LR-SAM / Barak-8: Deadly End Game!

LR-SAM at Aero India 2013

The Barak-8 and its DRDO variant LR-SAM, the chosen Point Defense System for large Indian warships, features a smokeless dual pulse motor that makes the missile highly maneuverable and fast at target interception range throughout the missile's wide envelope. This is evident from the video of the missile test in November 2014.

The missile is moving so fast during the end game that the target RPV appears to stand still in the air!

Note how the smokeless, but not entirely smokeless, rocket motor is still burning at impact.

Pulsed Rocket Motor

A pulsed rocket motor has multiple propellant segments, with a barrier that stops ignition separating any two segments. When one segment burns out the missile coasts till another segment is ignited.

A shortcoming of conventional solid propellant rocket motors is that they cannot be switched off and reignited, as is the case with liquid propellant rocket motors. A pulsed rocket motor addresses the shortcoming.

Without a pulsed motor, an air-to-air or surface-to-air missile rapidly loses speed and maneuverability after motor burnout. Such missiles are unable to engage hard maneuvering targets nearing the limit of their engagement range.

A pulsed rocket motor allows the missile to coast and then reignite its motor after seeker lock making it difficult for the target to throw off the missile.

Each pulse can have different thrust level, burn time, and achieved specific impulse depending on the type of propellant used, its burn rate, its grain design, and the current nozzle throat diameter.

IDP Sentinel members can read more about Barak-8/LRSM/MRSAM at the link below

Barak-8 / MRSAM / LRSAM - IDP Sentinel