New Delhi could have anti-missile shield by 2014

According to a new Pentagon report on China’s military, Beijing has paid India a sort of compliment. The People’s Liberation Army now targets India with its best and latest nuclear-tipped missiles, the solid-fuel Dongfeng-21 (NATO designation: CSS-5) medium range ballistic missile (IRBM), tipped with a 250-kiloton nuclear warhead that would flatten a large part of Delhi. Until now, India had been considered deserving only of China’s oldest and most decrepit missile, the primitive, liquid-fuelled Dongfeng-3 (NATO designation CSS-2).

India’s defence establishment is taking this new threat seriously, as also that posed by Pakistan’s nuclear-tipped MRBMs — like the Ghauri-2 and the Shaheen-2 — which can strike targets 2300 kilometres away. In an exclusive interview with Business Standard, the Defence R&D Organisation’s chief missile scientist has announced that, within three years, India will have a fully deployed missile-defence shield to safeguard a city like New Delhi from missile-borne nuclear attack.

Termed an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) shield, this complex system has been in the making since 1996. The DRDO is satisfied with the system’s ability to detect and track an incoming missile, and then launch an interceptor missile to destroy it while it is still in space (exo-atmospheric interception). If that misses, there is a second interceptor that homes in on the enemy missile while it is in the upper atmosphere (endo-atmospheric interception). In internationally watched tests, these interceptors have been tested thrice each.

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