.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
So while making my notes for this episode, I came
across a missile that's right now named as the Long
Range Land Attack Cruise Missile l R l a c M. Yeah,
it was a test launched first in December last year.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
So if you have a Brummos, what are you doing
with that?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
What is that exactly?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
Well, this could be This flies to about fifteen hundred.
This is our version of the Tomahawk. Oh okay, so
it is. It's basically giving options to military planners that
if I want to hit a target, I have a
range of options before me. You know, I can either
send in mand aircraft, I can strike it with the
Brumos supersnic cruise missile, or if I don't have the range,
(45:38):
if it's at if it's beyond the range of a Brumos,
then I you know, strike it with this long range
land attack Cruise missile l LACM, or I strike it
with some other it's like a ground based launcher, or
I use a conventional version of the Ugly five. You know.
So it's just giving planner multiple options. It's nothing more
(46:00):
than that. So it will be one more option, so
you will have to finally, you will have the hair
and the tortoise option before. Oh right, you'll have both.
You earn you have both. You have the supersonic version
the Brumos, and you have your TOMA equivalent to strike
the target right right.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
One more point on this, uh and uh. Now, this
is something that has never been officially talked about, but
if you were to go on to defense forums on
on on online, especially websites like Reddit, you will have
a lot of people defense geeks and nerds just like
you know, speculating about this talking about it. That the
(46:39):
Brumos actually is nuclear capable. India has never admitted that,
has never said that. So your thoughts on the technical
aspect of brummos being able to carry a nuclear warrant.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
But technically it can be retrofitted to fire a nuclear
a warr It's entirely possible, but uh, they decided from
the very beginning. The plan is decided at the very
inception of this joint venture not to put a nuclear
weapon or a nuclear warhead into it, because then what
happens is that it cannot be used as a tactical weapon.
(47:11):
It can't be used as the first time because when
your diversity sees a nuclear supersonic missile coming at anythings
that be nuclear. Yeah, so there is that uncertainty that
they wanted to avoid, which is why they right from
the beginning they said, this is going to be a
pure tactical weapon. There will not be any strategic variant
of it. There's not going to be either or this
(47:33):
only tactical weapon. But the flip side of that is
that when you're talking of ICBMs IRBMs like the Agly
five being modified with a conventional wallet, then you have
a problem there exactly right. So then you will have
to kind of make the use case for it to
say that, look, I will also employ this, but only
(47:54):
in a case when I have my back to the
wall and I literally have no other way of taking
out a larger adverse. This is not meant purely for Pakistan.
This is also primarily meant for China, and you don't
have the ability to take out any high value Chinese
targets using tactical weapons, using non strategic weapons, we don't
(48:16):
have bombers are fighter aircraft. Littlely I'll have to fly
one way suicide missions to strike targets deep inside China.
So this gives our war fighters and ability to hit
targets at extended ranges inside of China, especially de buried
fortified targets of the kind that they're building along the LAC.
So that's the kind of thing. But the thing is that,
(48:39):
to answer your question from the beginning, Bramos was always
going to be a tacticalness. That was a decision they took. Sure,
they can, you know, re engineer it to carry a
nuclear weapon on nuclear warhead, a compact nuclear warhead, But
why do that? You have so many other Yeah, you
have so many other weapons that you can do. You
have the brah you have the the other way, the
(49:03):
K fifteen Shoria, you have several other you know, land
based missiles that fly near hypersonic speeds that can carry
nuclear weapons. So why the Bramos.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
So a tangent, then a quick tangent there is there
any technology in the world that can discern whether an
incoming missile has a nuclear warhead, because what you said, no,
so then it's quite risky. What we're seeing in the
Russia Ukraine war and what we saw, I see a
bms were used, conventions were used with conventional warrants. Yeah,
(49:35):
so that's quite scraay.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Then if can't there is no way of telling whether
a missile has you can at best predict from the
trajectory of the missile. You will actually, I mean there
are missile uh you know, launch sensors that tell you
about the launch of a missile by an adversary, but
you cannot tell on literally until the point of impassion
(49:58):
that it is a convey warhead or non nuclear. So
that that's the kind of ambiguity that's it's actually a
bit scary. You know, if you look character if if
they were to be used in in large numbers, then
what's to prevent adversary from thinking is under massive nuclear attack.
So these would never be typically used in large numbers.
(50:21):
They would be used as a one off and possibly
I'm just guessing I don't have any information on this
that one side will call and tell the other person
or other people who are watching that this is a
conventional missile. We are not firing a nuclear weapon. So nothing,
no need to get alarmed because that the nuclear that's
a good point. Is not something you want to be
(50:42):
you know, rattling the nuclear ladder is not something that
you want to be shaking.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
That's a good point, actually, right, Uh, great, the great chat.
I just want your final takeaways if you know, anyone
were to analyze the Brummo success story and use it,
and I'd apply it to India's other upcoming projects like
the ANCA, the fifth generation fighter jet project or the
next generation tank project. I forgot the name it was.
(51:07):
It's called the f c our Future of our ser
sorry future edition, a new tank project or even to
build your own damn rifle. So some quick takeaways of
what we can learn from this success story and implement
it over there, and your your take on is it
going to happen?
Speaker 3 (51:28):
You mean the AMCA and no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
The the takeaways that you give us, the lessons that
will be learned have been learned and I've be implemented.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
You know, I'm a big conflicted here. They've I mean,
I would love to see the PMO, you know, handle
every single project of consequence like the AMCA and the
uh you know, fighter jet engine, maybe even the assault rifle.
But but that that's off the table. Now the rifle
we are good with that. But but my other thing
(51:57):
is that how can we load all of these just
on to the pm I'm sure the PMO has got
many other things to do rather than just run defense projects.
Maybe you know, projects like the nuclear submarine thing, which
is about ensuring the survival of your country because of
a second strike weapon kind of thing. Those kind of
things can be run by the PMO, but you cannot
(52:17):
have the Prime Minister's Office supervising tactical projects. Even the
promos is it's a great weapon, but it's a tactical weapon.
At the end of the day. We need to have
dedicated project teams. We need to pick the right people,
empower them. And I think Gere is where the most
(52:38):
crucial part of this whole thing is selecting the project teams,
empowering them, and then getting them to you know, go
help for leather to deliver on these projects and getting
the best you know, expertise wherever they are, and again
not treating them as you know like, oh, this is
a GTR project. Jet engines will be produced by the
(52:59):
g A T or you know, this missile will be
produced by this department of the DR. There has to
be a certain awareness about the criticality of these projects
to India's defense. Like the fighter jet engine for instance,
that is a project that I mean literally every Indian
(53:22):
fight indigenous fighter jet project from your marut to the
LCA Mark one to Mark one A and Mark two
is is struggling because we haven't mastered the engine. So
there is something that you need to get. Possibly that
that is a fit case for the PMO to look
at it. But other projects you need to have dedicated
(53:43):
project teams. You need to get the best and you know,
not necessarily only the DR. You need to find the
talent wherever it may be. It's you know, the US
Navy's success story, if you're right, the story of Hymen Recover.
I'm Admiral Hyman Recover. He's a guy who literally, single
handedly for decades was the head of the US nuclear
(54:06):
propulsion project and he ensured that the United States is
where it is today in the kind of ballistic missile
submarines that has nuclear bard attacks suburine attack because he
focused on the reactor. He went hell for leather for that.
We need to find these champions. It's always, at the
end of the day, it's always about the people behind this.
(54:29):
It's not so much about the hardware and the technology,
and those hurdles can be overcome right. You know, if
you have the right people, they will find the answers
to all your problems. And that has been the case
in all of our great success stories, including the Brumos.
You have visionaries like you know Dr Pill and people
(54:50):
who followed him into the Brumos after that, but of
course he had to do a lot of the heavy
lifting initial years, and of course doctor Kalam And to
identify these empower them and allow them to run the
project teams and then see them deliver these capabilities which
we've now benefiting from, I mean just imagined three decades
(55:10):
later the Bromos. What a shining example of a cooperation
with the Russian Federation it is and give you the
kind of capabilities that you know you could not have imagined. Possibly.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Indeed, we lend the chat there and thanks a great
to chat of fantastic insights. It's always loved talking to
your POV subject. Thanks, thanks for having me, and thanks
to all our lessons and viewers. That's it for this
week's defense to Us For more, tune in next week.
Tell then stay safe, not for us, any boundaries for
the passport by
This is India Today Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This is in Our
Defense On this podcast, whenever we have conversations around India's
defense projects, especially projects to build military hardware in the country,
we often focus and talk about delays, cost overruns, quality issues,
(00:50):
things not landing up on time, things not landing up
to the expectation, the forces wanted, projects getting shelved. Over
three seasons of this podcast, we've discussed several such projects.
The Ailis Drew, for example, has faced some uh some
questions many years after the induction. The Arguin battle tank
UH in service with the Army, but Army was not
(01:11):
really happy and projects kind of kind of basically shelved
the INSA's rifle. Just last week we discussed that how
initially there were a lot of quality concerns with that
with that rifle, and of course the program a success story,
but been too many years in the making, so I
faced many many dailiys. Uh. But there's one making India
project that did not go off the rails project that
(01:33):
you know really makes me happy and proud.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
The Brumost missile project. Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
These missiles were used for used with devastating accuracy during
operations that happened a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
And UH to talk about how this unicorn really happened
in India's defense space, I have with me. How are you?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yeah, I'm good, I'm good. They've good to be back, good.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
To have you, uh somethe So, like I was saying,
you know, this is one project, this is one area
of India's defense manufacturing development space that that makes me
really happy, that makes me really proud, that makes me like,
you know, hopeful that you know, if things are done right,
they can actually be you know, done done.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Very very right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Uh. So we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk
about the BRUMO story.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
UH.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
And also something that I was very surprised to know
of just before we began recording this episode, and I
was like, damn you goes my intro, and I was gonna,
you know, put praise on this project and has just
given me something that's gonna spoil that. But before we
get to that, before we get to the brumo's origin story,
before we get to how we ended up going on
(02:41):
this down this path of building this missile and successfully.
So I want to first get you to focus on
the two broad categories of missiles that that are there
out in the world. You have the cruise missiles, of
which Bramos is a tight and of course you have
the ballistic missiles, usually associated with nuclear weapons. But though
in this day and age of war you've seen both
(03:03):
Russia and with the run Is conflict, you've seen ballistic
weapons being used in a conventional miner where they sent
it out with a conventional warhead and cause cause the devastation.
So something you've explained to us, what's a cruise missile,
what's a ballistic missile? How do they differ in terms
of the flight that they take and in terms of
the devastation that they can cause?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah? Sure, great, good question to begin this discussion with them.
And it starts with, of course, where else the Second
World War, you have the Germans, who pretty much invented
every piece of military hardware there is. They started with,
you know, a need to project ordnance on target at
(03:42):
extended distances, and they went to rockets and missiles when
they wanted to strike at Great Britain. So they came
up with two weapons. The first one is called the
Wei one, which was a cruise missile, which is basically
an unguided aircraft, you know, with a with a turbofan engine,
carrying ahead and precisely steered to target right. So it's
(04:03):
like a It was called a variety of names, a
doodle bug, and you know all of that because of
the sound that it made, the droning sound that it made, right,
So that was a cruise missile. Now, a cruise missile
is something that flies entirely to the target. It stays
in the atmosphere. It is powered through the entire duration
of its flight from the launch to the target right.
It is powered by this turbojet engine and it's usually
(04:26):
sub sonic, and it falls on the target, it destroys
the thing. It's got to carries a warhead. A ballistic
missile is something that would be it's a rocket that
goes into space lower, it goes into lower orbit and
then it comes back and it is not entirely powered
all the way to the target, because what it does
(04:47):
is it essentially free falls onto the target, Yeah, uses
gravity and then comes down at tremendous speed. Depending the
longer the range of the missile, the faster it its
descent is. So, for instance, the Ugly five which is
we've been talking about, that has a terminal velocity of
between mark eight and mark twenty, so that goes almost
(05:09):
twenty times the speed of sound the warhead which enters,
So you have a multi stage rocket. It's the Ugly
five is about three stages, and the final stage is
the the the warhead, which is your MERV and that
that goes it exits the atmosphere and then it comes
back in and then uses gravity and then maneuvering thrusters
(05:32):
and goes straight down into the target. And that is
how the warhead hits the target. So that's essentially the
difference between a cruise and a ballistic missile. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Right, So let's get to it. The Brummos project, the
story of how this this missile came together, how the
company came together. Brum was actually a joint venture between
and Russia.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Thirty years this year, thirty ninety five, twenty five.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, and the name Drum stands for the two rivers,
Yamaputra in India and Moscowa in Russia.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So before we.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Began this recording, you told me about a very deeply
personal story, which would I think you should recount for
our Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
My first experience of watching a naval missile. So it's
like the story begins. This is when I was ten
years old, early eighties. My father was in the missile boats.
So he had commanded two missile boats, one in seventy
eight which is the ais Chutuck and one was in
nineteen eighty two which is the irons Pressure. Both of
missile boats OSA two class missile boats. A very interesting
(06:38):
story about the OSA classes that the Indian Navy was
the first world navy to, you know, use missiles on
a scale that had not been used previously. Fourth of
December nineteen seventy one, the India Pakistan War. That first
night of the beginning of the war, you have Pakistani
(06:58):
warships on auto harbor patrol. They suddenly start seeing these
big balls of fire in the sky, great big balls
of fire in the sky and they think that the
aircraft heading towards them, and they start firing with anti
aircraft guns and before they know it, these balls of
fire actually not aircraft. They are P fifteen anti ship missiles.
(07:21):
They are fired by Indian missile boats that have come
in at high speed, launched their missiles, turned around and
gone back to Indian waters. In less than thirty minutes
these missiles something that four missiles were fired. They destroyed
a destroyer, the pens Kiber, the a minesweeper the pens Mohafis,
and destroyed a mine you know, an ammunition carrying ship.
(07:44):
One of the most devastating naval engagements at the literally
the dawn of missile warfare and naval you know engagements.
Three ships all completely destroyed, sunk bottom of the Arabian Sea.
So the Indian Navy actually began that naval missile warfare
chapter in the world. Of course, the Russians the Egyptians
(08:08):
were the first. They used their Russian missile boats nineteen
sixty seven, they fired the first missiles in combat. They
sank and Israeli destroyed the lath the il Israel naval
ship Alat in sixty seven, but the Indian Navy was
the first to use missiles in a large scale. And
the story is which I was telling you, is that
(08:29):
my father called me on his missile boat one day
and I used to hang out with him on weekends
and called me and said, I'll show you something. And
he pressed a button the inside the bridge of the
ship and he asked me to go outside. And I
saw this one of the missile containers open and inside
there was a live missile. You know, it looked like
one of the most amazing things that I've ever seen.
(08:51):
I thought it was an aircraft. It looked for a
ten year old. You can imagine looking at a missile
that big. It's like about two and a half meters,
and I wouldn't call it a missile. I would call
it an aircraft. And I has to go on to
school and tell people that, you know, I have my
dad has aircraft on this. So that was my first
(09:11):
thing at looking at a naval missile. But this was
at the naval missile, the P fifteen missile. These were,
of course P twenty P twenty one termit missiles that
I'd seen half a ton of explosives nearly is what
they carried in their nose. You can imagine the impact
of a missile, a subsonic one, a cruise missile, flying
at literally eight hundred kilometers and are coming there, hitting
(09:36):
a target and exploding with all the residual fuel and
all the explosives, the kind of conflagration. And I understood
much later in like that's how the Pakistani warships were
destroyed in an instant and they just like kind of
broke up and sik.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, wow, fantastic nugget.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Did not know about that at all.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And the reason I was saying earlier that that kind
of you know me, the question should I lead with
the end to that I was going to do on
this podcast is because you've also explained how in Terstad
of lost the opportunity you make the most of having
this missile with it, right, You.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Know that moment in nineteen seventy one where we sang
so many warships. The missile did want it, what had
to do, without any question, just went it sang ships.
After that, there was another operation. This was the first
operation was called Trident. The second operation was called Python.
A few days later, when one single missile boat rained
four missiles on Karachi. It just attacked warships that were
(10:31):
in harbor. And you know that the impact on the
enemy was so much that all warships had been they
had been taken out of harbor patrol, out of harbor
patrol and brought into the harbor because they suddenly realized
they had nothing to you know, defend against naval missile attack,
especially coming at night. You have to imagine how absolutely
(10:53):
terrifying it must be. You are in the age or
you rather you think you're still in the age of
naval gun fire and stuff. You know, big gun ships
were still there, and all of a sudden you see
these balls of fire coming at you, hitting you, and
before you know what your ship is, you know, vaporized.
The kind of fear that that brought in that they
(11:13):
had to defuel these ships, take them inside, hide them
literally in port. And yet you had instances of ships
that the ins I'm looking at the I'm trying to
remember the name of the missile boat that did the Vinage. Yeah,
how appropriately namedus Vinache carried off this absolutely devastating missile
attack the second time around. You know, I would have
(11:36):
imagined that every single service would have come and grabbed
that the Army, the Air Force, and of course the
Navy would have taken this missile apart to try and understand,
how can we build more of this, How can we
build this into an Indian missile? Right, we never did that.
It just remained a naval missile all through its life
till it's still there in a couple of missile boats
(11:58):
and stuff. But of course there have been other more
capable missiles like the Bromos. Yes, but guess which other
country did it, which actually took a P fifteen literally
tore it up, went through it, reverse engineered, and then
built its own range of anti ship missiles.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I have a feeling it's a neighboring country.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
It is a neighboring country to the north, a very
large neighbor. It sits on our borders, right, the Chinese.
You have to give it to the Chinese. You know,
when they are given technology, when they given products, they
look at the technology that goes into making it and
they quickly reverse engineering. We keep making fun of them. Oh,
they still take the reverse engineering, but they absorb the
(12:41):
technology right, and today they are where they are because
of that mindset. We need to get hold of that tech.
We need to make our own Sadly, we didn't have
that mindset then in the seventies, but then you come
down to the nineties and you have a whole new
generation of scientists and these are some of our bright scientists,
like you have the Missile Man of India. You have
(13:05):
doctor Shivdanu Play. These are all the people who the
scientists who have been brought up on the igmd Integrated
Guided Missile Development Program, the Ballistic Missile Program. They understand
what missiles are all about and they want to well,
make India great again. That did come to mind, But
(13:25):
make India a missile part it's important. Right. You're looking
at one mindset which says that we must have you know, aircraft.
You have this, which is right, I mean, the services
are right in what they do. But you have another
mindset which says, why do you need mand aircraft, Why
do you need warships? What do you need tanks? When
(13:46):
we can do all of this with missiles, all of
this and more with missiles. Right. So this is the
different thinking that this new breed of scientists brought in
from the IGMDP school. I call it the DRDOS I
GMDP scientists like you know, fantastic scientists like doctor An
the developer of the the PD of the age, doctor Kalam.
(14:07):
Of course, the overall is sing doctor Stanu, who's the
BrahMos man who identified the BrahMos as our potential first
strike weapons. So that's how the story changed in the
ninete eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Right and correct me if I'm wrong. The Bromos also
initially was meant to be a naval missile, if I'm
not wrong. Correct, Absolutely, it began as as as something
to be built for the Indian Navy, went to the
army and find into the Air Force, which took a
lot of jugard. By the way, if I said not wrong,
because I think you had to juguard, Yeah, we'll get
(14:44):
what what I'm saying. We'll come to that a bit later.
The air Force, because that's the combo that was used
during opsitions in Gours. What we know from governments urces
that it was the fighter jets of Union Air Force
that fired the Brumos and not only the land version
is what we are told.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
But we come to that.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So the big question then for me is that what
is it about this project that we got almost nothing wrong?
Because you know the JA it's like clockwork precision.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
You had your tests.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Happening successfully, So more or less, there's no controversies about quality.
There's no controversy about late at least I haven't read
about it. Maybe it's not come out in the open.
I'm pretty there must have been some disagreements at some level,
but overall it seems to be a fantastically successful project.
So what is it about this particular project that we
got almost everything right?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
You know? Good question again, Dave, And I think my
take on this, from following this project for a long
time and talking to all of their the people who've
made this happen, is a couple of things. You know,
two things. Most important is that this missile, the deal
for this missile, the setting up of this joint venture
was done at the highest levels of government. It was
(15:58):
done at the intergovernmental level for the Russian which is
like President Putin talks to Prime minister, first Prime Minister
Archebay and then of course you know successive prime ministers.
So it's done at the very highest level, right, which
means that there is no level above that. Right that,
of course there is God above, but on earth you
have the heads of government who steer the project, and
(16:20):
every time there was a roadblock, the scientists, the project
teams had direct access to the very top. So I've
spoken to doctor Shift down to play fantastic anecdotes. We
tell you about I had a problem here and I
would go and meet Putin and I'd say, listen, I
have a problem. You've got to help me do this.
And it had something like President Putin's personal intervention on
(16:42):
a number of occasions where he overruled his own people
and said, no, listen, you must give them. So when
you have this kind of guidance, and you have, of
course a very extraordinary bunch of scientists on both sides,
Let's not forget the Russians are the ones who actually
developed them. This we helped. We brought in the money.
(17:04):
You took that missile off the ground. It was a
project which we helped realize with our funding and our
technical expertise. Of course, so it had everything going for it,
so there were no obstacles. It was not a normal
R and D project that you know, there was scientists
who struggling with some kind of technology and all that.
(17:25):
It was literally that these two governments wanted to make
this project happen. It did, and it happens they're at
project levels, at projects like the nuclear submarine project. Yes,
that has also had its share of hurdles, but because
it is so important to the country, and because it's
(17:46):
also being steered from the very top, from the Prime
Minister's office, you typically don't find the normal hurdles that
you would say in aircraft acquisition projects or anything. And
that is why increasingly you must have heard in previous
issues that podcasts that we've done about the engine problems,
where we've spoken about, you know, maybe we need to
(18:08):
get top level supervision for this, We need to get
the Prime Minister's office involved. And you know, because these
are not ordinary capabilities. The Bramos is not an ordinary missile.
There is no missile like this anywhere in the world,
a universal supersonic cruise missile which has multiple variants. No
country in the world has it today, not even the Russians.
(18:30):
They have different missiles for different purposes, but not the
same missile for multiple use. You know, So when you
understand the capabilities of a missile and how important it
is for your armed forces, then the doors automatically start
opening and problems dissolved.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Which then begs the question why did Russia never end
up buying these missiles, and which begs the follow up question,
then what did Russia get out of this?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Well, see, for the Russians, it was firstly, the Russians
have a large arsenal of missiles. They've also used the BrahMos.
They have the original version of it called the ya Kant,
which is the the export version of the Yakhant is
called the Onix. The original version is called the ONIX
(19:17):
three K five five ONIX, and the export version is
called Yakhant. The Yakhan is not you know, being exported
because it's the BrahMos, which is the thing. They have
used multiple versions of the Onyx in the war against Ukraine,
so they're also using it, but they prefer to use
their version of and not the Bramos because then I
think it will mean buying it from US, you know,
(19:38):
buying it from the Indian company. Yeah, so they have
their own stocks and missile but you know, the Russians
are a missile superpower. They've got an enormous range of missiles.
They just have to dip into their arsenal and they
can pull out like literally horses for courses, They have
missiles for targets. They are able to literally in a
(19:58):
couple of months bring out a miss the Rashnik, a
hypersonic ballistic missile. So they have mastered artillery and missileary.
So for them, they had a you know, a lot
of missile options. Bramos was not a very big thing
for them. It was a big thing for engaging with India,
the strategic partnership that they had with India, this joint
(20:20):
venture that they've got going with the Brahmoscorp. Which is
now manifested in a number of sales. Like if you've
seen two Philippines Philippines, they get a chunk of the
you know, royalty for that, like something like fifty percent
of the profits would go to them because they are
co developers. They own the IP for that missile, and
we're also developing variants of the BrahMos which will become
(20:44):
very competitive, and also our own completely standalone indigenous hypersonic
missile projects. Right right, So yeah, I'd like talk about
the Force.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Project because I think that took a I don't want
to use the words you card since you don't like it,
but that took some extra technological leaps that that the
Bromo had to had to make and if I remember correctly,
I think it was you who told me once maybe
on the podcast of Camera that it was their idea
in the first place. It wasn't the Air Force's idea. Therefore,
(21:15):
wasn't going to them and telling them that was there?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Really do it for you, you see.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
If you want to use it. And I love that video.
I love that video of the SUKUOI silently dropping that promos.
It just like it's like frozen in mid air. Suddenly
the jets shoot and it just zooms out of the bitches.
It's a fantastic video on the air launched video, but
one of their videos of the air launched version being
(21:40):
being tested and being used. So tell me about that story.
What what the technical issues not issues, but the technical
challenges of fitting it to the Suquoi uh and slightly
controversial question if I may, considering what you've done during operations,
and would you say that with the Bramos is perhaps
more devastating the rough with the scalpe.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Oh absolutely, yeah, good question. Again, they've run you know,
the thing is that the Bramos see when when you
launch a corporation. It's a profit making body. It needs
to sell missiles right to stay in the game. And
that is when you had Bramos cob which has already
sold surface launched versions of it to the Navy and
to the Army and to the Air Force, the FOCE
(22:22):
at ground launchers. Then they said, hey, listen, uh, we
need to sell the air launched versions to the Air Force.
Air Force said, well, yeah, okay, but how are you
going to find it? It's a three and a half
tun Yeah, it's a massive missile, right, it's how are
you going to launch it? So they said, okay, let's
look at the Sukhoy So thirty is the only platform
that can carry this. Yeah, but you know where are
you going to fit it. It's never been designed to
(22:43):
carry a missile like the Bramos. So that is when
they kind of engineered the Sukoi thirteen. Guard re engineered
the Sukhoi thirty to be able to carry the BrahMos
and three and three three ton missile. So they took
off one the booster section because they the momentum of
(23:05):
the aircraft itself gives it a certain thrust, which so
you could do away with the booster, and so that's
how the missile was born, and they got the Air
Force to give them a couple of Sukois which they
could then convert to carrying this silence on the centerline
of the Uhu thirty. It's got two points from where
(23:27):
the Bromos is held it. Unfortunately, each thirty can carry
only one, but they believe that when future versions of
the BrahMos, like the Ngi the next generation Bromos come,
you can carry something like four to six. Even so
this was something that was entirely a BrahMos caught idea
(23:48):
which then the Air Force wholeheartedly embraced because then they
realized that look, you're looking at a Sukhoi thirty which
is carrying a Bromos with a a two hundred and
fifty kg watered a quarter of a ton. That's a
lot of ordinance, and it's a supersonic strike missile. And
look at the range of the thing. It can go
(24:08):
as far as the Sooth thirty can fly. So you
have a couple of squadrons of this, and these are
like bombers, right, there's strategic bombers almost. So that's when
this whole project was kicked off, and I think by
about twenty twelve they begun the trials and a few
years later it was inducted. The Air Force has one
(24:29):
and possibly going up to three squadrons of tho thirties
which are being retrofitted to fire the Bromos. It's a
devastating weapon and that's exactly what they used during Obsendur.
And look at the beauty of it. You've not crossed
the international border. You fired these missiles from your side
of the airspace and they've literally gone like hot knives
(24:49):
through butter Yeah, nothing, no air defense, nothing, just went
all of them hit their pre programmed targets, air bases, hangars,
command posts, all of the those things, radars, radar stations
and all that. So this is actually that first strike weapon.
Now India has a no first use policy, right, but
(25:09):
that's for nuclear weapons, but for strike this is going
to be the first weapon that you will launch on
the first day of combat against your enemy. When you
want to knock out his air bases, when you want
to destroy his aircraft on the ground, you want to
shatter his radars, his air defense networks. This is your
weapon of choice. This is your first strike weapon. And
this is exactly what the BrahMos brings to the table.
(25:32):
And you know the fact that you have so many
versions of this missile that you have a ground launched version,
you have an air launched version, you have a maritime
version that could come from above the sea or below
the sea. The adversary is completely confused, right, he doesn't
know where that missile is going to come from. And
here's to factor in the fact that I am looking
(25:53):
at an adversary India that has three versions, possibly a
fourth version. Also, if Darian starts firing Bramos, it should
at some point, and these missiles are going to converge
on me from multiple directions and I don't have a
defense against it. So that's a very terrifying disciplinary, induce
(26:16):
discipline inducing tool when you get the enemy to behave
that we have no designs on anyone, right, We're not
an aggressive nation. We're not a nation that uses anything first.
But if push comes to shove, this is going to
be your tool to discipline your badly behaved neighbors.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
It's like the image I have of whenever the US
is a war, they'll have their warships or somewhere near
that country and they'll fire like this bunch of missiles yea,
and that image of like you know, streaks of like
the fire fire basically.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
But you know, this is how it began, is how
the whole development of the Bramos began with that exactly
that Senti scenario that it described Gulf War one nineteen
ninety one, where you have Indian scientists or watching with
wide eyes on CNN as you're seeing one of the
most potent air defense networks in the world, the Iraqi
(27:08):
air defense literally being shredded by tomahawks, the tourmawks flying around.
There's something at fifty or sixty of them that were
fired from offshore, the submarines and warships, and they shattered
the Iraqi air defense networks. I mean, they precisely went
in and at that point, till that point, nobody had
(27:29):
seen cruise missiles literally going through goalposts and you know,
windows and doors and stuff like that. But they started
doing that in Iraq. And when they saw the potential
of a cruise missile, a very very accurate cruise missile,
that's when we woke up to the possibility. You know,
we have an IGMDP with ballistic missiles and cruise missiles,
(27:53):
but we don't have anything with a first strike weapon
like the Bramos. I mean, of course we didn't have
a cruise missile at that point. Came in much later,
but it was all ballistic missiles, and nobody had thought
that we needed a super accurate missile like the Tomahawk.
So that's when they started thinking that do we need
to go down this route? Yes, and if we do,
(28:14):
do we go the hair root or the tortoise route?
The tortoise being the Tomahawk, which is slow and you know,
ponderous move it's sub sonic. Yeah, it maneuvers to target,
and you have the hair Root, which is a very
fast moving thing. You know, a couple of minutes it's
on target, flies at three times the speed of sound.
They chose the super sonic group and they said, look,
(28:37):
let's get this technology which the Soviets have developed, let's
co develop it with them, Let's put money into this project,
let's make this happen. And that's how the BrahMos was.
So it's actually the Iraq War, the nineteen ninety one
desert storm that actually set off that storm in the
minds of the Indian scientists and got them to think about.
You know, we need to have those missiles. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
We'll talk more about this better for quick break.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
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(29:30):
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Speaker 2 (29:51):
Welcome back, Santipa. I now want your wanted you to
talk about how the promos was used in operations in
bus civic options, specifically the last day of fighting that
led to the session of fighting between the two sites
because like you were describing, India managed to hit uh
(30:12):
their airfield, their military basis with with precision. That was
that was like you know, uh, it was seen on
the satellite imagery where you know, the the exact building
where these planes were kept, the exact center line of
the runway.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That's like President level Yeah two run with intersection points.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Both runways, right, So I want your thoughts on one,
why was it that we chose to use the Sukhoi
and combo because this is something I think the three
operation chiefs had said in one of the press conferences.
It was the air launched version that was that was
that that had been used, uh, and not so much
the land version. Why did that happen? A second, how
(30:54):
did it all go down?
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Because?
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Uh, unlike with some other controversies that we've had about
did India lose I mean, it's fairly known by now
that India did lose fighter jets, how many we don't
know yet, questions about be the wreckage et cetera. There
has not been a single claim of a single Grummos
being shot down. There has not been a single you know,
even a fake photo of a brumo's wreckage being in
(31:17):
Pakistan somewhere. All you have is the proof of the
strikes itself and that's about it. So my question being
how did these missiles manage to penetrate Pakistan's defense? So
technically speaking, so the first time it's happened, there was
an incident a couple of years ago where it accidentally
ended up in Pakistan was not raced by the.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Pakistan launch ad flew to Yeah, exactly, so tay us
to that.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Night when the military was in you know, hyper super
alert and they planned this mission to launch Bromos at
the Pakistani sites. What must have done been.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Like you know, I think it was basically a response
to the way Pakistan was targeted and civilians along the
international border and the luc And I think that is
when decision was made at the highest levels to launch
the brumos because this is the one weapon that there
is no answer to the enemy cannot intercept this weapon.
(32:13):
So all you have to do is to pull out
your targeting folder and start drawing up the list of targets.
Whether you wanted to be twelve or thirteen, or twenty
or fifty or there are plenty of missiles. It is
how many targets you want to hit to send the
message to Pakistan. And I think that the idea is
(32:35):
to get him to call and you know, tell you
to stop. Right. What happened, which is what happened on
the tenth when the dgmo's phone rang. So what did
it take for that phone to ring? That was the
BrahMos missile Bramos missile force that phone to ring because
when Pakistan saw that massive salvo which came in, you
didn't have any way of intercepting these missiles. So then
(32:57):
it only became a matter of how many more can
you expect? There would be multiple salvos of that, and
we've been producing this missile for fifteen years, right, there's
no shortage of BrahMos missile stocks. I don't know the
exact numbers those are, those are classified, but I can
imagine given the production run of the last decade and
(33:17):
a half, they must be substantial numbers of Brumos. So
there's lots more where that came from. You could possibly
go on for another week or two hitting all his
targets with BrahMos missiles still a point, and he would
not have much of his military machine left or moving.
I think that is the kind of capabilities that the
BrahMos displayed that night, and the reason that they chose
(33:39):
it is that there was nothing else. That we didn't
have anything else in our arsenal which is as deadly
and as precise and as devastating as the Bromos. There's
no way Bramos could go off target and you know,
stray off into a civilian area, because that was the
biggest concern that we did not want to strike any
civilian targets and the government of an ear you have
to give it to this question it the military might
(34:01):
question this. Part of the reason for the loss of
the aircraft is believed to be the fact that we
were not allowed to undertake suppression of enemy air defenses, right,
which is the first thing that you do in conflict.
The idea was only to strike at the terrorist targets,
which is what they did, and Pakistan retaliated when they
(34:23):
saw our jets launching to hit those terrorists launch pads.
So if it had been done, if it had been
left only to the military, my guess is that they
would have first launched with all the drones and dramases,
knocked out all the enemy radars and missile launch sites
(34:43):
before going into you know, before even launching your fighter aircraft.
But this was a decision that was made at the
highest levels to send in the fighter jets, and on
the tenth the decision was again taken to launch the
fighter just with the BrahMos which could not be intercepted.
(35:04):
So very strong message was sent out and the rest,
as they say, is history, but not in Pakistan. Pakistan
has its own version of history. It keeps rewriting its history.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And as always right, so over the years the promos
how much Indian has it become? So you said that,
and first of all, actually to go to sort of
you know, to ask a question before that, what was
that Russian help we need it in the first place,
even though you had some of the practiced minds over there,
(35:35):
even though they were involved with the ballistic may sell program.
What was the need to have that Russian know how?
What was it? The tech?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
The engine? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
As always so, what was it? And over a period
of time, ever since we've successfully tested and launched the
and inducted the first batteries of bromos, if I may
say that, how indian has it become over the period.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Of well, it's the Indian component has been steadily increasing
ever since it was inducted, over the last twenty years. So.
But the biggest concern, I mean this is a concern
for me as well. The fact is that you've not
been able to indigenize the engine so far, the ram jet, right,
which comes back to our old bugbear about engines. Engines engine. Yeah,
(36:21):
so the engine is literally the heart of the BrahMos missile.
I mean it cannot fly as fast as it does
without the ramjet engine. And of course the seeker. That's
a very important part of the miss At least two
things are Russian. Can the speaker is yes, exactly what
homes into the target, right, it's a radar seekert. It's
a very very advanced piece of technology, which is again
(36:42):
Russian in origin. But we are getting there. And with
the hypersonic missile, for instance, the DRDO is hypersonic, which
is entirely indigenous. We are developing our own missile which
is actually faster than the BrahMos. So that is going
to be a proof of the putting. So you know
quickly if you're looking at the evolution of Indian missiles.
(37:03):
Nineteen seventy one, we are a client state. We buy
a lot of P fifteen missiles, we use them, but
we don't reverse engineer them or do anything with it.
We come down to the early two thousands. We find
the BrahMos, we co develop it with the Russian Federation,
we build it, we acquire it in large numbers, but
it's still not entirely Indian. I mean I would want
(37:24):
for a missile to be one hundred percent Indian indigenous. Right.
This is not out of any spite for the Russian
Russian friends. I mean they've been fantastic strategic partners. But
the fact is, at the end of the day, you
need to have your own tech. And that is where
I think you're coming to stage three with the hypersonic
missile program, where the DADO has actually managed to vault
(37:49):
over technology and go from a supersonic missile to a
hypersonic missile. And that is going to be very, very
important for us in the years to come because with
this you are actually get into a very rarefied group
of countries that have hypersonic missile capability, and you need
to feel those hypersonic weapons very quickly because your adversity
(38:11):
is also going to build in countermeasures to the Bramos,
so you have to the next time. It has to
be something else that catches them completely off guard. So
there has been a slow, steady increase in the indigenous component.
Missile is finally assembled over here in India at Hyderba
Bramos facility, but a lot of key components are still Russian.
(38:33):
In origin. And there is a logic to it as well,
because they're looking at if there is nothing, there is
no workshare for the Russians, why would they be part
of the project. Then you will have to kind of,
you know, make sure that you pay extra for the engine,
you get the technology for the engine for the seeker.
(38:54):
That would add on more, you know, make the missiles
a little more expensive for you. The fact is that
my sense is that the Diadio has decided to go
to the hypersonic route. Now Brumos will continue, it will
possibly have its iterations, the BrahMos NG and the Bromos too,
which is the longer range version of the Brumos, a
(39:14):
hypersonic version of the Bromos. But they would want to
get a hygh personic, a pure Indian hypersonic missile. And
there have been some very encouraging breakthroughs like a thousand
and second test of the hypersonic engine. Very recently they
have been tests of the high HSD, the hypersonic glide vehicle.
(39:36):
There have been there's been a full scale launch of
the fifteen hundred kilometer ranged hypersonic missile last year, so
that have been very encouraging, you know, progress. So the
Brumos is I would say, it's one step in our
missile evolution. You know where you've gone from complete missile
(39:58):
blindness to missile awareness to finally, you know, complete missile
indigenous capability. Today we are completely self sufficient missile. We
can build all kinds of any kinds of missile. We
will be able to build radars us. We're still getting there,
but with missiley, I think we've come of age.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, but just sort of an extension to your point,
how does it work when it comes to the IP
over year, Because so, for example, is India allowed to
use the experience it has had with the Brumos development
for its other missiles the ones that you were just
talking about, or is that no, No, you have to
(40:38):
develop it from scratch on your own.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Well, I think a lot of the experience that you've
gained with the Brumos you can use it with other missiles.
But you can't take components out of the Brumos.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
You can't use that the engine basics.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
You can't use the engine is an issue. But I
think if you bargain with the Russians art convince them
about you know, what needs to be done for India's
own missile capabilities. I'm sure they listen, and there is
a very high level India Russia meat that's very shortly
(41:12):
a couple of months, possibly September, when President is coming
here with a big basket of uh, you know, missiles
and submarines and technology and all of that. So it's
it's for us to ask for all of these things.
And I'm sure they would consider this in the spirit of,
(41:32):
you know, India Russia strategic partnership.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Especially when India has sort of, you know, been one
of those rare countries in the world not to take
sides in the Russia Ukraine War and has been sort
of in the middle path. A quick follow up to
your point about hyperstorting missiles, even though I think that's
a that's a topic matter that can be a full episode,
but since you mentioned it, let's just briefly talked about
it and sort of break it down for people and
(41:55):
for even me, because I get very confused when you
talked about hypersonding.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Myself.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
I think there is one which would be yours in
the atmosphere hypersonic, which basically five flies fastness supersonic cruise missile,
and there's the other one which seems like a hybrid
between a ballistic missile and a cruise missiles. Just break
down this what is at hypersonic missile and what is
India aiming for?
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Well, India is aiming for both kinds of science. One
is of course one that stays within the atmosphere, which
flies at very high speeds over mark five and which
has a glide vehicle which is basically the one that
carries the warhead. So you would have seen some of
those protribes. The Chinese have those capabilities. And the other
(42:37):
one is a full scale hypersonic weapon, which is a
warhead which comes it goes into space and it comes
back at very high speeds hyperson You're talking of like
an ICBM I RBM kind of speed. So that is
a pure all the way hypersonic. There is no you know,
glide vehicle or anything of that. Just a warhead comes
(43:00):
in a yeah, massive speeds. That's a pure hypersonic thing.
But then you're also looking at reusable hypersonic vehicles. This
has been a pet project of the Dado where you
have a hypersonic vehicle that goes that delivers the weapons
on target and comes back. It's like an unguided projectiles. Yeah,
(43:21):
something like that, but in the atmosphere. So these are
the various uh you know programs that is that are
underway and it would come together in the next five
or six years or so. That you're looking at very
accelerated timelines for this because uh, you know, hypersonic missiles
and indeed supersonic missiles as well, like the bromos, they
(43:42):
give you the ability to bridge deficiencies like fighter aircraft
if you don't have enough fighter aircraft squadns. This can
tied over that shortfall of have enough. We yeah, that
that that's a that's a big, big void that we have.
We don't have enough you know, fighter squadrons. We are
(44:03):
ten squadners shot which is almost down a fourth. And
anyone who argues against man fighter aircraft you just have
to look at the Iranian experience where they don't have
control of their airspace. These Riley jets the IF can
fly in whenever they want and do whatever they want
in Iran airspace and not be challenged. So there's no
point of being a drone and a missile superpower if
(44:27):
you don't have man fighter jets to challenge your adversary.
When he comes up in your airspace or even lack
the air defense missiles to shoot him down. So all
of these will be important. You will need your missiles,
you will need maned aircraft, you will have drones. It's not,
you know, either or kind of thing. All of these
(44:48):
are complimentary technologies and they all have to exist side
by side. A couple of last points.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
So while making my notes for this episode, I came
across a missile that's right now named as the Long
Range Land Attack Cruise Missile l R l a c M. Yeah,
it was a test launched first in December last year.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
So if you have a Brummos, what are you doing
with that?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
What is that exactly?
Speaker 3 (45:14):
Well, this could be This flies to about fifteen hundred.
This is our version of the Tomahawk. Oh okay, so
it is. It's basically giving options to military planners that
if I want to hit a target, I have a
range of options before me. You know, I can either
send in mand aircraft, I can strike it with the
Brumos supersnic cruise missile, or if I don't have the range,
(45:38):
if it's at if it's beyond the range of a Brumos,
then I you know, strike it with this long range
land attack Cruise missile l LACM, or I strike it
with some other it's like a ground based launcher, or
I use a conventional version of the Ugly five. You know.
So it's just giving planner multiple options. It's nothing more
(46:00):
than that. So it will be one more option, so
you will have to finally, you will have the hair
and the tortoise option before. Oh right, you'll have both.
You earn you have both. You have the supersonic version
the Brumos, and you have your TOMA equivalent to strike
the target right right.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
One more point on this, uh and uh. Now, this
is something that has never been officially talked about, but
if you were to go on to defense forums on
on on online, especially websites like Reddit, you will have
a lot of people defense geeks and nerds just like
you know, speculating about this talking about it. That the
(46:39):
Brumos actually is nuclear capable. India has never admitted that,
has never said that. So your thoughts on the technical
aspect of brummos being able to carry a nuclear warrant.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
But technically it can be retrofitted to fire a nuclear
a warr It's entirely possible, but uh, they decided from
the very beginning. The plan is decided at the very
inception of this joint venture not to put a nuclear
weapon or a nuclear warhead into it, because then what
happens is that it cannot be used as a tactical weapon.
(47:11):
It can't be used as the first time because when
your diversity sees a nuclear supersonic missile coming at anythings
that be nuclear. Yeah, so there is that uncertainty that
they wanted to avoid, which is why they right from
the beginning they said, this is going to be a
pure tactical weapon. There will not be any strategic variant
of it. There's not going to be either or this
(47:33):
only tactical weapon. But the flip side of that is
that when you're talking of ICBMs IRBMs like the Agly
five being modified with a conventional wallet, then you have
a problem there exactly right. So then you will have
to kind of make the use case for it to
say that, look, I will also employ this, but only
(47:54):
in a case when I have my back to the
wall and I literally have no other way of taking
out a larger adverse. This is not meant purely for Pakistan.
This is also primarily meant for China, and you don't
have the ability to take out any high value Chinese
targets using tactical weapons, using non strategic weapons, we don't
(48:16):
have bombers are fighter aircraft. Littlely I'll have to fly
one way suicide missions to strike targets deep inside China.
So this gives our war fighters and ability to hit
targets at extended ranges inside of China, especially de buried
fortified targets of the kind that they're building along the LAC.
So that's the kind of thing. But the thing is that,
(48:39):
to answer your question from the beginning, Bramos was always
going to be a tacticalness. That was a decision they took. Sure,
they can, you know, re engineer it to carry a
nuclear weapon on nuclear warhead, a compact nuclear warhead, But
why do that? You have so many other Yeah, you
have so many other weapons that you can do. You
have the brah you have the the other way, the
(49:03):
K fifteen Shoria, you have several other you know, land
based missiles that fly near hypersonic speeds that can carry
nuclear weapons. So why the Bramos.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
So a tangent, then a quick tangent there is there
any technology in the world that can discern whether an
incoming missile has a nuclear warhead, because what you said, no,
so then it's quite risky. What we're seeing in the
Russia Ukraine war and what we saw, I see a
bms were used, conventions were used with conventional warrants. Yeah,
(49:35):
so that's quite scraay.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Then if can't there is no way of telling whether
a missile has you can at best predict from the
trajectory of the missile. You will actually, I mean there
are missile uh you know, launch sensors that tell you
about the launch of a missile by an adversary, but
you cannot tell on literally until the point of impassion
(49:58):
that it is a convey warhead or non nuclear. So
that that's the kind of ambiguity that's it's actually a
bit scary. You know, if you look character if if
they were to be used in in large numbers, then
what's to prevent adversary from thinking is under massive nuclear attack.
So these would never be typically used in large numbers.
(50:21):
They would be used as a one off and possibly
I'm just guessing I don't have any information on this
that one side will call and tell the other person
or other people who are watching that this is a
conventional missile. We are not firing a nuclear weapon. So nothing,
no need to get alarmed because that the nuclear that's
a good point. Is not something you want to be
(50:42):
you know, rattling the nuclear ladder is not something that
you want to be shaking.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
That's a good point, actually, right, Uh, great, the great chat.
I just want your final takeaways if you know, anyone
were to analyze the Brummo success story and use it,
and I'd apply it to India's other upcoming projects like
the ANCA, the fifth generation fighter jet project or the
next generation tank project. I forgot the name it was.
(51:07):
It's called the f c our Future of our ser
sorry future edition, a new tank project or even to
build your own damn rifle. So some quick takeaways of
what we can learn from this success story and implement
it over there, and your your take on is it
going to happen?
Speaker 3 (51:28):
You mean the AMCA and no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
The the takeaways that you give us, the lessons that
will be learned have been learned and I've be implemented.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
You know, I'm a big conflicted here. They've I mean,
I would love to see the PMO, you know, handle
every single project of consequence like the AMCA and the
uh you know, fighter jet engine, maybe even the assault rifle.
But but that that's off the table. Now the rifle
we are good with that. But but my other thing
(51:57):
is that how can we load all of these just
on to the pm I'm sure the PMO has got
many other things to do rather than just run defense projects.
Maybe you know, projects like the nuclear submarine thing, which
is about ensuring the survival of your country because of
a second strike weapon kind of thing. Those kind of
things can be run by the PMO, but you cannot
(52:17):
have the Prime Minister's Office supervising tactical projects. Even the
promos is it's a great weapon, but it's a tactical weapon.
At the end of the day. We need to have
dedicated project teams. We need to pick the right people,
empower them. And I think Gere is where the most
(52:38):
crucial part of this whole thing is selecting the project teams,
empowering them, and then getting them to you know, go
help for leather to deliver on these projects and getting
the best you know, expertise wherever they are, and again
not treating them as you know like, oh, this is
a GTR project. Jet engines will be produced by the
(52:59):
g A T or you know, this missile will be
produced by this department of the DR. There has to
be a certain awareness about the criticality of these projects
to India's defense. Like the fighter jet engine for instance,
that is a project that I mean literally every Indian
(53:22):
fight indigenous fighter jet project from your marut to the
LCA Mark one to Mark one A and Mark two
is is struggling because we haven't mastered the engine. So
there is something that you need to get. Possibly that
that is a fit case for the PMO to look
at it. But other projects you need to have dedicated
(53:43):
project teams. You need to get the best and you know,
not necessarily only the DR. You need to find the
talent wherever it may be. It's you know, the US
Navy's success story, if you're right, the story of Hymen Recover.
I'm Admiral Hyman Recover. He's a guy who literally, single
handedly for decades was the head of the US nuclear
(54:06):
propulsion project and he ensured that the United States is
where it is today in the kind of ballistic missile
submarines that has nuclear bard attacks suburine attack because he
focused on the reactor. He went hell for leather for that.
We need to find these champions. It's always, at the
end of the day, it's always about the people behind this.
(54:29):
It's not so much about the hardware and the technology,
and those hurdles can be overcome right. You know, if
you have the right people, they will find the answers
to all your problems. And that has been the case
in all of our great success stories, including the Brumos.
You have visionaries like you know Dr Pill and people
(54:50):
who followed him into the Brumos after that, but of
course he had to do a lot of the heavy
lifting initial years, and of course doctor Kalam And to
identify these empower them and allow them to run the
project teams and then see them deliver these capabilities which
we've now benefiting from, I mean just imagined three decades
(55:10):
later the Bromos. What a shining example of a cooperation
with the Russian Federation it is and give you the
kind of capabilities that you know you could not have imagined. Possibly.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Indeed, we lend the chat there and thanks a great
to chat of fantastic insights. It's always loved talking to
your POV subject. Thanks, thanks for having me, and thanks
to all our lessons and viewers. That's it for this
week's defense to Us For more, tune in next week.
Tell then stay safe, not for us, any boundaries for
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