India test fires Agni III missile

Heads up:

Agni-III flight test soon

Hopefully they've fixed whatever they messed up the first time

Lets hope this time they get it right.

If test is successful then India might have something to strike deep in china in case of war which i doubt will happen ever.

This if successful will give India the ability to target the entire chinese coastline with a substantial nuclear payload.
Uptill now this was only possible with lesser capable Agni IRBMs with compromised(lighter payloads).

Or the usa with a single 300kt warhead (range around 12000km @ 500kg).


just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons ofc

I don't think it will have range more than 3000Km. Max can be 4-5000.

Regards,
Alpesh

The projected range with a 1.5 ton load is ~5000km`s - reduce the load and you can increase the range

heres a `what if` - what if they fit a russain maneuvering RV to it? Thats entry phase maneuvering of course.

The Agani Series RV's are already of the manuvering kind:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Its not MIRV-ed though

New reports put the date at 11th April.
Its actually quite hilarious now; with guidelines in place India has to inform Pakistan all ballistic launches in advance.
If Pakistan knows then all parties who really NEED to know, would know.
So its actually very public now!

I guess that's why they've started leaking to news networks days before the launch itself!

A detailed consolidation of the Agni program here

Notably the Agni-III missile is a shorter and stubbier frame in order to suit future SLBM designs.

Daedalus3,

Any news on agni 3? when its going to be tested?

Supposedly today!

Just checking all the local new networks for anything..

Agni-III ballistic missile test fired



Balasore, April 12 (PTI): India today test fired its nuclear capable 3,000 km intermediate range ballistic missile Agni-III from the Interim Test Range (ITR) at the Wheeler's Island in the Bay of Bengal off the Orissa coast.

The indigenously developed surface-to-surface missile, blasted off at 10.52 am from a fixed platform with the help of an auto launcher in the launch complex-4 of the ITR, located about 72 km from here, defence sources said.

The sleek missile vertically roared into the clear sky leaving behind a thick column of white and yellow smoke, eyewitness accounts said.

It was not immediately known whether the trial was successful or not.

Fitted with an on-board computer, the missile was designed to go up to a distance of 90 km vertically crossing the atmosphere and re-enter into the earth targetting the predetermined impact point near Car Nicobar Island, the sources said.

If successfully test-fired, Agni-III will become the missile with the longest reach in South Asia and more powerful than any missile in Pakistan's arsenal.

However, China has missiles with a longer reach than Agni-III.

Three sophisticated radars, six electro-optical tracking systems and three telemetric data stations, located in the mainland were engaged to monitor the entire trajectory of the missile.

With an improved guidance system, this latest variant of the Agni series of missiles, Agni-III had a diameter of 1.8 metres and length of 16 metres.

The missile, which weighed about 48 tonnes, was meant to support a wide range of warhead configurations with a total payload ranging between 600 kg and 1.8 tonne and featured decoys and other anti-ballistic counter measures, the sources said.

This is Agni-III's second trial, the earlier experiment on July 9, 2006 having gone awry.

DRDO scientists said the fault detected in the first test trial of the Agni-III missile had been addressed.

This came 38minutes ago but the results have not been released, it is most probably sucessful



[edit on 12-4-2007 by chinawhite]

Yep its official.. the test was a success:

Official MoD press release

Other local News Reports:

www.ibnlive.com...
www.zeenews.com...
www.outlookindia.com...
timesofindia.indiatimes.com...
www.hindu.com...

International Reactions:

www.iht.com...
www.news.com.au...

Chinese media Reactions:

www.chinapost.com.tw...
english.people.com.cn...

A lot of happy people in India right now..

The first image of the launch:

Courtesy BRF


[edit on 12-4-2007 by Daedalus3]

Originally posted by Daedalus3


A lot of happy people in India right now..


[edit on 12-4-2007 by Daedalus3]

===========================================
A lot of sad people in China right now...
Do you mean that?
Would be a good post without this line.

^^



Good one..

But I guess there were a lot of sad people in India, when China pointed nukes at India and India didn't have the means to fight back;
When China clandestinely passed on nuclear tech to Pakistan in order to achieve N-encirclement of India.

These people aren't happy because they can now kill chinese..
They are happy beacuse their country has now more or less ensured a nuclear deterrence from China.
They are happy that their country is capable of pulling something of like that w/o pussy-footing under someone else's nuclear umbrella.
Self sufficiency is a big thing you know..
Ask a paraplegic.. really..

Originally posted by Daedalus3
^^

Good one..

But I guess there were a lot of sad people in India, when China pointed nukes at India and India didn't have the means to fight back;
When China clandestinely passed on nuclear tech to Pakistan in order to achieve N-encirclement of India.

These people aren't happy because they can now kill chinese..
They are happy beacuse their country has now more or less ensured a nuclear deterrence from China.
They are happy that their country is capable of pulling something of like that w/o pussy-footing under someone else's nuclear umbrella.
Self sufficiency is a big thing you know..
Ask a paraplegic.. really..

Thanks your reply.
These people aren't happy because they have to build more N-warhead..
They are happy because their county has now less than enough ensured deterences agains China..
.
.
.
.
If a racing has to be raised, better out of where 2.3b lived.

Yes..
Now we can all sleep easy esp since both have a no-first-use- policy..
peace..

A twist in the Agni III tale:
content.msn.co.in...

Originally posted by Daedalus3
when China pointed nukes at India and India didn't have the means to fight back

China never actually pointed any nuclear missiles at India. Simple reason, nuclear weapons were always seen as paper tigers to the Chinese leadership and only small amounts of missiles were procured to counter the Russians or Americans. In fact, India in a few years could have more nuclear weapons than china

Originally posted by chinawhite
China never actually pointed any nuclear missiles at India.

I would not believe that easily. China's aggressive policy towards India and its encirclement(military/nuclear infusion to Pakistan) would logically dictate that China had a nuclear posture towards India. Although I do tend to agree thatChina's initial IRBM/MRBM was mostly USSR centric.
However one must realise that the real animosity towards the USSR begin post 1962 Indo-China war and peaked at the Ussuri river conflict in 1969.

In fact, India in a few years could have more nuclear weapons than china

China drastically reducing its stockpile?

[edit on 15-4-2007 by Daedalus3]

After Agni III next up is an ICBM and an SLBM..

timesofindia.indiatimes.com...

India's Secret ICBM ambitions

[edit on 17-4-2007 by Daedalus3]