Procurement: June 27, 2003

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Although India cancelled it's Trishul surface-to-air missile program, it is using up the remaining missiles as "technology demonstrators." Apparently, the missile itself turned out OK, but the accompanying radars and software were plagued with a constant stream of bugs. The Trishul has a nine kilometer range, and between June 22-25, four successful tests were launched. These tests employed those portions of the control software that was not buggy. The Trishul was originally designed to deal with low flying cruise missiles and aircraft using countermeasures. As Russian or American missile designers could have told them, creating a missile system to deal with all of this is a lot more complicated than it looks. But the Indians are using the project as a learning experience, and are planning new missile designs that will build on the Trishul experience. India has a large supply of skilled engineers and scientists who work cheap, so they can afford to fund continuing high tech weapons development.

 

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