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Now, a steel alloy to reduce cost of missiles, rockets

sudhir007

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Now, a steel alloy to reduce cost of missiles, rockets | idrw.org

Indian Defence scientists have developed a special steel alloy that helps in drastic reduction of the cost of missiles and rockets.developed by the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL) and the Mishra Dhathu Nigam (MIDHANI), the special alloy, DMR 1700, has ultra-high strength and finds wide applications in space and defence sectors.

The DMR 1700 is set to replace the 250-Grade maraging steel, which is presently used in missiles and rockets. “It is an advanced material that can boost the country’s weapons system and military hardware,” said Dr VK Saraswat, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister. He was speaking at the 65th annual technical meeting of the Indian Institute of Metals (IIM) in Hyderabad.

The steel alloy, developed after a two decade-long research, would help reduce the cost of production of missiles and rockets by nearly two-thirds, DMRL director G Malkondiah said.

The DMR 1700 is a low-alloy steel with ultra-high strength and high-fracture toughness. As a corrosion-proof alloy, it can be used in ship hulls. The DMRL has also joined a select group of nations in developing high-purity aeronautical grade of titanium for space and defence applications.

“The DMRL has transferred the technology to the Kerala Metals and Minerals Ltd (KMML) which is setting up a 500-tonne year capacity plant. The product produced by the KMML will be converted into a finished product by MIDHANI for use in space and defence applications,” Saraswat said.

The newly developed titanium was an import substitution product and only four other countries – United States, Russia, Japan and Kyrgyzstan – had the know-how to produce aeronautical-grade titanium, said M Narayana Rao, chairman and managing director of MIDHANI.
 
Oh my god they are concerning about cost cutting in missiles, we need stealth and don't worry about cost.

Actually, nobody is attempting "stealth" for missiles.

The standard way to beat Anti-ballistic missiles is to use MIRVs (with some dummy warheards included), electronic evasion measures .... and high speed as in case of ICBMs.

Cost is definitely important ... allows large scale deployment, more frequent testing from batch productions.

However, "two-third" cost reduction looks drastic to me .... it will probably we "two-third" cost reduction in the cost of steel casings etc. Perhaps with respect to the total cost of the missile, cost reduction may have been 5 to 10%.

At 10%, a 25 crore Agni missile could cost 22.5 crore. We must remember something is better than nothing.
 

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