India test-fires nuclear-capable ICBM Agni-V

India test-fires nuclear-capable ICBM Agni-V

Rajat Pandit | TNN | Updated: Jan 18, 2018, 20:39 IST


NEW DELHI: India on Thursday morning successfully conducted the "first pre-induction trial" of its over 5,000-km range Agni-V intercontinental ballistic missile, which brings the whole of Asia and China as well parts of Europe and Africa within its nuclear strike envelope.
Sources said the country's most formidable missile will undergo one more such pre-induction trial "within this year" before it is inducted into the Agni-V regiment already raised by the tri-Service Strategic Forces Command (SFC) with the requisite command and control structures.

Once that happens, India will gate-crash into the super-exclusive club of countries with ICBMs (missiles with a range of over 5,000-5,500km) like the US, Russia, China, France and the UK. While a belligerent North Korea over the last six-seven month has rattled the US with tests of its two new ICBMs, Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15, expert opinion is still divided whether they are fully-operational and deployed as of now.

India, of course, wants a credible strategic deterrent against an aggressive and expansionist China, which has a large arsenal of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The SFC already has regiments of the Prithvi-II (350-km), Agni-I (700-km), Agni-II (2,000-km) & Agni-III (3,000-km) missiles, which are mainly meant to deter Pakistan from any misadventure. The Agni-IV (4,000-km) and Agni-V (over 5,000-km), in turn, have been developed with China in mind.

The over 50-tonne Agni-V, designed to carry a 1.5-tonne nuclear warhead, has been tested four times in "developmental or experimental trials" earlier. The missile was tested in an "open configuration" in April 2012 and September 2013, while it was test-fired from hermetically sealed canisters mounted on transport-cum-tilting launcher trucks in January 2015 and December 2016.

On Thursday, in its first pre-induction trial conducted by the SFC, the 17-metre Agni-V was launched from a canister atop the road-mobile launcher from the Dr Abdul Kalam Island off the Odisha coast at 9.53 am. The three-stage missile zoomed to a height of over 600-km in its parabolic trajectory and then splashed down around 4,900-km away towards Australia in the Indian Ocean barely 19 minutes later.

"The missile's flight performance was tracked and monitored by radars, range stations and tracking systems all through the mission. All mission objectives were successfully met. This successful test of Agni-V reaffirms the country's indigenous missile capabilities and further strengthens our credible deterrence," said a defence ministry official.

The missile's canister-launch version makes it deadlier because it gives the armed forces the requisite operational flexibility to swiftly transport and fire the missile from anywhere they want. "Since the missile is already mated with its nuclear warhead before being sealed in the canister, it drastically cuts down the response or reaction time for a retaliatory strike...only the authorized electronic codes have to be fed to unlock and prime it for launch," said a source.



Though the DRDO has often proclaimed it can develop missiles with strike ranges of 10,000-km to match the Chinese DF-31A (11,200-km) and DF-41 (14,500-km) missiles, the Indian defence establishment believes that Agni-V is sufficient to take care of existing threat perceptions.


There is, however, interest in the ongoing DRDO work on developing "manoeuvring warheads or intelligent re-entry vehicles" to defeat enemy ballistic missile defence systems, as well as MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) for the Agni missiles. A MIRV payload basically means a single missile is capable of carrying several nuclear warheads, each programmed to hit different targets.
Top Comment
Proud moment for all Indians. With AGNI-V, the ICBM in its arsenal India cam boost of its technological might & joins the elite club. Next in store AGNI-VI which will have a range more than 8500 kms.
Hirak Dutta