India's missile development program has grown by leaps and bounds, transforming it into a hub of missile manufacturing, a DRDO scientist told Sputnik India at Army-2023 Expo in Moscow.
In recent years, India has become one of the
top missile manufacturers, at least in Asia, if not the world.
In an exclusive interview with Sputnik India,
Dev Kumar Ghosh, who serves as the project director for one of
DRDO's missile programs, spoke about how India is producing a series of
state-of-the-art missiles for both its domestic needs as well as exports, the status of
missile production in India and how defense ties between New Delhi and Moscow
remain rock-solid at the time of growing Western pressure on the former.
Ghosh made the remarks in Moscow, where a delegation of Indian defense officials is participating in
Army-2023, the Eurasian nation's top military expo, which is being held at the Alabino training ground and the Kubinka airfield in the Russian capital from August 14-20. On Monday, Ghosh presented India's latest short-range anti-aircraft missile system —
QRSAM.
Sputnik: What does QRSAM mean?
Dev Kumar Ghosh: QRSAM stands for Quick Reaction Surface to Air Missile.
Sputnik: What does quick reaction in the missile context mean?
Dev Kumar Ghosh: Quick reaction means a "rapid response" to enemy threats. It is an autonomous system comprising a radar in a battery and the moment it will identify a friend or foe, it will engage the targets and on its own, it will fire and destroy the enemy aircraft or whatever it is.
Sputnik: This project is unique because this rocket is made up of locally manufactured components. In this light, how do you assess India's development in the defense sphere in recent years?
Dev Kumar Ghosh: India as a missile developer or a smart bomb maker has established all its building blocks, starting from all the subsystems such as the Infrared seeker system.
Moreover, we have developed the capability to design a missile that has an aerodynamic design, or a structural design. Besides, we can make a rocket with a motor propulsion design and thermal batteries that we can produce.
Therefore, all the building blocks which we need to make a missile, whether it is air-to-air or surface-to-air, or air-to-ground, we can make all these missiles in a time frame of, say, 24 to 26 months. The prototype, we can design in that period. So,
it is a technological leap.
In 2023, the DRDO is running 40 such programs where different types of missiles are in different stages of development, especially the air-launch variants.
India will have a very good production capability of missiles because of the government's Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, where we are encouraging the private sector to partner with us and they are joining us from the initial stage of the projects.
As of now, many companies have tied up with DRDO to become production partners. As far as missile development is concerned, the scenario has changed drastically in the last, say, 8 or 9 years as India has become a
missile manufacturing hub. This is our present status regarding missile development in India.
Sputnik: What is the purpose of your visit to this defense expo in Moscow?
Dev Kumar Ghosh: It is well known that Russia and India have shared close military ties since independence. If you see our missile programs, especially the weapons used by the Indian Air Force (IAF), most of the platforms are Russian. For example, the
Brahmos missile which is a joint Indo-Russian venture is deployed on Su-30 MKI fighter jets.
Plus, we are currently undertaking trials of missiles to be fired from other Russian platforms, such as MiG-29s for the IAF and the Indian Navy.
The main purpose for India to be in this defense expo is to make this mutual defense partnership between the two nations stronger and more fruitful.
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.....so basically bringing cheena in from backdoor. Mudi ji hai to mumkin hai 
