March 17, 200917 yr From Jane's Indian BMD shield could be in service by 2011 By Rahul Bedi 17 March 2009 A third successful test-firing of India's new ballistic missile defence (BMD) system in early March has given Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) officials the confidence to claim that the system will offer an initial operating capability by 2011. They told Jane's that the BMD system would be declared operational after six more test-firings, including an integrated trial in which two interceptors will be launched at an incoming ballistic missile: one to destroy it at an altitude of 40 km and the other to annihilate falling debris at a height of 15 km. Integrated trials will take place by the end of this year, with the remaining tests completed 12 months later, the DRDO declared. Thereafter, it will be the government's decision to induct the system as a deterrent against incoming, short-range ballistic missiles over a 200 km2 area, DRDO's chief missile scientist Dr Vijay Kumar Saraswat stated. Dr Saraswat said that during the latest trial on 6 March, a modified Prithvi Air Defence II (PAD II) two-stage hypersonic interceptor ballistic missile, fired from a mobile launcher at the integrated range on Wheeler Island, had intercepted and shot down a target missile at a height of 75 km within three minutes of being fired. The incoming target, a nuclear-capable Dhanush (Bow) navalised version of the surface-to-surface Prithvi (Earth), was fired from a warship in the Bay of Bengal simulating the trajectory of neighbouring nuclear rival Pakistan's strategic Ghauri missile with a 1,500 km strike.
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