Stratfor on BrahMos and the Export Market

Here is Stratfor's article on Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Supersonic Missile and its prospects in the export market.

The supersonic BrahMos anti-ship missile is being prepared for its first test-launch from a submarine, which could take place later this month. Already a well-tested design, the compact and versatile BrahMos also appears to have an export market waiting for it. Though the missile's true potential remains to be seen, it seems poised to achieve widespread proliferation. Taking its name from a juxtaposition of the names of the Indian Brahmaputra and Russian Moscow rivers, BrahMos Aerospace Private Ltd. began as an Indian-Russian venture in 1998. However, the design work on the BrahMos missile can be traced to the Soviet Union in 1985 -- the fledgling SS-N-26, on which the BrahMos is based, had already been through substantial testing by the time the company was formed. From the beginning of the joint venture, the export market has been part of the BrahMos' future. The world anti-ship missile market has been dominated since the 1970s by the French Exocet and the U.S. Harpoon. Compared to their predecessors, these missiles were compact and versatile. It was easy to find room on the deck of a ship for a few launcher canisters. They flew close to Mach 1 and, after a couple of design evolutions, were capable of being launched out of torpedo tubes or from aircraft. They quickly became the global standard, either through export sales or through widespread copying of the basic design. Exocets were used in combat in 1982 in the Falkland Islands war, sinking the HMS Sheffield and another ship (a third was damaged). Five years later, the USS Stark was struck by an Exocet fired from an Iraqi Mirage F-1 fighter (although the U.S. frigate survived). Eventually the Exocet (and other missiles based on the same design) grew from a first-class naval weapon, which it remains, into a tool of nonstate actors. In July 2006, an Iranian-supplied, Chinese-built C-802 -- which, while not necessarily a direct copy, is similar to the Exocet in most significant ways -- was used by Hezbollah to attack the INS Hanit off the coast of Beirut. But despite the Exocet's popularity, supersonic anti-ship missiles -- for a long time the sole purview of the Soviet Union -- are far more capable and devastating weapons. Missiles like the Soviet SS-N-19 Shipwreck and SS-N-22 Sunburn make naval planners nervous. At speeds up to Mach 3, when a supersonic sea-skimming missile appears on the horizon, response time is measured in seconds. Furthermore, at such speeds, the kinetic energy of the impact alone stands to do massive damage to a modern, thinly-armored surface combat vessel, even if the warhead fails to detonate. If the missile is destroyed at close range, debris traveling at high speed can still pepper the target, or even inflict more serious damage. However, these weapons have proven too big and unwieldy to become truly successful export products. The Shipwreck was never exported, and China received the Sunburn only as a result of importing the Russian platform designed to carry it, the Sovremenny-class destroyer. This is where the BrahMos comes in. Designed from the ground up as a supersonic missile, the BrahMos can approach speeds of Mach 3 -- three times as fast as either the Harpoon or the Exocet. The standard BrahMos missile can carry up to a 650-pound warhead, which is heavier than the Harpoon's payload and nearly double that of the Exocet. Touted as the "Universal Supersonic Cruise Missile" by the BrahMos joint venture, it -- like the Harpoon and the Exocet before it -- can be land-, surface-, sub- or air-launched and offers a substantial improvement in range from its predecessors. Of course, the BrahMos is not perfect. The first of two major drawbacks at this point is the diameter. Unlike the Harpoon and Exocet, the BrahMos is too thick to fit into a standard 21-inch torpedo tube (or even the rarer 26-inch tubes). This means submarines will have to be modified to carry it -- not a particularly cheap or attractive option. Also, the BrahMos does not come cheap -- reportedly in excess of $2 million each, more than twice the cost of a Harpoon or Exocet. However, the improved capability could prove more than sufficiently compelling. The BrahMos has already begun to be fielded on Indian naval vessels, and seems set to become a mainstay of the Indian military. Malaysia and Indonesia have also expressed interest -- Malaysia is expected to sign a formal deal later this week, and reportedly plans eventually to equip its new Su-30MKM Flanker jets with the missile. The export market, it would appear, is ready for an upgrade in capability and is willing to pay the price. It is quite telling that the first potential export customer for the BrahMos is Malaysia. In other words, the first country outside of Russia, India and China to field a supersonic anti-ship missile is not another great naval power, but a modest one. The fact that Malaysia could soon field an offensive naval capability that was once the sole purview of the Soviet Union marks a fundamental shift in the maritime threat environment -- a fact that could ultimately change the playing field not just for navies, but also for worldwide shipping. Click to Enlarge And Malaysia is only the first. Other nations from Algeria to Venezuela might find the new capability similarly enticing. Nations such as Taiwan could be just as intrigued by the availability of a supersonic cruise missile -- a role that the BrahMos also can play with modified targeting and guidance -- for land attacks. Ultimately, however impressive the BrahMos' success in the export market proves to be, the genie is out of the bottle; a new generation of versatile, compact supersonic anti-ship missiles is here to stay. If the BrahMos fails to capture that market, Russia has alternative export products up its sleeve. [Stratfor]

Stratfor on the Indo-US Civilian Nuclear Deal

Here is Stratfor's article on the Indo-US Civilian Nuclear Deal in full.

Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon will have a dinner meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns on Tuesday in an attempt to iron out differences over a pending U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear agreement. It has been nearly two years since India and the United States announced a strategic nuclear partnership, yet both sides continue to stare defiantly at one another from across the negotiating table. While Indians are well accustomed to slow-moving political processes, the sticking points holding up this important deal are threatening to upset a geopolitical balance that the United States is attempting to develop in the Indian Ocean basin. Under the agreement, India will be given access to civilian nuclear fuel and technology from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, despite the fact that New Delhi is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). For this deal to take effect, Indian and U.S. officials must ink a bilateral deal -- termed the "123 agreement" -- that reconciles Indian demands with the final version of the bill passed by the U.S. Congress in December 2006. The problem is that India is not too pleased with several new stipulations that Congress added to the original agreement, and neither side has much of an appetite for making concessions at this point. The version that is currently up for debate stipulates that the United States will cease nuclear cooperation with India if India conducts a nuclear test in the future, and that India will not be allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel itself. But these two demands challenge the groundwork laid by Indian policymakers over the past 50 years. A testing ban simply will not fly in Indian defense circles. India's last major military standoff with nuclear rival Pakistan was only about five years ago, so New Delhi feels it cannot agree to become legally bound by a moratorium on nuclear testing while it faces a very real threat across its border. The issue could be resolved, however, by inserting language similar to that included in the withdrawal clauses of several other disarmament treaties such as the NPT. Such a clause allows the party in question to withdraw from the agreement when "extraordinary events ... have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country." The reprocessing issue is a bit more complex. At its current pace, India does not have enough uranium reserves to support both its civilian and military nuclear programs in the long run. With the U.S. nuclear deal, India can preserve its domestic source of uranium for its unsupervised military program, and use imported uranium for its supervised civilian reactors, allowing the Indian nuclear defense program to leap ahead (and keep Pakistani leaders up at night). However, India also owns more than 30 percent of the world's thorium reserves, compared to just 0.7 percent of uranium reserves. It makes good economic sense -- and is one of India's long-term goals -- to pursue a nuclear program that fully utilizes the country's abundant thorium reserves, rather than become increasingly dependent on foreign suppliers for its nuclear fuel. At the risk of getting too technical: uranium-fueled reactors will operate with thorium in the reactor chamber, so that while the Indians are potentially generating "traditional" nuclear power, they are also irradiating thorium, which will turn it into U-233. That U-233 can then be extracted, via reprocessing, and used to create a new type of nuclear fuel for a different reactor. This would allow India to take advantage of its wealth of thorium for power production. The problem (from the U.S. perspective) is that U-233 also can be used in nuclear weapons programs -- and the idea of indirectly supporting India's nuclear defense program is not something that U.S. President George W. Bush will be able to sell to Congress, even though, with Iraq in shambles, his administration is extremely keen on claiming a foreign policy success. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also under a great deal of political pressure at home, and cannot afford to give the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party more fodder to use against him by appearing to cave in to U.S. demands. Indian officials and lobby groups are now being blamed in New Delhi for failing to communicate clearly India's core objections to the agreement much earlier in the process. With exasperation rising on all sides, negotiators in Washington and New Delhi are hoping to work out their differences ahead of a meeting between Bush and Singh in June on the sidelines of the G-8 summit in Germany. We are not prepared to declare the deal dead just yet, but the pressure is on.[Stratfor]

Lalu, the Tech Guy

Union Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav's IT plans for the Indian Railways this year is something to talk about. These are to be implemented by the railways and also Indian IT companies under the public-private partnership model.

6,000 automatic ticket vending machines to be installed in major cities Tickets at the press of a button by using smart cards or currency coins Monthly Season Ticket through Internet service to be free Common website to integrate the 50 different websites of the Railways with e-payment and e-tendering Train-enquiry call centres in all four regions with SMS alerts; the call centres will also provide ticket, hotel and taxi booking services Hand-held computers for train ticket examiners (TTEs) in reserved coaches to check seat availability and allot berths to wait-listed passengers E-tickets issued through the 'e-seva' facilities of state governments, post-offices, petrol pumps and ATMs Central Railway to undertake a pilot project of issuing daily and season tickets through multipurpose smart cards Modern signalling systems to be developed; Automatic Block Signalling System for junctions with heavy traffic Commercial portal to attract traffic for filling up vacant seats Freight Operation Information System (FOIS) modules to be integrated, ERP packages for zonal railways and production units Common website to integrate 50 different websites of Railways with e-payment and e-tendering [B-S]

What Lalu did during the last three years.

In the three years between his first and fourth budget, the Indian Railways, India’s largest employer, has seen an unprecedented improvement in performance, managing the impossible by balancing populism with efficiency. Lalu Prasad took charge of the Indian Railways in May 2004. Between then and 2007-08, the Railways surplus shot up from Rs 880 crore to Rs 11,450 crore. In the same time-frame, he would have achieved a 42 per cent increase in freight tonnage and a 73 per cent rise in freight earnings. Not surprisingly, his earning per net tonne kilometre is expected to go up from 72 paise in 2003-04 to 91 paise next year. Prasad's biggest contribution, of course, is in achieving efficiency gains by bringing down the share of total working expenses in the Railways' gross traffic earnings from 92.6 per cent in 2003-04 to 79.6 per cent in 2007-08. No other railway minister has managed to achieve such a dramatic turnaround. Also, significant is the expected rise in net revenue to Rs 16,022 crore, up from Rs 4,148 crore in 2003-04. Investments, too, grew steadily. As a percentage of gross working expenses, the Railways' investments are expected to go up from 32 per cent in 2003-04 to 57 per cent in 2007-08. On the passenger revenue front also, Prasad has maintained robust growth - a 49 per cent rise in passenger earnings from Rs 13,460 crore to Rs 20,075 crore in this period. Earnings per passenger kilometre are also expected to go up from 25 paise to 26 paise. Lalu’s performance in passenger traffic has not been as eye-catching as in freight traffic. Perhaps the advent of low-cost airlines and populist compulsions have played a role here.[B-S]

Russia's Generous Offer

One of the agreements signed by India with Russia during the Russian Defence Minister’s visit to New Delhi is on the manufacturing of the Russian RD-33MK thrust-vectoring engines for the MIG-35 (a highly maneuverable air-superiority fighter) in India. This is highly significant when China and Pakistan are hoping to get Russian sanction to use Russia’s Klimov RD-93 engines on the fighter aircraft JF-17 jointly developed by them.

Modern jet engines are among the most technically challenging military technologies. Operationally useful thrust vectoring -- the ability to angle the thrust of the jet engine, substantially increasing the maneuverability of the aircraft -- is one of military technology's crowning achievements. Russia was the first to master real thrust vectoring and build it into a serving combat aircraft design: the Sukhoi Su-30MKI, which uses single-axis or up-and-down vectoring. The technology has only now made its appearance in the U.S. military in the most advanced aircraft in the U.S. Air Force inventory -- the F-22 Raptor, and then only in single-axis form. The RD-33, on the other hand, can vector the thrust in all directions, adding even more maneuverability. Trouble with jet engine design set back the Indian indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) by years. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. had to use General Electric F404 engines in the LCA after the Indian-designed Kaveri engine development stalled. The LCA, now dubbed Tejas ("radiance"), is set to replace the Indian air force's MiG-21 fleet. The close, hands-on experience in manufacturing the RD-33 will set India on the course of avoiding these troubles in the future. Having a manufacturing facility on its own soil will give the Indian military industrial complex a new -- although far from complete -- independence. India has often cultivated multiple defense suppliers in order to avoid shortages or sanctions by any one partner. Such design expertise is a further step away from reliance on foreign sources. Although Russia will continue to sell parts to India's air force for some time, in the long run, this deal is better for India than it is for Russia because it helps India take important steps toward independence. Any further shared design experience on a new fifth-generation fighter -- even if it goes no further than a handful of Indian engineers spending a few cold winters at the Sukhoi Design Bureau -- will be enormously significant for India's indigenous design capability.[Stratfor]

SMS For A Railway Platform Ticket

The South Western Railway (SWR) on Friday launched a novel scheme to sell platform tickets here through mobile phones using the short messaging service (SMS) facility. Claimed to be the first of its kind service in Indian Railways, the electronic system enables subscribers of BSNL and Airtel to buy a platform ticket by keying in 'PFT' and code 3939 (for BSNL) and 64629 (for Airtel) even before reaching the Bangalore city station and collect it from a vending machine at the entrance. "The system will send a five digit pin to the subscribers opting for this hassle-free service. By entering the pin in the SMS-linked vending machine, they can obtain the platform ticket without monetary transaction, as an amount of Rs 4, including Re1 towards service charge, will be collected from the mobile operators," SWR general manager TN Perti said. [....] For those driving into the station terminal in four-wheelers, the zonal railway has installed a computerised car parking-cum-platform ticket-issuing machine at the main city station. ....the hi-tech machine offers pre-paid and post-paid facility.[DNA]

The Chinese Government of India

Earlier this year the Congress-led UPA government tried to ban 18 blogs and websites that it claimed was inimical to India. But on scrutiny it was revealed that the blogs and websites were actually inimical to the Congress Party! At that time as ISPs did not possess the technology needed block the sites, the ISPs implemented the ban at the domain level. This resulted in a public outcry and the govt was severely criticised as users were unable to access even other websites and blogs.

Now the govt has come up with a devious and hidden plan where it will be able to ban whatever it want on the internet and no one will know. In other words the Indian government - like their Chinese counterparts - will be censoring the World Wide Web and no more public outcry will it face.

Errant websites won’t be able to escape this net. The Centre is putting in place an advance screening system at the bandwidth landing stations to block individual websites and blogs perceived as threats to national security. The technology to be put in place at the eight landing stations — which bring international bandwidth into the country — will be capable of blocking websites at a sub-domain level, thus saving internet service providers (ISPs) from a sweeping shutdown. “GoI has realised that the most effective way to keep out such sites is through URL-based blocking solutions installed at international gateways,” a highly placed source told ET. After the system is in place, the department of telecommunications (DoT) can direct international long distance (ILD) players who own the landing stations to block a particular URL at the sub-domain level. [….] Sources also confirmed that DoT has circulated a draft report on Monday on ‘technical measurers for blocking of websites’ to key ministries, security agencies, leading ISPs and the three ILD players who own landing stations. …ILD operators would be mandated to install equipment specified by DoT. …The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPA), the body representing all ISPs, has already welcomed the DoT move.[Economic Times]

India Set for Huge E-Commerce Growth

With 38–40 million Internet users in India today, which is expected to grow at a very fast pace to 100 million by 2007-08, e-commerce in India is expected to grow exponentially.

E-commerce in India has almost touched the Rs 5,000 crore mark and is expected to garner around Rs 9,500 crore by 2007. This is despite the infrastructure constraints the country’s online community faces and the recent figures put out by the Internet and Mobile Association of India that estimate the Indian e-commerce market to touch Rs 2,300 crore (around 10 per cent of the organised Indian retail market) by 2006-2007, which itself is a 95 per cent rise over last year’s figure of Rs 1,180 crore and an over-300 per cent rise over the figure for 2004-05. The discrepancy in figures arises from the fact that online travel alone, which accounted for $800 million (a little over Rs 3,600 crore) in 2006, has not been accounted for, says Deep Kalra, founder and CEO, MakeMyTrip.com. This figure itself is poised to double next year. Do the maths for “all services that are being bought online” and you get a figure of around Rs 9,500 crore. Further, the figures are credible if you consider the following facts: An estimated Rs 30 crore of air and rail tickets are sold online in India every day; a jewellery piece sells every 5 minutes, a mobile handset every 8 minutes and a car every 9 hours on eBay; over Rs 5,000 crore worth of business (domestic and international) materialised through leads generated by Indiamart.com during the last one year. ICICI Bank alone conducted 17,000 online transactions a day, which is projected to rise to 70,000 transactions a day by 2007, says a source. Net banking transactions with ICICI Bank account for a little less than Rs 100 crore per month and credit card transactions account for Rs 300 crore per month. Last year, business-to-customer transactions with the bank accounted for Rs 2,400 crore. This figure is expected to double by March 2007. [….] Services like Net banking (32 per cent), bill payments (18 per cent), stock trading (15 per cent), job search (51 per cent), and matrimonial search (15 per cent) have seen tremendous rises. [….] On the downside, the country has only around 40 million Internet users (expected to rise to 150-200 million by 2008, depending on whose numbers one follows), around 15 million personal computers, and 12,000 cybercafes (other estimates, though, peg them at around 90,000 to 100,000). Besides, the country does not have a very healthy broadband pipe (around 2 million subscribers, slated to rise to 20 million by 2010). Currently, around 800,000 people transact on the Internet every month…. [Business Standard]

Related Links: Internet and Mobile Association of India e-commerce report. Find out what the rural India is using the net for other than agriculture matters.

New Blogging Trends in India

This is from The Hindu:

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According to an online survey of more than 1,000 MSN portal visitors in India, blogging is dominated by men, and blogs founded by business leaders make for the most enjoyable read, followed by those by politicians. This contrasts with the trend elsewhere, where blogging is evenly matched between the sexes and blogs by business leaders and politicians are far less popular than those by others. A desire for self-improvement and personal development is found to be a key driver of India's blogosphere with a large majority of online users reading blogs to stay informed about world events. They enjoy reading about technology the most, followed closely by news and education. Elsewhere, technology content ranks low. These findings suggest that blogging in India could become the "new fourth estate" with close to half the respondents believing that blogging content is as trustworthy as those of regular media outlets such as newspapers, radio and TV. While growing in popularity in India, the blogging community is still nascent with only one-seventh of Net-users actively blogging. And more than half of all Net users were unaware altogether of blogs. India's blogosphere is heavily dominated by men — three quarters of its bloggers are male. It is also fuelled by young adults.[The Hindu] Related Report:CNN-IBN (This one is more detailed)

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India's Armed Forces: Ready for the Future?

Nitin points out that motivational levels in the Indian armed forces could fall if compulsory military service for every Indian is brought in. He is of the view that an army that is smaller, well-trained and highly motivated will be far effective than a huge mass of reluctant people forced to serve.

In this regard the Indian army’s GI Joe plan is worth noting.

The Indian Army wants to turn its soldiers into superheroes… It has embarked on Project F-INSAS (Future Infantry Soldier as a System), which visualises the Indian soldier as the ultimate terminator — one with unprecedented lethality, mobility and survival skills. Project F-INSAS will exploit advanced technologies to enhance the capabilities of individual soldiers, making them "multi-mission, multi-role war fighters". […] The supersoldier will be equipped to fight by day and night, in all conditions and terrain. Modular weapon systems that can be re-configured - allowing an assault rifle, for instance, to be turned into a light machine gun - will equip them to meet changing mission requirements. Integrated sight systems will have thermal imagers, invisible laser aim pointers and a red dot sight. …F-INSAS intends to make the Indian soldier a self-contained fighting machine. By 2012, the Army will field the first version of F-INSAS, based on available technology…. The supersoldier will sport some incredible accessories. Smart vests, for instance, will come with sensors to monitor vital signs like ECG, body temperature and heartbeat, and will allow pinpointing bullet injuries. Sensors in the vest will provide online information to doctors about vital body signs. Combat helmets equipped with head-up display will provide a field of view equivalent to a 17-inch computer monitor right in front of the soldier's eyes. Output from the soldier's personal computer - attached to his backpack frame - and other sensors will be shown on the display unit, which will be the interface with the other subsystems and the digital battlefield. A futuristic radio subsystem will enable the soldier to transmit and receive voice messages and data, including streaming video. He will also get specially made boots to give some protection from landmines.[HT]

The Indian armed forces should not lag behind in adopting the latest military tactics and technologies that can minimise ones own casualties and inflict maximum damage on the enemy.

Right now technology is being used to fight urban terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and this is a welcome development.

The Indian army has digitally mapped both Srinagar and Jammu, installed secret high-resolution cameras at 32 vulnerable public places, and wired police squads with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices in both the cities. With this new gadget will, among other advantages, enable the police to sit in Jammu and watch live on computer screens the goings-on hundreds of kilometers away in Srinagar or vice versa. This means converting a normal police control room into a command centre. This new initiative will also help police identify suspects and increase transparency. Camera images will, for example, help establish the truth in cases where the police are accused of excesses in dealing with public protests. When a militant attack is reported in any part of the two cities, the calls to the police control room will be answered by a call centre where trained police staff will take down information, trace the location of the nearest police cars and direct them to the site of the attack. The mobile phones of officers will soon be wired into the GPS-based security grid… Such systems common in the West are used to tackle crime and traffic violations. In J&K, they will be focused entirely on fighting militant attacks.[HT]

There is a lot of time to develop the futuristic soldier. Right now the Indian armed forces should take immediate steps to address more serious problem of shortfall in the armed forces strength.

In many parts of India the army is the only source of employment for many. In strife torn Jammu Kashmir it is that very despised Indian army the only source of employment for large number of people. This is the same in many other areas of India too. Because of this the infantry quota is always filled up.

It is the officers’ quota that has fallen back. It drastically needs new recruits to fill up the shortfall. The officer shortfall is 11,000 in the army, 5000 in the navy and 500 in the air force. This is serious matter and compulsory service is not the answer because an unmotivated force will be sitting duck for the enemy.

To fill up the shortfall, slickly made ads showcasing the extracurricular activities of the army is not just the answer when today’s youth – in a booming economy - has better options of safe and better paying jobs in other sectors. Apart from offering attractive compensation packages matching the best offered in the private sector, the pitfalls of having officer shortfall should be effectively communicated to young prospective candidates. For this the army should take the help of the best PR talent available. There is no guarantee that this will fill up the shortfall but the motivated ones will surely reduce the shortfall.

Sometime back to boost recruitments from Gujarat which has low levels of representation in the Indian army, the army came up with a weird plan of holding an exhibition in Gujarat where arms and ammunition seized from Islamist militants in JK and elsewhere in India. The timing of this exhibition was interesting – soon after the 2002 Gujarat riots when anti-Muslim, Hindu nationalist feelings were very high in Gujarat. I don’t know what success it had.

What size the Indian army should be is still debatable considering the future state of affairs. The present strength of 1.1 million makes the Indian army the second largest after China’s. A time will come when a strong and rapidly growing India will have to assert itself in the world and may have to sent troops to safeguard its interests in other parts of the world. Sooner or later our troops might see action in Afghanistan where we have vital interests. Just like China our hunt for black gold and other minerals could get nasty and then we will have no option but to call up on our troops to safeguard our interests.

We need a blue water navy to keep an ambitious China in check in the Indian Ocean. That means a Navy with at least three Aircraft carrier flotillas, a first-class submarine fleet plus the regular Naval flotilla.

Coastal security should be strengthened without delay, as there is definite threat to vital costal installations – onshore and offshore – from terrorists.

Another Fiji should not happen anywhere. Nowhere should Indian Diasporas be second-class citizens. In case it becomes inevitable in any part of the world, then the government of the day should not shy away from helping that Indian Diaspora by whatever means to achieve their stated goals.

All these scenarios call for a large armed force that is motivated and raring to go at all times.

Gagan: India's Eye in the Sky

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) are at work to provide a modern navigation system over the Indian airspace.

The system, christened GAGAN or GPS and Geo Augmented Navigation, will be a Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS).

GAGAN will be operational by end 2007. For Delhi Airport it would mean less delays during the winter months when fog throws air traffic out of gear. GAGAN will operate like Category IIIA Instrument Landing System, helping flights land in near zero visibility conditions. Its accuracy will be within 1 metre. It will provide both lateral and vertical guidance.

Worldwide, ships and aircraft use two core constellations to determine their position - the GPS system of the US and a similar Russian system.

These set of satellites send a time-stamped message to the aircraft and ship, helping it fix its location and route. The position accuracy achievable with these core constellations (GPS and GLONASS) is 30 metres and not good enough for precision approach and landing requirements of civil aviation in India. These need to be augmented. GAGAN, with its satellites and ground-based transmitters will fill this gap over the Indian airspace.

There are three types of augmentation systems - Ground Based (GBAS), Aircraft Based (ABAS) Space/Satellite Based (SBAS). The ground and aircraft based systems have several handicaps - not available over the oceanic (Indian Ocean) airspace, unable to cover India's territorial airspace, performance dependent on terrain conditions, expensive to maintain and require periodic calibration.

GAGAN is being implemented in three stages:

Stage I: Technology Demonstration System — is complete.

Stage II: Initial Experimentation Phase — year-long, under process.

Stage III: Final Operational Phase — scheduled for 2007.[HT]

More Power To Solar Power

President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has plans to light up Rashtrapati Bhawan with solar power. To avoid cutting down about 15-20 trees in the compound, the project would require the construction of a new structure on which the solar panels will be mounted.
All this will cost about Rs 350 crore.
The proposed structure -- which will double up as a convention centre -- would be bigger than Vigyan Bhawan..
The president's press adviser, S.M. Khan, has confirmed that such a proposal was initiated by Kalam who recently held a meeting with experts to discuss the project. The National Thermal Power Corporation and Power Finance Corporation have formed a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to set up a 5-MW solar photovoltaic power project at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Kalam is said to be keen to set an example -- if Rashtrapati Bhawan can be lit up using photovoltaic solar power panels, so can rural India.
The project cost includes the setting up of power panels (estimated cost: Rs 135.70 crore) and the construction of 10 blocks with basement, ground floor and first floor for solar panels to be mounted on rooftops (Rs 206.69 crore). The project is to be located near bungalow number 1&2, Mother Teresa Cresent, Rashtrapati Bhawan. "A number of proposals have been discussed since early this month and we're awaiting directions from the president's office," said a source. "Once implemented it could act as a convention centre bigger than Vigyan Bhawan. It could also house high-profile offices, like that of various regulators."
Preliminary estimates indicate the convention centre would be able to house over 5,000 people. It can even have an underground parking.
The original proposal was to lay PV solar panels at ground level divided in 10 sub-fields in total area of 96,192 sq m. Two alternative suggestions were discussed. One was to build 10 blocks with basement and ground floor for solar panels mounted on rooftop. The available plinth area on each floor was to be about 8,537 sq m.
The second suggestion, which is understood to be most favoured, is to build it on the same pattern but on an increased floor area of 25,611 sq m for each block at an estimated cost of Rs 206.69 crore — to be constructed in 10 months.[HT]