Russia Offers To Upgrade India's Strela Missile System

Russia has offered to upgrade India’s existing short-range Strela-10M3 mobile air defence system to the level of the Strela-10M4 or Strela-10MN (night version), RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

“During a meeting of the Russia-India Inter-governmental Commission (IGC), we made a technical proposal to India for the modernization of the Strela-10M3 SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems. A formal offer was made under the aegis of Rosoboronexport,” said Slobodchikov, Doctor of Technical Sciences and member of the Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Cosmonautics.

The Strela-10 SAM has been under development in the KBtochmash since the beginning of the 1970s. The main drawback of the earlier versions was that the system was unable to work at night and was even lacking thermal sighting capability.

“Modernization includes the upgrading of the combat vehicle, but we will not touch the rockets,” said MD of KBTochmash, subsidiary of NPO Precision Complexes OJSC, owned by the state corporation Rostec.

However, the new versions the Strela-10M4 or Strela-10MN (night version), can work at night, primarily because of the introduction of autonomous sector search and target acquisition capability, the MD of KBtochmash added.

The Strela-10M3 required that the operator to see the target with his own eyes, or receive targeting information from somewhere, swing the launcher installation at the target, find and capture it, and then launch the missile.

However, “Now the Strela-10MN (night version) has been automated, a device detects a target in the sector, transmits a command to the operator, after which the operator captures the target and shoots,” said Slobodichkov.

The Strela-10M4 SAM is designed to protect military units, in various forms of battle and on from air attack and reconnaissance devices, diving and flying at low and ultra-low altitudes.