On Tuesday an official stated that the next firing will be done in mission mode before user trials for the airforce and navy. The mirror by a cruise missile has been test-fired successfully for now. Well, the test was conducted before in October 2020 and it did not go well. The Defence and Development Organisation on Wednesday fired the thousand km range Nirbhay Cruise missile and it was done for a testing facility in Orissa from Chandipur. Well, it was fired today at 9:55 a.m. and the subsonic Cruise missile was actually tested for a hundred km in flight and 15 minutes in time.
It was an initial partial success according to the DRDO sources and the indigenous engine was tested successfully but the delivery platform came down due to inexplicable reasons. An official stated that “maybe a snag in the controller, but the engine worked well. Next test-firing will be all done in mission mode before user trial for airforce and navy.“ When the subsonic missile was actually tested last time it got aborted after 8 minutes flying time and thus this trial was the first successful test firing with the engine of the indigenous booster.
The subsonic missile is flying at a speed of 0.7 to 0.9 Mach with sea-skimming and terrain hugging capability. So it proved to be very helpful for the missile to stay under any radar to avoid any detection and also it carries a conventional warhead of 300 kg weight. The missile can target up to 1500 km range and it is a two-stage missile as the first stage is using solid fuel. The second stage is using liquid fuel and the missile is capable of flying between 15 m to 4 km from the ground. With all the other functionalities the missile also has a loitering capability which allows the delivery platform to maneuver flight. It can be easily fired from sea, land, and, through mobile launchers and the missile at the end to hit the target by doing in-flight course corrections.
As it has successfully crossed the test-firing stage. Later it will be going handed over to the army and they will conduct 3 more tests before inducting it and using it. After the induction, Nirbhay can be expected to deploy along the Line of Actual Control (Lac). Well before the turbofan engine was in use in the Nirbhay missile but now, the Manik turbofan has been used in the current testing. First, In Nirbhay missile the turbofan engine was in use but now Manik turbofan will be used.
Thus now this missile is now called an Indigenous Technology Cruise missile and the Manik turbofan engine helps it function at high speed and also at the same time it does not create much noise. Hopefully, this two-stage strong missile will also cross all the three left tests from the army and can be a successful project.
