BHUBANESWAR: India’s first indigenous air-to-air missile Astra cleared its maiden user trial on Tuesday. The missile fired from a combat aircraft intercepted a live aerial target off Odisha coast.
Developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the all-weather beyond visual range missile was fired from Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft that took off from Kalaikunda air force base in West Bengal. Defence sources said the missile was launched incomplete Sukhoi-30 MKI flight envelope and destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle meeting all mission objectives as expected.
“The missile was fired from the aircraft as a part of user trials. The live aerial target was engaged accurately demonstrating the capability of first indigenous air-to-air missile. The mission profile was executed in a textbook manner,” Ministry of Defence (MoD) stated in a release. Various radars, electro-optical tracking system and sensors tracked the missile and confirmed its engagement with target. All the sub-systems including the indigenous radio frequency seeker performed accurately.
Though user trial of a missile is conducted after its induction in the armed forces, there was no word from the Ministry whether Astra has been inducted in the Indian Air Force.
India is one among the four-Nation elite club which has fast-moving air-to-air missiles in their arsenal. Others in the club include USA, Russia, France and Israel. “A couple of more user trials of the futuristic missile is expected this week,” sources informed.
Astra will not only be the mainstay of territorial air defence in its category, but the state-of-the-art technologies developed under the Astra project will also be the building blocks for other variants of air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.
The single-stage and solid propelled missile are one of the smallest missiles developed by DRDO. The 3.8 metre-long missile has a diameter of 178 mm with an overall launch weight of 154 kg. It can carry about 15 kg of the high-explosive warhead.
Astra has a strike range of 20 km to 80 km in tail-chase and head-on mode respectively. Entirely a complex missile it can intercept fast-moving aerial targets at supersonic speeds of Mach 1.2 to 1.4.
Meanwhile, DRDO is working on Mark-II version of Astra missile which will have longer strike range and state-of-the-art ring laser gyro-based high accuracy inertial navigation system. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has congratulated DRDO and Air Force teams for the successful test.
