The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Trials of long-range SAMs by year-end

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 15, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Trials of long-range SAMs by year-end

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: Indian defence scientists have embarked on developing long-range (100 km) surface to air missiles (SAMs), the flight trials of which are expected to begin by the year-end.

The missiles with multi-platform systems can be launched from ship and ground. The propulsion, control guidance and other systems for the "hit-to-kill" missiles were being built, according to V.K.Saraswat, Director, Research Centre Imarat, a DRDO institution.

He told reporters here on Wednesday that the development phase of long- range SAMs was expected to be over in two to three years. Feasibility studies were also on for developing short-range helicopter-launch anti-ship missiles.

At present in the SAM class of missile, India has medium range Akash, which has a range of about 27 km.

Apart from SAMs, a long-range Air Defence System was also being developed. Once deployed, the radars of such a system would have multiple target tracking capacity and could simultaneously track 200 aircraft up to a distance of 400 km.

Predicting that future wars would be network-centric and not platform-centric, he said the coordination of all platforms in a network would be required. India had an excellent command, control and communication network which was totally encrypted and secure.

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