Team News Riveting
India has deployed BrahMos and Nirbhay cruise missiles besides Akash surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to thwart Chinese moves in eastern Ladakh, where the two countries are locked in a standoff.
India’s main stay in the stand-off weapons is the Brahmos air-to-air and air-to-surface cruise missile with its 300 kilogram warhead.
The 500 km-range BrahMos cruise missile, 800 km-range Nirbhay cruise missiles along with Akash surface-to-air missile (SAM) with a capability to target aerial threats 40 km away are at the core of India’s stand-off weapon deterrence to People’s Liberation Army (PLA) missile deployment in Xinjiang and Tibet regions.
The PLA’s western theatre command has deployed stand-off weapons up to 2,000 km range and long-range SAMs in Tibet and Xinjiang. The supersonic BrahMos, subsonic Nirbhay as well as Akash have been deployed to counter it by India in the worst-case scenario.
The Chinese deployment is not limited to occupied Aksai Chin but is located in depth positions from Kashgar, Hotan, Lhasa and Nyingchi along the 3,488 km Line of Actual Control (LAC).
According to officials, the BrahMos missile has been deployed in good numbers in the Ladakh sector with the option to deliver the stand-off weapon from a Su-30 MKI fighter. Besides, the BrahMos can be used to create choke points in the Indian Ocean using the Car Nicobar air base in India’s island territories.
The IAF’s Car Nicobar air base is the advanced landing ground for SU-30 MKI’s which can use air-to-air refuelers to protect against any PLA warship threat coming from the Strait of Malacca to Sunda Strait across Indonesia, officials said.
The Nirbhay subsonic missiles have a range that could reach up to 1,000 km, and have both sea skimming and loitering capability. It is capable of flying between 100 metres to four km from ground and picks up the target before engaging it. The Nirbhay missile has only a surface-to-surface version.
The third stand-off weapon used by Indian military is the Akash SAM, which has also been deployed in sufficient numbers to counter any PLA aircraft intrusion across the LAC in Ladakh sector.
Over the last few months, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force has not only deployed a large number of fighters and helicopters in the region but also significantly upgraded infrastructure at its air bases on the Tibetan Plateau.
The Akash missile with its three-dimensional Rajendra, a passive electronically scanned array radar that has the capacity to track 64 targets at a time and simultaneously engage 12 of them. The missile has the capacity to engage all aerial targets including fighter planes, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
