India successfully flight-tests pilotless Lakshya

Lakshya has been developed by India’s Aeronautic Development Establishment (ADE),Bangalore to perform discreet aerial reconnaissance of battlefield and target acquisition. It is launched by a solid propellant rocket motor,and sustained by a turbojet engine in flight. It has radar,IR and visual signature augmentation. Lakshya can be launched from land or ship and be recovered by a parachute system safely on land or sea. Lakshya’s Ground control station and telemetry station allows pilotless control of aircraft and real time data acquisition. Till now,more than 200 Lakshya launches have been carried out

Meanwhile,DRDO is planning to test the nuclear-capable Prithvi-II ballistic missile on December 22 and 24 instead of the Advanced Air Defence Interceptor as planned earlier. The last tesfiring of Prithvi-II missile with a maximum range of 350 km on September 24 ended in an embarassing failure as the missile dropped off a few seconds after its launch from Integrated Test Range in Chandipur-on-sea of Orissa. DRDO had blamed the failure of the rocket engine on the failure.

DRDO sources said the faults in Prithvi-II has been rectified and the improved version would now be test-fired on December 22 and 24.

Bhubaneswar.

On December 11,the maiden testfiring of Agni-II Prime,a two-stage,surface-to-surface missile with a range of about 2,500 km failed as it veered off its trajectory and fell into the sea. Agni-II Prime was meant to fill the gap in the range between Agni-II and Agni-III.