In view of terrorist threats, India has planned to develop missile shield in major cities. Talks are afoot for getting technological support from Israel which has developed Iron Dome Shield – a protection cover from short-range missile attacks from Gaza and West Bank.

The Interceptor Missile AAD launched by the Scientists of Defence Research and Development Organisation from Wheeler’s Island in Odisha on Friday successfully destroyed the incoming Ballistic Missile at an altitude of 15 Kms. The interception took place at 12.52hrs. The target missile, a modified version of Prithvi, mimicking the enemy’s ballistic missile, was launched from Launch Complex III, Chandipur. Long Range Radar and MFC Radar located far away could detect the Missile from take-off and tracked it through its entire path. The total trajectory of the incoming Missile was continuously estimated by the guidance computer and subsequently the AAD Missile was launched at an appropriate time to counter and kill the ballistic missile.

'At around 1252 hours, the interceptor hit the target missile successfully at an altitude of 14.5 kilometres,' DRDO spokesman Ravi Kumar Gupta said.

He said a simulated test was also done on Friday to check the system and it was also successful.

In Friday's test, the hostile missile was simulated to be a ballistic missile fired from the range of 1,500 kms, he said.

The Ring Laser Gyro based Navigation System in Target, Fibre Optic Gyro based INS in Interceptor, Onboard computers, Guidance systems, Actuation Systems and the critical RF Seekers used for the terminal phase have performed excellently. The AAD Missile system initially guided by Inertial Navigation system was continuously getting update of the target position by the Radar through a data link. The Radio Frequency (RF) seeker tracked the Missile and Onboard computer guided the Missile towards the Target Missile and hit the target. The Radio Proximity Fuse (RPF) exploded the warhead thereby destroying the target missile completely.

In this mission, a special feature of intercepting multiple target with multiple interceptor was demonstrated successfully. An electronic target with a range of 1500 km was launched and the Radars picked up the target missile, tracked the target missile subsequently & launched an electronic interceptor missile. This electronic interceptor missile destroyed the electronic target missile at an altitude of 120 km. All the four missiles were tracked by the Radars and all the guidance and launch computers operated in full operational mode for handling multiple targets with multiple interceptor. All the four missiles were in the sky simultaneously and both the interceptions took place near simultaneously.

India is working towards development of a multi-layer Ballistic Missile Defence system.

'We are ready to deploy the system in the NCR region by 2014,' DRDO's scientist and Director of the Missile Defence Programme Avinash Chander said.

The 'hostile' ballistic missile, a modified surface- to-surface 'Prithvi', mimicking an incoming enemy weapon, first lifted off from a mobile launcher at around 12.52 hours from the launch complex-3 of Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur-on-Sea, about 15 kms from Balasore.

This has proved the capability of DRDO to handle multiple targets with multiple interceptors simultaneously. The complete Radar Systems, Communication Networks, Launch Computers, Target update Systems and state of the art Avionics have been completely proven in this Mission.

The DRDO chief V K Saraswat said the missile shield has been successfully tested nine times and it was in a very mature stage.

'I think this would be ready for deployment by the 2013- 14 timeframe,' he said.

The missile defence shield is planned to be a two-tiered system in which the interceptor missiles can destroy their target vehicles in both outside and inside the atmosphere.