Agni-V: Is India counting its chickens too early? - www.daily.bhaskar.com
Commodore (retd) C Uday Bhaskar, former director of the National Maritime Foundation said,"China has been working on the missile technology before 20 years than India and we are at a very early stage of ICBM. Agni-V will take few more years to get fully operational. So, we have to cover a long distance before we come at par with China in terms of missile prowess."
Its absolutely unfair to compare with Chinese missile program when we just tested a 5000km range missile.
Its like comparing Chinese program with US or Russian one and calling them decades behind. There is no comparison in the kind of resources invested, path chosen, challenges faced, threat profile, political desire & requirements.
its the challenges India had to face and choices we had made that resulted present stage. IMO we were capable of coming out with operational ICBM in 80s or 90s if we went all out but that would offend group of countries. US pressure, Project Valiant Failure, MTCR, ISRO being only for peaceful purposes.
Traditionally being non-aligned to any SuperPower and yet afraid of offending them, India always ended up somewhere in middle.
just think about, we are only country who are able to test a missile upto 5000km range, able to send strong message to china, yet doesn't offend any other country, instead get some praise from US for non-proliferation record and yet maintain strategic relationship with Russia. Europe was silent, so was Japan and many other countries who would otherwise raise alarm. This doesn't happen with China, Nkorea, Iran.
coming to capabilies, Agni-V is the vehicle, and around it you have build technologies.
MIRV, SLBM, MaRV will come later, but Agni-V is the basic defining milestone for many reasons. Agni-III was the actual start where we built large 2m dia solid rocket motors.
Agni-V milestone can be compared to 1974 nuclear test or 1980 SLV-3 Launch when India sent its first rocket into space.
to be on par with P5 countries, SLBM, MIRV & ASAT are needed. Its good to know DRDO is in the process. It would be interesting how SLBMs will be designed, it would need more composites, further miniaturization, reducin height of the motors to fit the inside sub tube.
P.S.btw guidance system is capable of providing sub-200 metre circular error probable (CEP) accuracy at max range for the Agni V as of now.
DRDO press release states it as few meters of accuracy. We have to speculate how much few meters would be.
as already stated by others before china is ahead of india in every defense aspect whether missiles or planes & this point is not even worth debatable by any defense expert worth his or her salt.thinking otherwise is just living in dreams.i agree agni V is a major milestone & an effective deterrence against china but that's it.it does not mean India has same or even close missile capabilities as that of china.deterrence is not to be confused with capability because if it is then even north korea has comparable military strength to USA.
north korea doesn't have vehicle that can reach US, they had attempted but failed including the latest attempt. Even if Koreans manage successful test, The so called US Missile Defense could be quite good against that. A better example will be what DF-31 means to China against US is pretty much what Agni-V means to India against China. mobility, canisters, short-reaction time, solid rocket motors but MIRVs will come later for A5.
As far as SLBM is concerned, it will be most capable Second strike option, which is why India desires the most. A long range SLBM with few MIRVs launched from submarine underwater will be culmination of indias missile program.
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