NEW DELHI: The Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) on Friday successfully conducted flight-trials of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Launched Precision Guided Missile (ULPGM)-V3.
The success is seen as a major boost to India’s defence capabilities. According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the tested missile is an enhanced version of the ULPGM-V2, which had been developed and delivered by DRDO earlier. The present trials were carried out in the anti-armour configuration at the National Open Area Range (NOAR) in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh.
The MoD, in its statement, said, “The ULPGM-V3 is equipped with a high-definition dual-channel seeker that can strike a wide variety of targets. It can be fired in plain and high-altitude areas. It has day-and-night capability and a two-way data link to support post-launch target/aim-point update.”
“The missile is equipped with three modular warhead options: anti-armour to destroy modern age armoured vehicles equipped with Rolled Homogeneous Armour (RHA) with Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA); penetration-cum-blast warhead with anti-bunker application; and pre-fragmentation warhead with a high lethality zone,” the ministry added.
The missile is jointly developed by DRDO laboratories including Research Centre Imarat, Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory, High Energy Materials Research Laboratory, Integrated Test Range, and Defence Electronics Research Laboratory.
The missile was released from a UAV indigenously developed by an Indian start-up, Newspace Research Technologies, Bengaluru. DRDO is actively pursuing the integration of ULPGM weapons with long-range and high-endurance UAVs from several other Indian companies. Development-cum-Production Partners (DcPPs), Adani Defence and Bharat Dynamics Limited, Hyderabad, and 30 MSMEs/start-ups contributed to making this project a grand success.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated DRDO and the other stakeholders on the development and successful trials of the ULPGM-V3 system. He termed the success as “proof that the Indian industry is now ready to absorb and produce critical defence technologies.”
Secretary, Department of Defence R&D and Chairman DRDO, Dr Samir V Kamat, termed the development of such a weapon as “the need of the hour”, while congratulating everyone involved.