A load of crap from an idle brain

Russia on Friday became the third country after the US and France to sign a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with India since this country acquired the waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The agreement was signed in the presence of President Dmitry Medvedev and PM Manmohan Singh.

In the initial stages, Russia will help India build two additional nuclear power plants at Kundakulum. Even before the NSG waiver, Russia was helping India build two 1,000 MW nuclear power plants at the same site. The Russians, however, had to wait for the NSG waiver to India for a more more focused nuclear cooperation. More such power plants of Russian design, according to the two sides, will come up at other places in the country. The location for at least two more nuclear power plants is being finalised.

The modalities of the agreement had been thrashed out in November 2007 during Singh’s visit to Moscow but India refrained from signing it citing the need for a clearance from the NSG.

The two sides also signed agreements in other fields like defence, space, trade and commerce.

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India and Russia have signed an agreement to jointly develop the 5th generation stealth fighter aircraft with equal financial and technological stakes. Overall development cost of the Sukhoi T-50 is in the region of US$ 10 billion.

An artist’s rendering of the Sukhoi T-50 fifth generation fighter aircraft

India will lease a nuclear powered Akula-II attack submarine from Russia from mid-2008 onwards under a hush-hush Rs 2600 crore (US$ 650 million) deal.

The Akula-II class attack submarine

Then, of course, India will be acquiring another 40 Sukhoi-30MKIs to add to the 190 already contracted, 347 more T-90S to add to the 310 such main-battle tanks already inducted, and 80 more Mi-17 medium-lift utility and assault helicopters from Russia. The deal does not include 230 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters India is going to acquire from Russia at an overall cost of over $8.5 billion.

2 SU-30K Flankers, 2 F-15 Eagles and 2 Mirage 2000 flying in formation

The 44,570-tonne aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov (below), was initially supposed to join Indian Navy by August 2008 as per the $1.5 billion package deal signed with Russia in January 2004. But India will not be getting the carrier, already rechristened INS Vikramaditya, anytime before 2010. The package deal, incidentally, includes 16 MiG-29K ‘Fulcrum’ supersonic fighters and a mix of Ka-31 and Ka-28 helicopters to operate from the carrier’s deck.

News source: TimesofIndia

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INS Rajput, 8 Other Warships To Deploy Brahmos Cruise Missiles

The Indian Navy has already deployed the Indo-Russian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile on the INS Rajput, P Venugopal, director, Defence Research and Development Laboratories (DRDL) and head of the BrahMos mission told a packed audience at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai, Mumbai, which is holding the aerospace meet Zephyr 2007.

INS Ranjit is next in line among the eight warships that the Indian Navy has planned to equip with this missile. Each ship will be fitted with four missile launchers, two on each side of the vessel. The Indian Army has already inducted its first group of truck-launched missiles.

The four-tonne rocket has a diameter of 70 cm and is 8 metres long. It has a maximum range of 300km and a payload of 500kg. Both the latter are the maximum limits mandated by the international missile control regime, he said, hinting that they could have achieved higher parameters in these two areas had it not been for the limits.

The missile can fly from a sea-skimming height of just 10 metres above the waves to an altitude of 15km. While it can achieve a maximum velocity of Mach 2 in the denser air at sea level, this goes up to Mach 2.7 in the rarefied upper atmosphere above 7 km, he said.

The missile has three propulsion systems. First, a gas generator blows it out of its canister, then a solid fuel booster speeds it up to Mach 2, after which an air-breathing liquid fuel ramjet takes over to propel it to its target.

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