Army to acquire man-portable anti-aircraft missiles

The Army is acquiring new-generation very short-range man-portable anti-aircraft missiles for meeting its requirements to protect its assets from hostile aerial platforms flying at low level. These provide crucial air defence cover to frontline troops in the field or are used as the last-ditch effort to neutralise incoming aircraft that may have penetrated into the air defence network.

Plans have been drawn to procure 48 launchers of Very Short Range Air Defence System (VSHORADS), along with 85 missiles and 48 night vision sights.

"To meet the evolving dynamic air threat, Army Air Defence requires VSHORADS man-portable missile system for effective terminal and point defence. These VSHORADS, based on infra-red Homing (IR) technology, are effective fire-and-forget type of missile systems," a request for proposal (RFP) issued by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on May 3 states.

The system should comprise an IR homing missile coupled to a manportable launching mechanism and suitable sighting system to engage targets, including fighters, transport aircraft, helicopters and unmanned aerial systems, both by day and night.

According to requirements defined by the Army, the missile should have an effective range of 6,000 meters or more, minimum engagement radius being 500 meters and ability to engage targets approaching at speeds of 400 meters per second or more.

The missile systems will be used by all three services on land and ship-based platforms as terminal and point defence system against all types of aerial threats in manportable single launcher configuration as well as for para-dropped operations.

These will be employed across all terrains including high-altitude areas, plains, deserts, coastal areas and the maritime domain in temperatures ranging from minus 30 degrees Celsius to 50 degrees Celsius.

At present, the Russian-origin Igla shoulder fired missile, along with a small number of its more advanced variant, Igla-S, is used by the services to provide point air defence cover against low-flying aircraft. About 3,000 launchers are estimated to be in service. It replaced the earlier SA-7 that was employed for similar purposes.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is also developing VSHORADS, which also has a man-portable version. The system is under final stages of evaluation. In February 2025, three successive flight-trials of VSHORADS in the final deployment configuration were conducted against low-altitude, high-speed targets simulating hostile UAVs with low thermal signatures. For the first time, the trials included two field operators who carried out weapon readiness, target acquisition and missile firing.

The projected requirement for DRDO's system, according to reports, is 500 launchers and 3,000 missiles for the Indian Army and 300 launchers and 1,800 missiles for the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy.