India prepares for interceptor missile test

New Delhi - India planned to test an interceptor missile in the eastern state of Orissa, where at least 3,000 people living in villages near a test range had been shifted to temporary camps, news reports said Sunday. The indigenously developed Advanced Air Defense missile was to be fired from an offshore test range, the IANS and PTI news agencies reported, quoting defense sources.

Range integration work for the proposed trial had been completed and the test could be conducted Sunday, the sources said.

The missile is part of the multi-layer ballistic missile defense system that India has been developing for over a decade.

It is capable of destroying any hostile ballistic missile at a low-altitude trajectory, PTI quoted defence sources as saying.

The target, a version of the short range surface-to-surface ballistic missile Prithvi, would be fired from a mobile launcher at a test range on the coast of Balasore district.

Soon after, the interceptor missile, using a radio frequency seeker, would be launched from Wheeler Island in the Bay of Bengal about 70 kilometers away, the sources said.

The missile was expected to intercept and destroy the target at low-altitude over the Bay of Bengal.

"Officials have shifted about 3,000 people living within a 2-kilometer radius of the Chandipur test range to temporary camps," Balasore district police official Rajesh Kumar was quoted as saying by IANS.

The 7-meter interceptor is a single stage, rocket-propelled guided missile. It has a secure data link for interception, independent tracking and homing capabilities and radars, the sources said.

Nuclear-capable South Asian neighbors India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars, routinely engage in tit-for-tat missile tests. They have an agreement under which prior notice is given to about such tests or other defense exercises.

Pakistan test-fired naval missiles and torpedoes in the Arabian Sea on Friday.

The tests came around a month after India fired its nuclear-capable surface-to-surface Agni-III missile.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/313993,india-prepares-for-interceptor-missile-test.html.