Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The testfiring of indigenously developed ballistic missile defence system,earlier scheduled for August,is likely to be conducted on Monday,defence officials said.
The testfiring comes four months after the failure of the interceptor Advanced Air Defence AAD.
In March this year,Indias efforts to have a credible ballistic missile defence BMD shield suffered a jolt when the Prithvi missile,mimicking an enemy ballistic missile,veered off its path and did not reach its required altitude of 110 km. It reached a height of about 70 km and fell into the Bay of Bengal. Since the enemy missile did not reach the required altitude,no ignition was given for the interceptor Advanced Air Defence AAD system to take off from the Wheeler Island,off the Orissa coast.
Though the Defence Research and Development Organisation DRDO had earlier decided to testfire the missile in August,sources said the tests would be conducted on July 26
or 27. The ballistic missile defence system is being
developed by the DRDO
to thwart an enemy missile attack.
Sources said both the enemy missile and the interceptor are being programmed in separate locations in Chandipur and Wheelers Island. We have taken all precautions to
prevent any failure, sources said. The two different missiles have been developed as part of the system for endo-atmospheric and exo-atmospheric interception of an incoming ballistic missiles.
India plans to deploy the first phase of the missile shield by 2012 after completing a series of trials and evaluating its target range.
