India’s Hypersonic Scramjet Breakthrough Explained | In Our Defence | India Today

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]The scramjet, actually, is the most significant of all of these tests.

[00:00:05]Because I was talking to a DRDO scientist friend, and he said, "Look, it's the culmination of 25 years of perseverance and hard work and, you know, research, development, tests, and testing."

[00:00:18]So, it's a quarter century of work that's finally manifested in that 20-minute test of that um scramjet uh rocket which which went off, that scramjet engine.

[00:00:31]And this is really impressive because now you can you have the confidence to, you know, go ahead and use this as a, you know, a propulsion of a vehicle, a missile, which will then be, you know, that'll happen in the next couple of years. I mean, this is very important as far as ground tests go, to demonstrate uh the scramjet engine firing for 20 minutes. That's exceptionally uh it it's a big break through. It would be uh you know, where we were with the BrahMos missile maybe 25 years back. That is the That is the moment that we are. Well, not quite. I guess we would be there when we would fire it on a missile, you know, integrate it. But it's a big break through. And I would think this scramjet is is huge. The other missiles are actually kind of, you know, incremental stuff. We already had that. We have the K-4. We're now going to the K-5.

[00:01:22]The Agni was there. We have now tested an Agni with MIRVs. This is a completely new tech. Scramjet is totally different tech. And it's almost like alien technology kind of, you know, coming to us.

[00:01:35]Uh yeah, I'm going to come back to scramjet in just a moment, but first a couple of technical points of I want you to explain to our listeners and viewers because that's something I got stuck at when I was sort of researching for the for the episode. So, one thing is clear, and one missile you forgot to talk about is a long-range anti-ship missile.

[00:01:53]>> Oh, yeah, LRA LRA SHM. Yeah, that that is See, the LRA SHM, that's also another big breakthrough.

[00:01:59]This is a missile that will again put us in the league hypersonic league. Though it's not a pure it doesn't work as a scramjet kind of thing but it's a very fast supersonic thing which propels this missile into hypersonic thing which is hypersonic is excess of Mach 5.

[00:02:17]Though that vehicle comes in but it goes it's not hypersonic through and through its entire range it's about 1500 km.

[00:02:26]And it gives our missile ears especially the shore it's it's a anti-ship missile basically.

[00:02:35]It's meant to you know knock out high value targets like you know aircraft carriers for instance supply ships large you know targets.

[00:02:47]High value targets and also knock out shore establishments. You can target bases and all that [clears throat] for that. But you know obviously this in its present configuration it's [snorts] a truck base I think it's a 8 by 8 if I'm not mistaken.

[00:03:03]In that configuration it can only be launched from you know coastal platforms and you know coastal areas and stuff as a shore battery. It it needs to be compacted further to be launched from warships. I I guess that is a project that's already in the pipeline and there is considerable excitement is considerable interest in the Indian Navy in this technology the hypersonic missile which is because if you look at the history of anti-ship missiles I mean the anti-ship missiles are always the ones that have you know led the way Yes. Even BrahMos by the way was an anti-ship Absolutely it began its life with the Indian Navy and then went on to the other services. The Indian Navy has always been the first to induct the missile so in 71 you had the P-15 missiles which are subsonic but they were you know for their time they were way ahead, 50 years back, more than 55 years to be precise. Then you had the next phase of technology, which was supersonic, when you came in with the BrahMos Mach 3. In it was tested in the late '90s and inducted in the early 2000s. And now this is the third milestone, where you're going to go to a hypersonic missile, which is your long-range anti-ship missile, and that is purely indigenous.

[00:04:17]BrahMos is Indo-Russian.

[00:04:18]>> Yes. You're depending on the Russian ramjet engine, but this one is purely indigenous. So that's another big breakthrough.