Indian Army Test-Fires Prithvi II Missile

India on Thursday test-fired its indigenously developed nuclear-capable Prithvi-II ballistic missile from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Orissa as part of the user trial by the Army.

"The missile mounted on a mobile launcher was test-fired from the launch complex-3 in the ITR at around 0905 hours", defence officials said on Thursday.

With a maximum striking range of 350 km, the missile is capable of carrying a pay-load of 500-1000 kg warhead.

"Prithvi-II missile had proved its robustness and accuracy during many trials earlier," an official of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said. "Taken from routine production lot during earlier users trials by the Army, the missile had achieved single digit accuracy reaching close to zero circular error probability (CEP)," they said.

The missile, which has features to deceive any anti ballistic missiles, had demonstrated flight duration of 483 seconds reaching a peak altitude of 43.5 km in 2008 users trial.

Similarly, as a part of the operational exercises by Armed forces, two Prithvi-II missiles, aimed at two different targets at 350 km from launch point of ITR, at Chandipur were successfully launched within minutes of each other on 12th October 2009 and all the mission objectives were met.

The sleek missile once again proved its accuracy when the user, tried it in a salvo mode on 27th March and 18th June 2010 from Chandipur.

It was the fourth successful Prithvi-II flight within a period of eight months.

The test firing of the surface-to-surface missile, which has already been inducted into Indian armed forces, was a routine trial conducted by the personnel of "strategic force command" (SFC), defence officials said.

"The trial was conducted in the presence of senior officials as part of routine training exercises," they said.

'Prithvi', the first ballistic missile developed under the country's prestigious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), is propelled by liquid propulsion twin engine.

With a length of nine meter and one meter diameter, Prithvi-II uses an advanced inertial navigation system with manoeuvring trajectory.

"The entire trajectory of today's trial was tracked by a battery of sophisticated radars, electro-optic telemetry stations and ships launched in the down range impact point area in the Bay of Bengal for the post-launch analysis", the officials said.