Nirbhay to be test fired in May
15 February, Bengaluru
After one successful and three failed tests, subsonic cruise missile Nirbhay is all set to be fired again in May end or in the first week of June.
A panel was formed after the fourth test of the missile ended in failure, DRDO Chief S Christopher told the mediapersons here on the margins of the Aero India show. He said all the shortcomings have been rectified and now the missile can be test-fired any time in May or June, depending upon weather conditions and other favourables.
“A flight-test of the missile from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Balasore in Odisha in December was “an utter failure”. Out of four Nirbhay missions so far, three have ended in failure.
In the last test, the missile took off from Launch Complex-III of the ITR, but it did not follow the required flight path. The missile started flying beyond the safety corridor and threatened to fall on the land. The inbuilt “destruct” mechanism in its first stage was activated and it was destroyed. A successful Nirbhay Mission would have lasted for more than an hour.
The missile, conceived, designed and developed by the DRDO, can take out targets 1,000km away. It can carry a 300kg warhead.Nirbhay’s debut flight on March 12, 2013 was a failure. After 20 minutes of lift-off, it deviated flight-test of subsonic cruise missile Nirbhay from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Balasore in Odisha on Wednesday was “an utter failure”, informed sources in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said.
The sources added that the failure was caused by the wing-deployment problem in the second stage of the missile, which flies like an aircraft.Out of four Nirbhay missions so far, three, including Wednesday’s flight-test, have ended in failure. On Wednesday afternoon, after the missile took off from Launch Complex-III of the ITR, it did not follow the required flight path.
“The booster engine in Nirbhay’s first stage started working. The missile lifted off from its launcher. But it started veering dangerously towards one side in less than two minutes of its lift-off,” DRDO officials said.
The missile started flying beyond the safety corridor and threatened to fall on the land. So the “destruct” mechanism in its first stage was activated and it was destroyed.The DRDO sources called the mission “an utter failure” because the missile started veering towards one side in the “initial phase” of the flight itself.
They said, “It is a big failure. We should have a thorough re-look at what has been done so far. Out of four Nirbhay missions, three have ended in failure.” The sources ruled out any problem with the missile’s configuration. They said it could be “a hardware failure” that led to the mission being aborted. “This is a hardware element issue. This is a reliability issue with a component,” they explained.
A successful Nirbhay mission would have lasted for more than an hour. In a normal mission, the contraption will take off vertically like a missile, then a mechanism in its first stage will tilt the missile horizontally and the first stage, with its booster engine, will jettison into the sea. Then the second stage with the turbo-engine will start cruising horizontally like an aircraft with its wings spread out at a subsonic speed of 0.7 Mach.
The missile, conceived, designed and developed by the DRDO, can take out targets 1,000 km away. It can carry a 300 kg warhead.Nirbhay’s debut flight on March 12, 2013 was a failure. The second flight on October 17, 2014 was a success and the missile travelled 1,010 km instead of the targeted 800 km. The third mission on October 16, 2015 was again a failure.