BY : THE HINDU

Agni-1, India’s workhorse missile with a range of 700 km, has attained full operational capability following a successful test-fire from the Wheeler Island, off Orissa coast on Sunday.

At 10.15 a.m. scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Indian Army (main user) launched the surface-to-air Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). In about nine minutes, the missile attained its desired distance, trajectory and demonstrated its operational capabilities.

Describing the test as a ‘complete success’, Dr Avinash Chander, Director, Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL) and Programme Director of Project Agni, said, “The terminal data tracked by two naval ships and total performance from the radars at the Interim Test Range (ITR) showed that the missile performed to its optimum capacity exactly as expected.”

The significance of the test was that the Agni-1 missile had met the full specifications and requirements of the user, alongside meeting the mission objectives, Dr Chander told Business Line from the Wheeler Island.

Agni-1 has already been inducted into the Indian Army. Sunday’s test-fire is also a demonstration of the user’s preparedness in handling the missile system. The all-composite body, indigenous missile was developed by Indian defence scientists and produced by the public sector Bharat Dynamics Ltd.

India’s prestigious Agni Project, launched in the mid-1980s and first successfully test-fired in 1989, currently has three variants of the surface-to-air missile — Agni-1 (700 km); Agni-2 (1,500 km); and Agni-3 (beyond 3,000 km).

The Union Minister of State for Defence, Mr M.M. Pallam Raju, and the Scientific Adviser to Raksha Mantri, Dr M. Natarajan, congratulated the Army and the DRDO scientists for the successful test-fire.