The test flight of India’s subsonic cruise missile Nirbhay

The test flight of India’s subsonic cruise missile Nirbhay, which can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads and has a range of 1,000 km, goes exactly as scripted. By T.S. SUBRAMANIAN IT was a flight that far exceeded the expectations of the missile and aeronautical engineers of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on October 17. It was only the second flight of Nirbhay, India’s subsonic cruise missile, which takes off vertically like a missile, jettisons its booster engine and then starts flying horizontally like an aircraft at a subsonic speed of 0.7 Mach. However, the smooth flight of Nirbhay on that day for more than an hour, covering a range of 1,010 km, demonstrated not only the DRDO’s ability to blend missile and aeronautical technologies into a single contraption but also filled a vital gap in India’s arsenal. While India’s supersonic cruise missile BrahMos has a range of just 290 km, and can carry only a conventional warhead, Nirbhay is a long-range missile that can attack targets 1,000 km away. Besides, it can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads. In addition, it is a “treetop” missile: it can fly at a height of just five metres, undetected by radars. It is a “loitering missile” as well: it can hover above an area for several minutes, pick out a target and attack it with precision. In several DRDO engineers’ reckoning, Nirbhay is the base on which more powerful subsonic cruise missiles with longer ranges can be developed. The sky was clear at 10-05 a.m. at the Integrated Test Range (ITR) near Balasore, Odisha, when Nirbhay lifted off from a mobile launcher, a TATRA truck. This is the sequence of its test launch: Nirbhay’s booster engine revved up; it rose vertically to a height of 800 metres; a mechanism in the missile tilted it horizontally; the booster engine fell away; the turbo-jet engine, akin to an aircraft’s, ignited; and with its wings spread out Nirbhay started cruising like an aircraft at an altitude of five km. It was carrying a 300-kg dummy warhead. It flew for more than an hour and 10 minutes, traversing more than 1,010 km against the targeted 800 km. It progressed from one waypoint to another, covering 16 waypoints on its flight path. At the end of 1,000 km of flight, with its aviation turbine fuel exhausted, Nirbhay plunged into the Bay of Bengal. All along, a Jaguar fighter-aircraft of the Indian Air Force tailed it, videographing its flight. Source:  www.frontline.in/