Prime Minister hails India's defence programme

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the occasion of DRDO award function while congratulating the scientists and engineers on Agni III test, said, “The successful demonstration of our anti-ballistic and long-range strategic missile capabilities indicates our growing technological strength. I would particularly like to congratulate our scientists and engineers on the recent successful launch of the Agni III missile.

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I understand that all the design parameters have been validated.”

With a hope to focus on several state-of-the-art technologies such as Hypersonic Propulsion, Unmanned Air, Land and Underwater Vehicles, Robotics, Stealth, Smart Materials, Micro and Nano Technologies, as well as war fighter support from DRDO, he hailed the contribution of DRDO to have enhanced India's defence preparedness and self-reliance.

While Agni Programme Director, Avinash Chander said that design work for Agni V has been started which will be of 5,000 km range and will be last in the series of Agni. Moreover, DRDO will deliver the missile in two years of time.

Presently India's strategic mission is still devoid of ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) and SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles) and till now no major power has shown its pleasure on India having ICBM and SLBM in future.

But the determination shown by the defence scientist of possessing such interest is commendable even uncertainty looms over the finalisation of Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Reportedly, India is ready to beam into the exclusive club of countries by 2010-2011 by possessing ICBMs and SLBMs as well as BMD (Ballistic Missile Defence) capabilities.

As currently only US, Russia and China acquired the highest place in having developed all the three capabilities including ICBM, SLBM and BMD.

ICBMs are ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear weapon with a range of more than 5,000 km (AGNI V); SLBMs are ballistic missile that can be launched from submarines while BMD can be used as defence against ballistic missile. But still India's Agni will have the range incomparable to China's missiles with ranges up to 10,000 km.