Country entered elite club
The year witnessed India surging ahead on the defence front and emerging as the new regional super power. The successful testfiring of the Agni-5 intercontinental ballistic missile and development of modern support systems for soldiers gave India a definitive advantage over other major developing nations.
Hyderabad played a pivotal role in the development of the missile system and capacity-building in new strategic areas. The induction of a submarine, static sensor and an inshore patrol vessel at Visakhapatnam and a Coast Guard station at Krishnapatnam boosted the defence capabilities on the marine side.
Various DRDO labs in Hyderabad provided backbone technology for the suc- cess of the missile programme. Agni-5, launched on April 19, pushed India to the elite club of nations possessing long-range ballistic missile. The success achieved through Agni-5 propelled DRDO to concentrate more on the Agni series, resulting in the flight test of 4,000 km range Agni-4 missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
All the missiles in the Agni series were successfully flight-tested. India exhibited its missile prowess through 350-km range surface-to-surface missile Prithvi-2. The Dhanush missile was fired from a naval ship, giving the Navy an upper hand in the region. Earlier, BrahMos Block-3 version was flight-tested with a speed almost three times that of sound.
The year registered the development of a two-layer ballistic missile defence capability against missiles with ranges up to 2,000-km class. Both the exo and endo atmospheric interception were demonstrated with great precision.
The country’s air defence system got a boost with the induction of medium range, multi-target Akash missiles. DRDO also scored a point with the anti-missile tank Nag.