India Friday again showed its military muscle by successfully testing fired an indigenous ballistic missile shield in the eastern state of Orissa, said a senior defense ministry official.
The interceptor missile was fired from the Wheeler Island off the Orissa coast and destroyed the "enemy" missile at an altitude of 80 km, said the official.
This is the second time for India to conduct missile tests within days, after the country test fired successfully an Indo- Russian jointly made Brahmos supersonic missile in the western Rajasthan desert Wednesday.
The "enemy" missile was a modified version of the Dhanush surface-to-surface missile. It was fired from a naval ship in the Bay of Bengal to simulate the terminal phase of the flight of a ballistic missile with a range of 1,500 km, according to the official. As the missile was nearing the Wheeler Island, a Prithvi air defense missile was launched and intercepted it.
"The ballistic missile defense shield was tested successfully for the third time," the official said, on condition of anonymity.
The Indian Ballistic Missile Defense Program is an initiative to develop and deploy a multi-layered ballistic missile defense system to protect the country from missile attacks.
The program is a two tiered system consisting of two interceptor missiles, namely Prithvi Air Defense (PAD) missile for high altitude interception, and the Advanced Air Defense (AAD) Missile for lower altitude interception.
PAD was tested in November 2006, followed by AAD in December 2007. With the test of the PAD missile, India became the fourth country to have successfully developed an anti-ballistic missile system, after the United States, Russia and Israel. |
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