Indian Missile News And Discussion

[Arun_S]

[size="4"][color="blue"][url="http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/02/11/stories/2010021153551100.htm"]Industry soars with Agni-III[/url] [/color][/size]

HINDU

M. Somasekhar



Hyderabad, Feb. 10



The successful completion of test flights of Agni-III, India's long range, nuclear-capable missile, also marks a significant contribution of Indian industry in establishing domestic capabilities.



More than 150 industries of different sizes, including 60-70 large private and public sector companies, were instrumental in fabricating small components to sub-assemblies to integrating the entire missile



Agni-III has a range of over 3,000 km and was successfully flight-tested on Sunday morning from Wheeler Island off Orissa coast.



Agni-III is fully an indigenous missile with design by the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) and products developed by domestic industry, said Mr Avinash Chander, Programme Director-Agni and Director, Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL).



“With three consecutive successful tests, including the latest one with the user, the Agni-III missile is ready for induction into the Indian defence forces”, Mr Chander told Business Line.



The global norm today for such a missile is to undertake 3-4 trials before declaring it ready for induction. In the case of Agni-III all the requirements have been met. The materials and technologies have also been demonstrated.



The success has also established the fact that “there is no technology gap as we go into the production phase. The public sector Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), the lead integrator will produce the missile.” . DRDO has also developed and successfully tested Agni-I (range of 700 km) and Agni-II (above 2,000 km) and are in various phases of induction into the defence services.



Agni-III has also created a staging platform for Agni-V, the very long range missile that the DRDO is now working on. It also creates the [color="#800080"]capability for space deployment of micro to mini satellites at short notice as well as a range of other capabilities,[/color] Mr Chander said.