India will test-fire the subsonic cruise missile Nirbhay in a few weeks’ time in October. Some amount of mystery surrounds Nirbhay because it has been kept top secret and nobody knows what it looks like in the absence of official photographs. Agni-V took the country’s ballistic missile programme to a new level, but Nirbhay (meaning fearless) is more keenly anticipated by the armed forces for its long range and because it can be launched from multiple platforms. India is yet to prove its mettle in long-range cruise missiles.
Sources revealed that in the indigenously developed Nirbhay, only the NPO Saturn engine is Russian. It is being termed as India’s answer to the US Tomahawk missile. DRDO officials disclosed that the terrain hugging Nirbhay can be launched from multiple platforms —land, air and sea — and thus its various versions can be inducted into all three armed forces.
More significantly, its air-launched version will be integrated into the Indo-Russian Su-30 MKI aircraft of the IAF to further enhance their range and strike capability. So far, the Su-30 MKI has been equipped with Brahmos supersonic cruise missile and Astra medium-range air-to-air missile. Nirbhay, with its range of 1,000 km, will fill a void that the forces have felt for a long time. It will be test-fired from the Integrated Test Range at Balasore in Wheeler Island off the coast of Odisha.
The two-stage subsonic missile will cruise at 0.7 Mach (speed less than that of sound) and is armed with ‘loitering’ capabilities which means that it can perform multiple manoeuvres for zeroing in on its target. Nirbhay is going to reinforce the Indo-Russian Brahmos supersonic cruise missile. The Brahmos travels at 290 km at 2.8 Mach (2.8 times the speed of sound) while Nirbhay is designed to travel at a subsonic speed of 0.7 Mach while covering a greater distance.