Israel, India to Cooperate on Long-Range Barak Naval SAM

Barak Components(click to view full) In December 2005, DID discussed a number of India’s indigenous missile projects, and the fact that over their 20+ year development histories, the country had frequently needed to buy substitutes abroad. The exception was the Russian-Indian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which was modified from an existing Russian design and has been outstandingly successful. It would appear that the BrahMos model’s lessons have sunk in, because one of the missiles DID had covered may be about to go by the wayside in favor of a $350 million international project based on a modified Israeli Barak surface-air missile. Barak launch(click to view full) Defense News reports that India and Israel have finalized their biggest defense development agreement: The state-owned Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) in Hyderabad, and Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) reportedly signed a pact on January 27, 2006 for the joint development and production of a long-range version of the Barak (Heb. “Lightning”) air defense system. A senior scientist of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) reportedly said that the 50/50 shared program has an estimated cost of about $350 million over the next five years. Additional funding will be infused by both parties […]