India goes clubbing

The Hindustan Times reports that India is on the verge of acquiring a strategic capability to strike land targets thousands of miles from its shores by inducting the Russian underwater launched Klub-S subsonic cruise missiles. These missiles will come as a goody together with the delivery of the Sindhuvijay, an Indian Navy Kilo-class submarine that was overhauled at the Russian Zvezdochka shipyard at the White Sea. The Klub-S is a high-precision missile that can be launched from standard torpedo tubes from a depth of 35 to 40 meters with a range of – according to the Hindustan Times - 275 sm.

The article continues by informing that the Klub-S is not the only new missile that India will get together with the upgraded Kilo-class, known as the Sindhughosh Class in Indian service:

Besides the land attack version, the subs are also coming armed with 3M-54EI anti-ship cruise missiles.

This is all in a tumble; let’s make some sense out of this: the Klub is an anti-sub and anti-ship cruise missile system (ASCM) that is sometimes referred to as the Club, Biryuza, Alpha and Alfa. Two modifications exist: Klub-S for submarines and Klub-N for surface vessels.

The crew of Globalsecurity.org knows that:

Five types of missiles - 3M-54E, 3M-54E1, 3M-14E, 91RE1 and 91RE2 - have been developed for the Club ASCM. The Club-S can be armed with a 3M-54E or 3M-54E1 anti-ship missile, 3M-14E submarine-to-coast missile or a 91RE1 anti-submarine torpedo. The Club-N can be armed with a 3M-54E or 3M-54E1 anti-ship missile, 3M-14E submarine-to-coast missile or a 91RE2 anti-submarine torpedo.

The missiles come with the Kilo-class submarine, so we have the S-version of the Klub family. The range of allegedly 275sm can be corrected to 275kn. There is no Klub-missile with a range of 275sm and the export of such a missile would furthermore put Russia into breach of its MTCR obligations, because 275sm are more than 500km. Because the Hindustan Times brags about the “capability to strike land targets thousands of miles from its shores” we can assume that this missile is the 3M14-E LACM, the family’s land-attack version.

The second missile that was wrongly labeled “3M-54EI” by the Hindustan Times is the 3M-54E1 version of the Klub-S ASCM. This missile is the Russian equivalent of the Tomahawk and is almost identical in shape to the 3M14E. Because the missile is subsonic it must be the 3M-54E1, without the addition 1 it would be the supersonic version, which can only carry a 200kg warhead instead of the 400kg that can be delivered by the 3M-54E1 and the 3M-14E.

Those of you who want more details can have a look at “The Klub Missile Family” by the Defense Threat Information Group.

Ok, the missile riddle is solved. However, there is another piece of information in the screwed up Hindustan Times article that still makes me wonder:

Naval sources said Sindhuvijay will start sailing from the Russian shipyard located close to the White sea on August 5 and dock at Western Naval Command base in Mumbai a week later.

One week for more than 15.000km? This is not bad. According to the conventional wisdom the Kilo-class submarines have a speed of 25 knots = 46km/h. This sums up to 7728 km in a week of full speed ahead. So it seems that the Indian navy preferred to have supersonic submarines over having supersonic Klub missiles.

Picture © DTIG

Better late...

... than never. Back last month, on June 17, the United States Navy conducted a flight test of its Tomahawk Block IV Missile. Somehow I missed it. You can read about the test over at the Space War site (it also took them over a month to report about this test, so I am not the only slacker).

More to come on the weekend. إن شاء الله

Sea, land and now air - BrahMos everywhere

Back in March I wrote that the air-to air version of the BrahMos is in its finishing stages. This stage is now over. RIA Novosti writes:

"For the airborne version...we had to reduce the mass of the missile and to ensure aerodynamic stability after its separation from the aircraft. The air-launched platform has its own initial speed during the launch of the missile, so we have reduced the size of the booster. Now the missile is ready," Sivathanu Pillai told RIA Novosti in an exclusive interview.

The BrahMos missile has a range of 180 miles (290 kms) and can carry a conventional warhead of up to 660 pounds. It can hit surface targets while flying at an altitude as low as 10 meters (30 feet) and at a speed of Mach 2.8, which is about three times faster than the U.S.-made subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile.

India has chosen the Sukhoi-30MKI Flanker-H as platform for the BrahMos. Plans exist to produce at least 140 of these aircrafts by 2014 under a Russian license with full technology transfer.

RIA continues:

Experts estimate that India might purchase up to 1,000 BrahMos missiles for its Armed Forces in the next decade, and export 2,000 to third countries during the same period.

While earlier statements indicated that the airborne version for BrahMos is expected to be tested in 2009, the latest information did not contain any information in this direction.

Another test-flight of the Tiger

Pakistan conducted mid December another test of its first cruise missile, the Hatf-VII Babur (Arabic 'tiger'). The missile is subsonic and nuclear-capable; it possesses “near stealth capabilities and is a low flying, terrain hugging missile with high maneuverability, pin point accuracy and radar avoidance features”.

It is always stressed that the Babur was indigenously developed. However, the Babur cruise missile holds many similarities to the Tomahawk land attack cruise missile, with the two being roughly the same size and shape and having a similar wing and engine intake design. However, in 1998 US-destroyers fired Tomahawk missiles at Taliban bases in Afghanistan. Six of these missiles mis-fired and landed in Pakistan. Rumors exist that Pakistan reverse-engineered these Tomahawk missiles and developed its own prototype. In contrast to that, India’s oppositional Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that the missile was produced in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime because of allegations that China had transferred cruise missile technology to Pakistan.

The Babur entered serial production in October 2005. Pakistan conducted five missile tests so far:

· August 11, 2005: land-based transporter erector launcher
· March 21, 2006: second test of the original 500km range missile
· March 23, 2007: upgraded version, range extended to 700km
· July 26, 2007: upgraded version, launched from the torpedo tubes of an Agosta 90b submarine
· December 11, 2007: a surface-to-surface version was test-fired

Officials have announced, Pakistan is already working on a second, more advanced cruise missile, with a range of 1,000km.

Watch this short clip for some general information on the missile:



Some analysts complain that due to the Hatf-VII Babur, India feels compelled to match the cruise missile with a similar weapon type of its own, namely Nirbhay, which is expected to be first test-fired in 2009. Others do not see the threat of an accelerated arms race but perceive a momentum of stability. Pakistan’s President Musharraf was quoted: “[The Babur] will further improve the existing military balance in the region”. An arms race, in which the involved actors compete in introducing certain types of weapons faster than their opponents do, show a certain form of continuity, but definitely not stability.

To put the Babur into the context of the South Asian missile proliferation: Sharad Joshi from CNS published a series of four articles in WMDInsights on the intensifying competition between India and Pakistan in the development of increasingly advanced, nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles. See
· India's Missile Program: Diverging Trajectories, WMD Insights, February 2007,
· Pakistan's Missile Tests Highlight Growing South Asia Nuclear Arms Race, Despite New Confidence Building Measures, WMD Insights, April 2007,
· India Successfully Tests Agni-III: A Stepping Stone to an ICBM?, WMD Insights, May 2007, together with Peter Crail, and
· India and Pakistan Missile Race Surges On, WMD Insights, October 2007.