New Delhi: Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Navy successfully conducted a maiden flight trial of sea-based endo-atmospheric interceptor missile off the coast of Odisha in the Bay of Bengal on April 21, 2023. The purpose of the trial was to engage and neutralize a hostile ballistic missile threat thereby elevating India into the elite club of Nations having Naval BMD capability.
Prior to this, DRDO has successfully demonstrated land-based BMD system with capability to neutralize ballistic missile threats, emerging from adversaries.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated DRDO, Indian Navy and Industry involved in successful demonstration of ship based Ballistic Missile defence capabilities.
Secretary DDR&D and Chairman DRDO Dr Samir V Kamat complimented the teams involved in the design and development of the missile. He said that the nation has achieved self-reliance in developing highly-complex network-centric anti-ballistic missile systems.
Last year, India had stunned the world with the successful launch of submarine launched ballistic missile K-15. However, developing an anti-missile system is much more complex than an offensive missile system and requires very advanced expertise in cutting-edge defence technologies. DRDO utilised the available talent in India and could achieve the feat indigenously.
The ambitious missile defence programme was launched in 2000 and since then many successful tests under Phase-1 of the BMD had been conducted, giving confidence to the scientists to go ahead with much more complex longer-range anti-missile systems.
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