With the objective of providing a shield to major cities from enemy ballistic missiles, India on Saturday successfully conducted a test wherein an incoming missile was intercepted by a missile in exo-atmosphere. With this capability, India has now entered the elite league of nation having this capability. The other four countries are US, Russia, Israel and France.
The significance of this test, the second in the last two years, is that the interceptor missile can shoot down a ballistic missile fired from more than 2,000-km, at least 50-km above earth’s atmosphere, thereby nullifying any threat to India’s skies and cities. Some more tests will be conducted in the coming months before the missiles which are part of Ballistic Missile Defence System (BMD) are inducted into service. The programme was conceived in 1999.
As regards the latest test of the missile, an incoming enemy missile was intercepted at 07.45 off Balasore in Bay of Bengal in Odisha. The interceptor was launched from Abdul Kalam Island (Wheeler Island) of Integrated Test Range in Balasore.
With this commendable scientific achievement, India has crossed an important milestone in building its overall capability towards enhanced security against incoming ballistic missile threats. It has entered an exclusive club of four nations with developing capabilities to secure its skies and cities against hostile threats, Defence Ministry officials said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar lauded the efforts of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for this achievement.
This mission was termed as “PDV mission is for engaging the targets in the exo-atmosphere region at an altitude above 50 km of earth’s atmosphere.” The target depicted a hostile ballistic missile fired from more than 2,000 km away and launched from a ship anchored in the Bay of Bengal.
The interceptor missile tracked it in an automated operation and the computer network with the help of data received from radars predicted the trajectory of the incoming Missile. The interceptor was kept ready and took-off once the computer system gave the necessary command for lift-off. The Interceptor guided by high accuracy Inertial Navigation System (INS) supported by a redundant micro navigation system moved towards the estimated point of the interception.
Once the missile crossed the atmosphere, the heat shield ejected and the seeker dome opened to look at the target location as designated by the mission computer. With the help of inertial guidance and seeker the missile moved for interception and all events were monitored in real-time by the telemetry stations located at various spots, officials said.