The reason why India immediately eliminated the Spike super missile

The Indian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that the agency has just decided to completely cancel the Spike NLOS long-range anti-tank missile deal with the Israeli manufacturer. The reason for this decision was explained by India as prioritizing similar domestically produced products.

Despite the decision by India, Israel has yet to make any official statement on the collapse of the contract, which included at least 8,000 Spike missiles and more than 300 launchers under a $525 million deal signed in 2014.

The Spike anti-tank missile is a multi-purpose, electro-optical missile system that can be used on many different combat platforms (land, air, sea). It is manufactured by the Israeli advanced defense company Rafael.

This type of missile has an operating radius of 25 km, weighs 71 kg, is very light and has low maintenance and operating costs. Spike can carry many different types of warheads: high explosive fragmentation, penetration, smart, multi-purpose...

It can be integrated with satellite guidance systems or drones, has its own target positioning system combined with remote control. With these features, Israel's Spike has defeated its American rival Javelin, developed by US defense companies Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co.

So is the reason for the contract failure really because New Delhi prioritizes domestic products or is there some other reason?

The Jerusalem Post has analyzed to find out the real cause of this failure. India's announcement to cancel the Spike missile contract is most likely related to the quality and effectiveness of this weapon - an issue that has also been complained about many times by South Korea after purchasing and putting Spike into service.

The first drawback, the source said, is the problem with the launch system's features. Each complex has four launchers, but when the first missile has not hit the target, the second missile cannot be launched because the missiles must be controlled separately.

A South Korean Spike missile fires.

Given the Spike’s attack pattern and when faced with a rapid, high-speed attack, this is unacceptable. Even if these systems can simultaneously launch missiles, they must wait for the missiles to hit their targets before launching the next volley. According to experts, this is not enough to counter the enemy’s high-intensity, high-power attacks.

The second fundamental shortcoming of Israeli missiles is that they are not adapted to carry out attacks in natural foggy conditions. Here, the combat effectiveness of the missiles is significantly reduced.

In the mountainous terrain on the Indian border with China and Pakistan, fog often appears. In such conditions, Spike missiles will have great difficulty suppressing attacks from enemy forces, deployed in caves of rocky mountains.

After discovering a series of shortcomings on the Spike, the manufacturer made some modifications to improve the system. However, in subsequent experiments, it was shown that only about 50% of the missiles hit the target in mountainous and foggy conditions.