Missile will ramp up naval warship potency

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 27

The long-range surface-to-air missile that has been successfully tested against a flying target from an Israeli warship will be the main stay of the Navy in the year to come.

The missile has a range of 80 km and height ceiling of 16 km. It will have the ability to simultaneously engage 12 targets with 24 missiles.

The DRDO is tasked with producing the propulsion rocket system, thrust vector system and certain other components.

The Israel Aerospace Industry (IAI) has built the seeker and the last stage avionics.

Once the missile is okayed, frontline Indian warships will carry it. Fifteen warships, including the Vikramaditya and under-construction aircraft carrier Vikrant will have these. It’s easier to fit the missile on under-construction ships. Fitting it onto the existing platforms like the Vikramaditya will be a complex procedure and it will entail some cutting through the deck, a period of eight to nine months will be needed to do this.

The test was to launch the missile from a moving warship and verify its ability to identify and kill the target mid-air while even changing course mid-flight. The missile costs Rs 2,606 crore – approximately $450 billion.

This will be a generational shift over the in-use Barak 1 missile system which has been fitted on a host of naval ships, including aircraft carrier INS Viraat. The new missile guarantees protection to a ship from an aircraft or even a sea-skimming cruise missile.

Only a few missile systems offer protection to ships against aircraft and very few can stop sea-skimming cruise missiles. A sea-skimming missile is difficult to detect.