In a significant step towards developing a strong defence system, India has taken a big step towards developing a Ballistic Missile Defence System. The beginning of this has been done by testing an interceptor missile against an incoming enemy missile over the Bay of Bengal. The fledging two tier Ballistic Missile Defence System being developed by Defence Research and Development Organization.
This system is capable of tracking and destroying hostile missiles both inside and outside the earth’s atmosphere. India rides new high with successfully conducting a test of supersonic interceptor missile of the coast of Orissa on 6th December 2007. As a pant of exercise, two missiles were test fired against each other from two different missile test ranges located in Orissa. In test, one missile was assumed as attacker and other as defender.
However, the missile shield will have highly sensitive radars to track incoming missiles and an interceptor that can destroy it. The guidance system in the shield would ensure that the two missiles collide within a matter of seconds, there by saving vital targets from destruction.
The first test of the Ballistic Missile Defence System was done in November 2006 when an exo-atmosphere hypersonic interceptor successfully destroyed an incoming prithvi missile at an Israeli of around 40-50 kilometer demonstrating a capability akin to the Israeli Arrow-2 Ballistic Missile Defence System. The second lest in December 2007 successfully took on the enemy missile at a 15 kilometer altitude, on the lines of American patriot.
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The Defense Research and Development organization has planned to develop Ballistic Missile Defence System in two phases. In phase- I, a Ballistic Missile Defence System capable of taking on 2000 km class targets is being developed. While the phase-II will be geared towards tackling threats from missile upto 5000 km. DRDO has pointed out that, the Ballistic Missile Defence System of phase-I should be ready for deployment by 2011. When this will happen, India will gatecrash into a very exclusive club of countries like USA, Russia and Israel.
Ballistic Missile Defence capabilities are incredibly complex and expensive. DRDO has stated that its missile system is comparable to the Israeli Arrow system and the American Patriot system. DRDO expects ballistic missile shield to take care of threat from existing Chinese and Pakistani missiles. As Pakistan possesses missiles with ranges between 400 and 2000 km, while the Chinese arsenal varies from a range of 300 km to 2800 km.
The two tiered Ballistic Missile Defence System consists of he Prithvi Air Defence which will intercept missiles at exo-atmoshpheric attitudes of 50-80 km and Anti Air Defence missile for interception at endo-atmospheric altitudes of upto-30 kilometer. The deployed system would consist of many launch vehicles, Radars, Launch Control Centers and Mission Control Centers.
The Mission Control Centre is the software intensive system of the Ballistic Missile Defence. It receives information from various sources like Radars, Satellites etc, which is then processed by computers. Mission Control Centre is connected to all other elements of the system through a Wide Area Network. MCC performs target classification, target assignment and kill assessment.
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It also acts as a decision support system for the commander. It can also decide the number of interceptors required for the target.
As both China and Pakistan fielding a wide variety of nuclear capable ballistic missiles and therefore. Ballistic Missile Capabilities for India is a crucial Necessity. At the sometime, it must be remembered that a Ballistic Missile Defence System can be overwhelmed by a flurry of ballistic missiles but, it is quite vulnerable to cruise missile since they evade enemy radars by flying at low altitudes virtually hugging the terrain.