BHUBANESWAR: Ahead of the crucial Malabar Naval Exercise that is set to take place next week, the Indian Navy on Friday successfully test-fired an Anti-Ship Missile (AShM) from its missile corvette INS Kora off the eastern coast.
Defence sources said the AShM homed in on the target ship destroying it with deadly accuracy at maximum range.
The test-firing conducted as part of a practice drill mimicking a war-like situation.
The missile launched in full operational configuration somewhere in the Bay of Bengal successfully hit the target, a decommissioned frigate.
The drill proved the warship’s combat readiness. INS Kora leads the Kora-class of corvettes in active service with the Indian Navy. It is equipped with 3M-24 AShMs as a primary weapon along with two Strela-2M anti-air missiles as defensive weapons.On October 23, in a similar exercise, the Navy had successfully flight tested another AShM from its missile corvette INS Prabal off the western coast.
The missile launched somewhere from the Arabian Sea successfully hit the target ship sinking it in the ocean. INS Prabal belongs to the Veer-class corvettes and it was sailing in the sea when the missile was launched.Sources said the Navy has significantly increased its deployment in the Indian Ocean region following the Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) over the recent stand-off with the Indian Army.
The AShM test-fired is a guided missile that is designed and developed for use against ships. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial guidance and active radar homing. Several other anti-ship missiles also use infrared homing to follow the heat that is emitted by a ship and the missiles can be guided by radio command all the way.
With Australia joining the Malabar exercise, it is for the first time that all the four-member countries of the quadrilateral coalition will be participating in the mega drill. The US and Japan are the other countries that will participate in the annual exercise to take place in two phases in the Bay of Bengal from November 3 to 6 and in Arabian Sea in mid November.