The Indian defence establishment would have a hypersonic missile - BrahMos II - in its fold in the next four years and the DRDO was developing "Clock Technology" to make warships and aircraft totally invisible both to the human eye and radars. Brahmos Aerospace was working on the hypersonic missile project, Brahmos II, which was expected to be ready by 2013, Defence Scientist and Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) Chief Controller Dr A Sivathanu Pillai said.
Giving this information on the sidelines of a function got up as part of DRDO's golden jubilee celebrations here last evening, Dr Sivathanu Pillai said work in this regard has commenced.
The indigenous second BrahMos missile would have improved speed and fire power. The speed range of the missile would be between Mach five (five times the speed of the sound) and Mach seven and it was expected to be ready by 2013, Dr Pillai, who is also the CEO and Managing Director of Brahmos Aerospace, said. He also said work on developing an universal missile launcher has commenced at the Brahmos Aerospace in Thiruvananthapuram.
Earlier, speaking at the function, Dr Pillai said the DRDO's new mantra would be "less men, more machine" With the changing dimensions of war theatre, the future wars would be fought with minimum people, but with maximum weapons.
The DRDO was focussing on robotics and unmanned vehicle development to prepare the Indian defence to meet future war situations, which would be more network centric and fought with autonomous systems. ''The main aim was to attain maximum weapon power by using minimum people'', he added. Observing that cyber warfare and robotic systems would dominate the battlefield, Dr Pillai said robotics and software plays a vital role in modern day combat and the DRDO has been developing weapons and combat systems which were less man-centric. He said nanotechnology and biotechnology would change the perspective of future wars. ''The Bio-Nano revolution will change every applications in the battlefield and the DRDO was making efforts to develop robot-soldiers, stealth ships and radars''.
''We are on the process of developing a "clock technology" that will make the warships and aircraft totally invisible, both to the human eye and radars. The DRDO is developing a material called meta-metal which has a negative refractive index, making things invisible.