Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Ballistic Missile Defence Program” Complete Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Ballistic Missile Defence Program

The Indian Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) Program is an initiative to develop and deploy a multilayered Ballistic missile defence system to protect India from missile attacks.

Introduced in light of the ballistic missile threat from Pakistan and China, it is a two-tiered system consisting of two interceptor missiles, namely Prithvi Air Defence (PAD) missile for high altitude interception, and the Advanced Air De-fence (AAD) Missile for lower altitude interception. The two-tiered shield will be able to intercept any incoming missile launched 5,000 kilometres away.

PAD was tested in November 2006, followed by AAD in December 2007. With the test of the PAD missile, India be-came the fourth country to have successfully developed an Anti-ballistic missile system, after United States, Russia and Israel. On March 6, 2009, India again successfully tested its missile defence shield, during which an incoming “enemy” missile was intercepted at an altitude of 75 km.

In the third test, a manoeuvrable warhead called gimballed directional warhead (GDW), which can rotate 360 degrees, was used for the first time as the interceptor. A Dhanush missile was fired from a Navy warship, the INS Rajput, to mimic the trajectory of an incoming enemy ballistic missile. The decay missile achieved an altitude of 120 km. It was tracked by ground-based radars and an interceptor missile was launched from a mobile launcher located on Wheeler Is-land Launch Complex and it completely destroyed the incoming missile. The test has validated the capabilities of the indigenously developed Swordfish Long Range Tracking Radar (LRTR).

With this test India has reached another milestone to-wards making the BMD system operational by 2011-12. Once operational, the BMD system will provide India an effective defence shield against both China and Pakistan fielding a wide variety of N-capable ballistic missiles.

Background

Since the early 90s, India has faced the threat of ballistic missile attacks from Pakistan, against which it has fought multiple wars in the past. With the heightening of tensions in the region, and in response to Pakistan’s deployment of M-9 and M-11 missiles bought from China, in August 1995, the Indian Government procured six batteries of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles to protect New Delhi and other cities. In May 1998, India for the second time (since its first test in 1974) tested nuclear weapons, followed by Pakistan with its first ever nuclear test. With Pakistan’s testing of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, this threat intensified.

In 1999, the Kargil War between India and Pakistan be-came the first direct conflict between two declared nuclear powers. As the war progressed, the first hint of the possible use of a nuclear weapons was on May 31, 1999 when Pakistani foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmad made a statement warning that an escalation of the limited conflict could lead Pakistan to use “any weapon” in its arsenal. This was immediately interpreted as an obvious threat of a nuclear retaliation by Pakistan in the event of an extended war. The leader of Pakistan’s senate noted that “the purpose of developing weapons becomes meaningless if they are not used when they are needed.” Some experts believe that following nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistani military was emboldened by its nuclear deterrent cover to markedly increased coercion against India.

Development of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) System or the BMD began in late 1999, suggesting that India initiated the program in the light of Pakistan’s eschewing of a nuclear `no first use’ policy and heightened tensions during the Kargil war including a possibility of full scale nuclear war.

Development

Phase 1

The development of BDM system began with around 40 public and private companies including Bharat Electronics Ltd., Bharat Dynamics Ltd., Astra Microwave, ASL, Larsen & Toubro, Vem Technologies Private Limited and KelTech involved in its development. Development of LRTR (Long Range Tracking Radar) and MFCR (Multifunction Fire Control Radar) was led by Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE).

For the AAD Missile System, Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) developed the mission control software. Research Centre, Imarat (RCI) developed navigation, electromechanical actuation systems and Active Radar Seeker. Advanced System Laboratory (ASL) provided the motors, jet vanes and structures for the two missiles. High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) supplied the propellants for the missile.

Description: The two-tiered BMD System consists of the PAD Missile for interception at exoatmospheric altitudes of 50-80 km; and AAD Missile for interception at endo-atmospheric altitudes of up to 30 km. The deployed system would consist of many launch vehicles, Radars, Launch Control Centres (LCC) and Mission Control Centre (MCC). All these are geographically distributed and connected by a secure communication network.

The MCC is the software intensive system of the Ballistic Missile Defence. It receives information from various sources like Radars, Satellites, etc., which is then processed by ten computers running simultaneously. MCC is connected to all other elements of the System through a WAN. MCC performs target classification, target assignment and kill assessment. It acts as a decision support system for the commander. It can also decide the number of interceptors required for the target for an assured kill probability.

MCC, after performing all the functions, assigns the tar-get to Launch Control Centre LCC of a battery. LCC starts computing the time to launch interceptor based upon information received from Radar. This is decided based on the data received from radar, on the speed, altitude and flight path of the target. LCC prepares the missile for launch in real time, carries out ground guidance computation.

After the interceptor is launched, it is provided target information from the radar through a datalink. When the Interceptors closes on to the Target ballistic missile, it activates the Active Radar Seeker to search for target missile and guides itself to intercept the target. Multiple PAD and AAD interceptors can be launched against a target for high kill probability.