Indian Defence Power and Missile Systems

This is a copy of one of the posts from my another blog http://harshankur.blogpost.com.

Some mind-blowing facts about Indian army :-

• Indian Army is the 3rd biggest military contingent in the World next to USA and China.
• India's indigenous nuclear-capable ICBM(Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) AGNI-V puts India into the Elite Club consisting of USA, China, France and Russia.
• The famous missile series AGNI's first missile AGNI I failed in its first two tests and was made fun off by other countries like USA, UK, Pakistan, etc.
• It was successful in the third try but USA claimed that the project head A.P.J. Abdul Kalam( who happened to have visited Long Island, USA for some other work) had learnt the technology from their missiles. Now AGNI is one of the best missile systems in the world.
• Agni and Prithvi both are Nuclear capable basaltic  and are most accurate in the world in their respective categories. Prithvi will always hit within 50m of target coordinates thus making it devastating with even smaller payloads(explosives)
• India claims AGNI-V to have a reach of 5,000 kms to which Chinese and Australian delegates and experts suspect to have a range of 8,000 kms. and that India is hiding these facts just to avoid any concern from foreign countries.
• AGNI-VI(being built) will have a range of 10000 kms. which would give India the power to strike in any part of the world barring South America and very small parts of North America.
• India is also alleged to be secretly devloping Surya class missiles based on ISRO's PSLV model. Surya I and Surya II will have ranges around 10,000 and 20,000 Kms.
• India's cruise missile (being tested) NIRBHAY is a cruise nuclear-warhead missile which when blasted, moves in stealth mode and when the target is in nearby range, attacks it with a random procedure thus eliminating the probability of it getting stopped by any anti-missile system as its process is itself not defined. In other words-unstoppable.
• In the hilly terrains, it gives an advantage as the missile goes from the side of the mountains and attacks the target from the rear side.
• The missile BrahMos-2 (built in collaboration with Russia)(under development)(Brahmaputra+Moscow) is the fastest hypersonic missile in the world travelling at a speed of Mach-7 (7 times the speed of sound in air).
• BrahMos I is already devloped with 13 variants (ex air to ground, ground to ground, ground to sea, sea to sea etc) It is already in service of the Army, Navy and Air force. It is one of its kind because generally cruise misiles are Sea to Sea or Sea to Land.
  
  
  
  
  Coming to Navy-based missile systems
• India's INS-Vikrant(bought from UK) was the first aircraft carrier of India.
• The HMS Harriers(airplanes on INS VIRAAT) are one of its kind which has the ability of vertical landing and take-off.
  
  Shown below is INS VIRAAT
  
  
  
• India's statistics for aircraft carriers is like this
  Active:
  • INS Viraat: Centaur class carrier (ex-HMS Hermes) in service since 1987.
  • INS Vikramaditya : Modified Kiev class carrier (ex-Admiral Gorshkov) due in service October 2013.
  Under construction:
  • INS Vikrant: 40,000 ton Vikrant class carrier. It is being built at Cochin Shipyard and is expected to enter service in 2017.
  Planned
  • INS Vishal: 65,000 ton Vikrant-class carrier. Expected to enter service in 2022.
  Retired:
  • INS Vikrant : Majestic-class carrier, (ex-HMS Hercules), in service from 1961 to 1997 and currently a museum ship docked at Mumbai.
• The image below shows the countries which currently operates aircraft carriers in blue and the historic operators in light blue.
• 
  
  
  India's INS-ARIHANT is the first indeginious(built completely in India, by India) nuclear powered submarine in India. It has a capability to shoot missiles with nuclear war-heads even after being at half-a-kilometer beneath the water-level.
  
  
  Coming to the Air Based Power
• The Sukhoi Su-30MKI, Dassault Mirage 2000,  and MiG-29 serve in the Indian Air Force and are also seen as a means to deliver nuclear weapons.
  
  Shown below is Sukhoi Su-30MKI
  
• In addition India maintains SEPECAT Jaguar and MiG-27M which can be used to drop gravity bombs.
• Shown below is the mid-air refueling of two Mirage 2000 aircrafts.
  
  
  
• The new in queue for the indigenous aircraft  of India is HAL-Tejas
• It integrates technologies such as relaxed static stability, fly-by-wire flight control system, multi-mode radar, integrated digital avionics system, composite material structures, and a flat ratedengine.
• It is a tailless, compound delta-wing design powered by a single engine.
  
  
  Shown below is HAL Tejas
  
  
  
  The entire list of the known missile types possessed by Indian Armed Forces can be found here
• India is also developing a fiftth generation stealth air superiority plane, that is it will not be seen on radar giving it an absolute advantage BVR(Beyond Visual Range) fights and bombing deep in to enemy territory.
• Below is an image of the plane... currently under trails
  
  
  List of missiles by country
• 
  Will update more information later.