India successfully carries out maiden test of long range hypersonic missile

The hypersonic missile with a range of over 1500 kms is designed to carry various payloads and is meant all three services

India on Sunday (November 17, 2024) announced the successful flight test of its maiden long-range hypersonic missile with a range of 1500km. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted the flight test late on Saturday from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island, off Odisha coast, the latest in a series of missile tests in the last two months.

“The missile is designed to carry various payloads for ranges greater than 1500km for all the services of Indian armed forces,” DRDO said in a statement. “The missile was tracked by various range systems, deployed in multiple domains. The flight data obtained from down range ship stations confirmed the successful terminal maneuvers and impact with high degree of accuracy.”

Also Read: India test-fires Agni-V ballistic missile with multiple warhead technology under Mission Divyastra

Congratulating DRDO on the achievement, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on social media ‘X’, “India has achieved a major milestone by successfully conducting flight trial of long range hypersonic missile... This is a historic moment and this significant achievement has put our country in the group of select nations having capabilities of such critical and advanced military technologies.”

This missile has been indigenously developed by the laboratories of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Missile complex, Hyderabad along with various other DRDO laboratories and industry partners, DRDO stated.

Hypersonic weapons are manoeuvrable weapons that can fly at speeds of at least Mach 5, five times the speed of sound. The speed of sound is Mach 1, and speeds above Mach and Mach 5 are supersonic and speeds above Mach 5 are hypersonic. Ballistic missiles, though travel much faster, follow a fixed trajectory and travel outside the atmosphere to re-enter only near impact. On the contrary, hypersonic weapons travel within the atmosphere and can manoeuvre midway which combined with their high speeds makes their detection and interception extremely difficult. This means that radars and air defences cannot detect them till they are very close and little time to react.

An October 2021 memo of the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), ‘Hypersonic Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress’ had noted that although the U.S. , Russia, and China possess the most advanced hypersonic weapons programs, a number of other countries - including Australia, India, France, Germany, and Japan - are also developing hypersonic weapons technology.

DRDO has been pursuing hypersonic cruise miaaile technologies for sometime as part of its Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) programme and successfully tested a Mach 6 scramjet in June 2019 and September 2020. This test demonstrated the scramjet engine technology, a major breakthrough. In a scramjet engine, air goes inside the engine at supersonic speed and comes out at hyper sonic speeds.

DRDO had said after the HSTDV test in 2020 that many critical technologies such as aerodynamic configuration for hypersonic manoeuvers, use of scramjet propulsion for ignition and sustained combustion at hypersonic flow, thermo-structural characterization of high temperature materials, separation mechanism at hypersonic velocities have been validated.

In addition, a hypersonic version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, a joint development of India and Russia, is also under development.

Published - November 17, 2024 09:36 am IST