NEW DELHI - The failure in rapid
succession this week of a satellite launcher and a
new ballistic missile have shown up the
technological and budgetary difficulties faced by
India's space establishment - civilian and
military.
Hours after the US$50 million
geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV)
with a communications satellite on board was
ordered to self-destruct - as it veered off course
soon after liftoff on Monday - authorities at the
civilian Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)
said one of its four strap-on rocket motors had
failed.
Like the GSLV, a new
intermediate-range ballistic missile "Agni III"
that was launched by the secretive Defense
Research Development Organization (DRDO) failed
soon after liftoff on
Sunday and crashed into the
Bay of Bengal, less than 1,000 kilometers away
from the launch site.
The failure of the
Agni III was in some ways more serious because it
exposed the political limitations of India's
attempts, despite its ambitions, to pursue a
military capability which is truly independent of
the US's strategic calculations.
The
surface-to-surface ballistic missile, designed to
have a range of 3,500 kilometers, took off in a
"fairly smooth" manner at the designated hour. But
"a series of mishaps" occurred in its later flight
path.
The Agni-III was originally meant to
be tested in 2003-04. However, the test was
postponed owing to technological snags. After
their rectification, said reports, the missile's
test flights were put off twice largely for
"political reasons", so as not to annoy the US.
Earlier this year, India decided to
postpone the missile test out of fear that a test
could hamper US Congressional ratification of the
India-US nuclear cooperation deal. Publicly, the
Indian defense minister cited "self-imposed
restraint" to justify the postponement.
However, last month, General Peter Pace,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US
military, visited India and declared that "I do
not see it [a test] as destabilizing" or upsetting
the regional "military balance" since "other
countries in this region" (read, Pakistan) have
also tested missiles.
Following this
"facilitation" or clearance, and after indications
of favorable votes in US Congressional committees
on the nuclear deal, India's stand changed. A week
later, the DRDO announced it was ready to launch
Agni-III.
This is the ninth missile in the
Agni series (named after the Sanskrit word for
"fire") to have been tested. The first was tested
in May 1989. The last test (Agni-II) took place in
August 2004.
Unlike major powers like the
US, Russia or China, which test the same missile
10 to 20 times before announcing that it is fully
developed, India considers only three or four test
flights to be enough for both producing and
inducting new missiles.
This is not the
first time that the test of an Agni series missile
has failed. In the past, some tests of the shorter
range Agni-II (range 2,000 kilometers-plus) also
proved unsuccessful.
But what makes the
Agni-III's failure significant is that unlike its
shorter-range predecessors, it was a wholly new
design, developed with the specific purpose of
delivering a nuclear warhead.
The Agni-I
(range 700 to 800 kilometers) and Agni-II were
both products of India's space program and
connected to its Integrated Guided Missile
Development Program (IGMDP), itself launched in
1983. Originally, their design used a satellite
space-launching rocket (SLV-3) as the first stage,
on top of which was mounted the very short-range
(150 to 250 kilometers) liquid fuel-propelled
Prithvi missile.
The Agni-III's brand new
design, in which both stages use solid
propellants, was to enable it to carry a payload
weighing up to 1.5 tons and deliver it to targets
as far away as Beijing and Shanghai. At present,
India lacks an effective nuclear deterrent
vis-a-vis China, based on a delivery vehicle
carrying a nuclear warhead. Agni-III was meant to
fill the void.
The causes of the failure
of the test flight are not clear. Scientists at
the DRDO, which designed and built the missile,
have been quoted as saying that many new
technologies were tried in the Agni-III, including
rocket motors, "fault-tolerant" avionics and
launch control and guidance systems. Some of these
could have failed. Other reports attribute the
mishap to problems with the propellant.
"The DRDO isn't the world's most reliable
weapons R&D agency," Admiral L Ramdas, a
former chief of staff of the Indian Navy, told
Inter Press Service. "The Indian armed services'
experience with DRDO-made armaments has not been a
happy one. Their reliability is often extremely
poor. We often used to joke that one had to pray
they would somehow work in the battlefield."
The agency has a budget of Rs30 billion
(US$670 million), which is of the same order as
the annual expenditure of the Department of Atomic
Energy which is responsible for India's civilian
and military nuclear programs.
"This
figure is extremely high for a poor country like
India, with a low rank of 127 among 175 countries
of the world in the United Nations Human
Development Index," said Anil Chowdhary of the
Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. "Yet
the DRDO has delivered very little."
None
of the three major projects assigned to the DRDO
has been completed on time or without huge
cost-overruns. These include the development of a
Main Battle Tank (MBT), a nuclear power plant for
a submarine, and an advanced Light Combat Aircraft
(LCA), all involving expenditures of hundreds of
millions of dollars.
The MBT project was
launched in 1974. But the tank has failed to meet
service requirement tests. It is reportedly too
heavy and undependable to be used in combat
operations. The Indian Army prefers imported
Russian tanks over the indigenous MBTs and says it
will use the MBTs for training, not operations.
The nuclear submarine project, launched 31
years ago, is not yet finished despite the almost
$1 billion spent on it. The LCA project, launched
in 1983, is still in the doldrums: the DRDO has
failed to develop the right engine for it. Even
with an imported engine, the plane is unlikely to
enter service anytime soon.
"The primary
reason for these shocking instances of
underperformance and inability is lack of public
accountability and oversight of the DRDO," says M
V Ramana, an independent technical expert attached
to the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in
Environment and Development, Bangalore.
"The DRDO, like all of India's defense and
nuclear service establishments, is not subject to
normal processes of audit. It has used 'security'
as a smokescreen or shield and refused to be held
to account," he adds.
The DRDO says it
will try to rectify the faults in Agni-III.
Whether or not and whenever that happens, India's
missile development program, with future plans to
develop an intercontinental ballistic missile with
a range of 5,000 kilometers or more, has suffered
a major setback.
