India joins ELITE CLUB with its successful test of the Indigenous Ballistic Defence Missile

MARCH 6, 2009
India has successfully conducted a test with a coordinated twin missiles from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) base at Dhamra and to position a ship in the Bay of Bengal 70 km from the base. This test is significant step in Inida's indigenous ballistic missile defence program.

During the test, DRDO launched its exo-atmospheric interceptor Prithvi II Air Defence (PAD) missile, which intersected the target in mid-air about 70 nautical kilometres from the coast and then fell into the Bay of Bengal as programmed.

DRDO’s BMD programme is a two-tier system consisting of two interceptor missiles, namely PAD missile for high altitude interception, and the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile for lower altitude interception.

During today’s launch, two missiles have been fired with a modified version of the Dhanush surface-to-surface missile simulating as an "enemy" missile, which was fired from a Naval ship.

In this test, the modified version of Dhanush, which is known as the naval version of Prithvi (a surface-to-surface missile) acted as an enemy missile. A Prithvi Air Defence (PAD) missile launched from Wheeler’s Island intercepted the incoming missile at an altitude of 70-80 km in the last 1.5 seconds of its flight and destroyed edit.

The incoming missile simulates the terminal phase of the flight of a ballistic missile with a range of 1,500 km, similar to Pakistan’s Ghauri.

The interceptor PAD missile uses, for the first time, the gimballed directional warhead. The warhead fragments in all directions at angles of 360 degrees, ensuring that the target missile is blown up. It has been used only in the USA and Russia until now.

Maintaining that today’s test is the first of its kind, sources claimed that the ground tests have been performed on the directional warhead. The test will be the first time it has been assessed in flight.

Do you hav any idea how much money was spent in that??
Anyways i think India should stop with the weapons programme for the time being and do something more in the fields of public welfare.

Can't we say that a Defence programme is a part of public welfare?

Defence programme is not helping the public currently is it?
Is it worth to spend so much on weapons on mas destructin when govt can do better stuff lik bring down inflation and recession.Did u know tat nearly 40% of the taxes go 2 th army?
m not against th army or smthn it provides employement and all bt dont u thnk its useless 2 just go on spending aimlessly on the weapons and nt on th public?Dnt u thnk?

Well it's a relative topic. So there are varied opinions.

the problem is India's neighbours.
Pakistan- is more like a pseudodemocracy with the army calling the shots in ots day to day working.Media reports across the globe say that a military coup is inevitable in Pakistan. This ballistic defence system is capable of intercepting the Pakistani Ghauri missile which has a range of over 2000 kms.

China- every now and then china raises the issue over arunachal pradesh. The chinese too pose a threat to india.

In addition to this the situations in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh too are very volatile, posing a threat to India. Plus we have insurgency within our country as we have to deal with the Maoists, Naxals, militancy in the North-East and terrorism.

To top it up the defence forces lack manpower. India poseses one of the largest defence forces in the world so the financial requirements of the defnce is humungus.

I absolutely agree with you.

I agree with you.to maintain the stability of government in India and also to sustain external hostilities,we need to spend.
But dont you guys think we should improve the weapons of the police forces too??

yes definitely a lot has to be done.