Ganesh Kendale
NEW DELHI: In a significant development amid the frenetic race among China, Russia and the US to develop and deploy hypersonic weapons, India has tested its first long-range missile that is manoeuvrable mid-flight and flies over five times the speed of sound to evade enemy missile defence systems.
The hypersonic missile, designed to carry various payloads for ranges over 1,500km, was “successfully flight-tested” from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island off the coast of Odisha at 6.55pm on Saturday, a defence ministry official said.
The missile, which flew at Mach 6 speed, was tracked by various range systems deployed in multiple domains. “The flight data obtained from down range ship stations confirmed the successful terminal manoeuvres and impact with high degree of accuracy,” the official added.
Describing it as “a historic moment and stupendous achievement”, defence minister Rajnath Singh said the flight-trial has propelled India into a group of select nations that has the capability to develop such “critical and advanced military technologies”.
Former DRDO chairman G Satheesh Reddy told TOI the missile is “a gamechanger” with multiple applications in Army, Navy and IAF. “A missile of this range with hypersonic velocities will provide a decisive edge to India.”
The missile, with the speed of a ballistic missile as well as the manoeuvring capability of a cruise missile, of course, will have to be fine-tuned with several tests over the next few years before it is ready for production and deployment. The naval version will be geared towards destroying enemy warships at long ranges with pinpoint precision, an official said.
With their capability to defeat existing missile and air defence systems due to super-fast speeds, high-manoeuvrability and low altitudes of flight, hypersonic weapons have become a major focus area for major military powers. The two main types of hypersonic weapons are cruise missiles that are powered by air-breathing engines or “scramjets” during their entire flight and “glide vehicles” that are launched atop ballistic missiles before gliding to their targets at speeds over Mach 5.
China and Russia are ahead of the US in designing aerodynamically manoeuvrable hypersonic weapons for use with nuclear warheads. In July 2021, for instance, China’s test of a nuclear-capable missile carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle and warhead had sent shockwaves around the globe.
In June 2019, DRDO for the first time tested a hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle (HSTDV), which was to serve as a crucial building block in the development of long-range hypersonic weapons. But the flight trial failed.
A second test in September 2020 was successful to the extent that the scramjet-powered “cruise vehicle” or HSTDV flew for 22-23 seconds at Mach 6 speed after separation from the “launch vehicle” of solid rocket motor of an Agni-I ballistic missile at 30km altitude. While another HSTDV test was conducted in Jan last year, trials of a much longer duration are needed on this front, as reported by TOI earlier.
Parallelly, there was a plan to develop a hypersonic version of the already-inducted conventional (non-nuclear) ramjet-powered BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, which fly at Mach 2.8 speed with a 450-km strike range, developed with Russia. But this will be an expensive proposition and is not on the cards at present, an official said.
