I was not wrong. DRDO's lighter "Shoulder Fired VSHORAD: missile has just broken cover. But it has pleasantly surprised me in a few ways. It is certainly not your grandfather's Igla/Stinger. It's reflective of a missile designed in 2025 by a missile powerhouse.
All my analysis is based on the three pictures below. They were brought to my notice by @Archit_Ch. I am amazed at how keen his eye is. Mine are getting old, so I am glad! I am going to make some guesses, but I am quite confident of them. Take it for what it is worth.
The two missiles have very different layouts. VSHORAD has dual-thrust solid motor with four lateral exhausts. This gives the missile very fast initial acceleration. The booster burn is completed under 2.5 seconds!
This is critical to increase the Probability of Kill (Pk) of a "last-ditch" anti-air missile. Further-more it is fitted with a miniaturized RCS system which sits behind the lateral exhaust to manuever the missile right after it is launched even before its fins get effective.
VSHORAD is probably the smallest missile in the world with an RCS system. The system has 32 extremely small solid rocket motors (arranged in 8 groups of 4). Each motor fires a small smokeless burst invisible to the naked eye.
These extremely fast acceleration and maneuverability makes it one of the best in terms of Probability of kill (Pk), but it comes at the price of weight. The missile itself weighs abt 20 kgs, too heavy to fire over the shoulder. So a seated config has been opted like Mistral
This config allows for more sophisticated sighting systems. But I pity the soldiers carrying such systems in mountainous and or forested areas. They are better suited for vehicles, ships, helicopters etc.
We need a lighter missile which can be carried by a 1-2 man team over long distances, Something of the Stinger/Igla class. DRDO's initial RFPs on MPDMS also looked like the same.
Instead they have developed a truly modern missile based on the VSHORAD experience. They miniaturized and integrated a lot of systems into a single avionics module which neatly fits into a section with 68mm dia and 110mm in length.
1. I expect the missile to be around 70mm in dia against the 90mm of the VSHORAD. My back of the envelop calculations says that this missile will be around 12.5 kgs, instead of the VSHORADS 19 kgs. Compare this to Stinger/Igla's weight. I think I am close.
2. The solid motor has no lateral nozzles, but a single exhaust nozzle at the back. This will not be able to provide the acceleration of the VSHORAD, but will be close because of the lighter overall weight. It will be dual-pulsed to increase Pk.
3. The RCS system has been moved to the front of the missile, just behind or ahead of the canards. My guess is it is just behind. This way, the exahust from the RCS motors won't impinge on the deployed canards. Also the canards can deploy backwards. This is favourable.
4. I am guessing that the RCS system itself has 40 motors arrange in 8 radial columns of 5 motors each.
5. The missile has an active gimballed seeker in the nose. Most likely the same uncooled dual-band IR imaging one in the VSHORAD. So, this is a ultra-modern fire-and-forget missile. Like I said in the beginning probably one of best in the world.
Now, I have only two wishes for low hanging tactical projectiles. 1. An air to air close combat missile from DRDO, and 2. A sir launched rocket system from EEL Pvt. Ltd.
