India to conduct missile vs. missile test Sunday
Nov 24, 2006 - 11:35:41 PM
, Reviewed by: Priya Saxena
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The air-defence exercise will be followed by a three-day national conference on range technology to be held Nov 28-30 at the ITR.
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By RxPG News Service,
[RxPG] Balasore -, Nov 24 - India will for the first time fire two home grown missiles against each other Sunday to validate the capability of the weapon to achieve its design parameters, officials said.
Termed the Prithvi Air Defence Exercise -, one missile will be fired from the shore-based Integrated Test Range - at Chandipur-on-sea and the other from Inner Wheeler Island, both of which are located 150 km from state capital Bhubaneswar, a defence official told IANS.
'If their trajectory is perfectly aligned, it would be termed a success of the operational status of the Prithvi-II missile,' the official added.
The aim of the exercise is to test the missile's ability to provide an air-shield cover to important Indian metros of India against hostile attacks, the official explained.
The Prithvi is one of the five missiles being developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme of the Defence Research and Development Organisation -. First tested in 1988, Prithvi-I has a range of 150 km and can carry conventional or low-yield nuclear warheads for use against troops or armoured formations.
Its two variants, the Prithvi-II and Prithvi-III, have a range of 250 km and 350 km respectively.
Prithvi-II was first tested in January 1996. It flew 250 km and is said to have accurately landed at a pre-determined point. The Indian Army has already inducted Prithvi I and II.
Prithvi-III was successfully test fired for the first time in October 2004.
Prithvi-II was again test fired Nov 19.
'We are happy this test met all the parameters. This has promoted us to conduct the air-defence exercise and we hope the first ever experiment will also be fruitful,' a scientist involved in the mission said.
'While the missile from the ITR will be the attacker, the missile from Wheeler Island would act as the defender and will be fired five seconds later,' he added.
The air-defence exercise will be followed by a three-day national conference on range technology to be held Nov 28-30 at the ITR.
To be inaugurated by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the conference will be and attended by 15 renowned defence scientists from the US, Britain, France, Germany and Denmark.
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