‘By War Fighters, For War Fighters’: The JSR Dynamics Story

A fighter pilot passionate about designing munitions and hungry for indigenously developing them retires as the vice chief of the Indian Air Force in 2018. The same year, he sets up a company to give shape to his efforts. And JSR Dynamics came into being. The work it does is complex but the underlying idea is simple. Or, as the company’s tagline goes: ‘by war fighters, for war fighters’.

Last month, Khagantak, a long-range glide bomb made by JSR Dynamics in collaboration with Bharat Electronics Limited, was tested and validated by the Indian Force in Pokharan.

Explaining the thought process behind the bomb, Air Marshal SB Deo (Retd) says he may now be an entrepreneur but nobody can take the fighter pilot out of him. The first thing he had in mind was aerodynamic performance. That ties in with the operational requirements of the Indian Air Force.

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He pointed to India’s two adversaries: one to the north (China) and the other to the west (Pakistan). In the first case, high altitude poses a challenge; in the latter, aircraft have to face Westerlies. And headwinds can reduce a weapon’s effective range.

The idea is to provide maximum stand-off capability to the weapon so that the aircraft that carries it doesn’t need to move too close to the target and be vulnerable to enemy fire.

“So right from the beginning, this bomb was designed to give excellent aerodynamic performance. Khagantak is the longest-range glide bomb in the world,” Air Marshal SB Deo (Retd) told BharatShakti Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale at the company’s facility in Nagpur.

Indigenous development is key to the glide bomb programme. The design, integration and testing are done in India. But some components still have to be sourced from abroad.

The retired air force officer is all for IDDM (indigenously designed, developed and manufactured). But, as he says, it must be high on performance and cost-effective. “I have never understood people saying here’s an IDDM product but it performs 20% less (than imported stuff) and costs 30% more.”