Indian Fighter Plane

A variant, the Su-30MK (NATO designation Flanker), has been sold to India with licensed local production to begin in 2000.

The aircraft is equipped to operate autonomously in combat over hostile territory, in escort of deep penetration strike aircraft, and in suppression of enemy airfields. The aircraft provides general air defense in cooperation with ground and airborne control stations.

The aircraft is equipped with a 30 mm gun and a range of missiles, rockets, and bombs mounted externally on ten hardpoints. The aircraft's infra-red search and track system, laser rangefinder, radar, and helmet mounted target designator provide detection, tracking, and attack capability.

The range of air-to-air missiles carried by the Su-27K aircraft includes:

• R-27R1, all aspect medium range missile with semi-active homing
• R-27T1 all aspect medium range missile with infra-red passive homing
• R-73E all aspect close combat air-to-air missile with infra-red passive homing

The R-27R1 (NATO designation AA-10A Alamo-A) and the R-27T1 (AA-10B Alamo-B) has a range from 0.5 to 60 kilometres, with the aircraft flying from 20,000 to 27,000 m altitude and speeds up to 3,500 km/hour.

The R-73E (NATO designation AA-11 Archer) provides all-aspect target engagement in close, high maneuverability combat with load factor up to 12g. The range is from 0.3 to 20 kilometres.

Ordnance for air-to-ground missions include:

• free fall and retarded aerial bombs 100, 250, and 500 kg
• incendiary devices, 500 kg
• RBK cluster bombs, 25 and 500 kg
• unguided aerial missiles C-8, C-13 and C-25

The Su-27SK is equipped with a coherent pulse Doppler radar, Phazotron N001 Zhuk, with track-while-scan and look-down/shoot-down capability. The range of the radar against targets size 3 square metres is over 100 km in the forward hemisphere and 40 kilometres in the rear hemisphere. The radar has the capacity to search, detect, and track up to 10 targets with automatic threat assessment and prioritization.;

The aircraft has an OEPS-27 electro-optic system which includes an infra-red search and track (IRST) sensor collimated with a laser rangefinder. The range of the electro-optical system against a reheated target is from 40 to 100 kilometres depending on the aspect angle presented by the target.

The Su-27SK is equipped with a new electronic countermeasures suite for individual aircraft, and for mutual and group protection in the forward and rear hemispheres. The countermeasures system includes a pilot illumination radar warning receiver, chaff and infra-red decoy dispensers, and an active multimode jammer located in the wing-tip pods.

The Su-27SK is powered by two AL-31F turbofan engines designed by the Lyulka Engine Design Bureau (NPO Saturn). Each engine has two air intakes, a primary wedge intake and a louvred auxiliary air intake. The twin-shaft turbo-fan engine has after-turbine flow mixing, a common afterburner, an all mode variable area jet exhaust nozzle, an independent start and a main electronic control and a reserve hydromechanical engine mode control system. The engine nacelles have a semimonocoque configuration. The high temperature sections of the engines are made of titanium alloy.

The cockpit is equipped with a single zero/zero ejection seat type Zvesda K-36MD. The pilot is equipped with a helmet mounted target designator.

The fly-by-wire system in the Su-27SK uses quadruple redundancy of transducers, units and interfaces of the vital control channels to perform the following functions:

• longitudinal control
• provision of stability and controllability for longitudinal, lateral and yaw control
• control of the aircraft configuration in maneuvers
• restriction of parameters to keep within g-load and angle of attack limitations
• decrease of aerodynamic loading to conform to limitations of aircraft structure
  

Nuclear Weapons

India's nuclear weapons program was started at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay. In the mid-1950s India acquired dual-use technologies under the "Atoms for Peace" non-proliferation program, which aimed to encourage the civil use of nuclear technologies in exchange for assurances that they would not be used for military purposes. There was little evidence in the 1950s that India had any interest in a nuclear weapons program, according to Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1). Under the "Atoms for Peace" program, India acquired a Cirus 40 MWt heavy-water-moderated research reactor from Canada and purchased from the U.S. the heavy water required for its operation. In 1964, India commissioned a reprocessing facility at Trombay, which was used to separate out the plutonium produced by the Cirus research reactor. This plutonium was used in India's first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, described by the Indian government as a "peaceful nuclear explosion."

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, India began work on a thermonuclear weapon in the 1980s. In 1989, William H. Webster, director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that "indicators that tell us India is interested in thermonuclear weapons capability." India was purifying lithium, producing tritium and separating lithium isotopes. India had also obtained pure beryllium metal from West Germany