The Secret Behind Why is DRDO still Focused on Nirbhay Missile After Failing Four Times

Nirbhay missile is very important for us because it is a subsonic nuclear tipped cruise missile. BrahMos missile carries only conventional warhead and it can supposedly carry nuclear warhead as well as per a Russian official.

Being a cruise missile it flies through the atmosphere, and can avoid being detected by flying low through the air( close to the terrain) This unlike the ballistic missiles does not take a parabolic trajectory.

Nirbhay missile project was an Exact copy of Tomahawk missile. As you can see below, India’s Nirbhay and Pakistan’s Babur missiles are an EXACT copy of USA’s Tomahawk cruise missile.

Nirbhay was an Utter failure project by DRDO. Out of five missile tests, only Two missile was flown successfully!

Why is DRDO so obsessed with this project? Is there any secret?

Yes. There is a secret. The main secret here is the ACCURACY and RANGE.

Tomahawk is considered as the best cruise missile because of its pin point accuracy and Long range cruising capabilities. This missile can literally fly through a window and kill anyone.

It can also go underground and destroy underground bunkers.

DRDO could only copy Tomahawk’s external design like wings, engine placement, shape etc. But they couldn’t copy its internal DSMAC and TERCOM guidance systems which is the brain of the Tomahawk’s Guidance system which will guide the missile to its target with Extreme Precision.

Tomahawk missile proved its capabilities and showed its deadly accuracy during the Gulf war. This war was code named “Operation Desert Shield” by USA. This war was fought to bring down Saddam Hussein- the dictator of IRAQ.

297 Tomahawk missiles were fired by USA on Saddam Hussein’s military bases, underground bunkers and weapons stockpile. Out of 297 missiles 282 missiles had hit the target with very high precision. The rest 15 of them failed due to some malfunction during launching. If there was no malfunction, all the missiles would have hit the target with an accuracy of 95 %.

Tomahawk missile’s target can be changed during mid flight. So all these factors makes Tomahawk the best cruise missile in the world.

After looking at Tomahawk’s success rate, whole world, especially India and Pakistan quickly understood that the one who has a missile like Tomahawk has a greater chance of winning the war. Hence the weapon race began.

India started Nirbhay program in 2004. Pakistan started BABUR missile project in 2001, three years before India. On August 12/2005 Pakistan gave India a shock! Pakistan had successfully launched Babur cruise missile! Babur was joined to Pakistan military in 2005. Many modifications have been made to the missile since 2005. Many successful missile launch was conducted by Pakistan after the modifications.

All these above points put DRDO in shame. So DRDO is very much firm on Nirbhay missile. They want to build it and fly it. But there is a problem, they cant even get the wing deployment mechanism right. How can the missile reach the target if it doesn’t open its wings?? DRDO has a long way to go in order to build a cruise missile like Nirbhay.

This answer was written on Quora by Suyog and you can follow him there.