India on Monday tested its most formidable Agni-5 ballistic missile with a multiple-warhead capability for the first time over the Bay of Bengal, in a major boost for the country’s credible strategic deterrence especially against China.
The flight-test of the Agni-5 missile, which has a strike range of over 5,000-km, with MIRV (multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle) technology under ₹Mission Divyastra’ was announced by PM Narendra Modi on X. “Proud of our DRDO scientists’ Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle Technology,” he posted.
An MIRV payload basically means a single missile carrying several nuclear warheads, each programmed to be released at different speeds with different trajectories to hit different targets that can be hundreds of kilometers apart. All the Agni series of missiles inducted by the tri-service Strategic Forces Command (SFC) till now carry only a single warhead. DRDO has been working for several years for MIRVs and “manoeuvring warheads or intelligent re-entry vehicles” for the Agni missiles to defeat enemy ballistic missile defence systems and ensure effective retaliation to a first-strike by an adversary. MIRV missiles, incidentally, can also have decoys in addition to actual warheads to fool enemy defence systems.
The flight-test of the three-stage Agni-5 with the multiple re-entry vehicles, conducted from the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island off the Odisha coast on Monday, was tracked and monitored by various telemetry and radar stations. “The mission accomplished the designed parameters,” the DRDO said.
There was no official word on how many warheads were carried by the missile for the test. Sources, however, said the Agni-5 was tested with three warheads with a range reduced to around 3,500-km since it was the maiden MIRV flight. “This system is equipped with indigenous avionics systems and high accuracy sensor packages, which ensured the re-entry vehicles reached the target points within the desired accuracy. The capability is an enunciator of India’s growing prowess,” said a source.