India’s Air Defence Shield Also Includes Short-range Missiles; Navy Gets More Muscle

Short-range missiles have lately been successfully tested thanks to India’s attempts to improve the nation’s missile defence system.

Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and the Navy successfully completed flight testing of the Vertical Launch Short Range Surface to Air Missile on June 24 at the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur off the coast of Odisha.

According to the MoD, it is a ship-borne weapons system designed to eliminate close-range aircraft threats, such as targets that skim the surface of the ocean.

On June 15, the Prithvi-II short-range ballistic missile was successfully launched for training purposes.

The Prithvi-II system “is a proven system and is capable of attacking targets with a very high degree of precision,” according to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

All of the missile’s operational and technical parameters were successfully validated by the launch of the user training mission.

“With time, we were able to develop sophisticated self-produced offensive and defence missile systems. According to Lt-Gen (retd) VK Chaturvedi, a defence analyst, “the nation’s missile technology has developed the capacity of the reliable pin-pointed hit on enemy’s critical targets.”

The MoD published three lists of 310 pieces of military hardware between August 2020 and April 2022, including a variety of missile types that will be gradually built domestically.

The government has also set a goal of reaching $5 billion in defence exports by 2024.

In the process, the Philippines awarded India a contract for three batteries of the BrahMos cruise missile valued at $374.96 million (about Rs 2,700 crore).