Our Bureau
New Delhi
India is taking huge leaps in strengthening the country’s defensive prowess. With the ambitious project, ‘Mission Sudarshan Chakra’ (MSC), announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country is aiming to provide security cover to strategic as well as vital civilian areas all across the nation till 2035.
One of the first major steps in the direction of MSC, is Project Kusha and it has been announced that India will begin testing its new interceptor missiles for an indigenous air and missile defensive shield under the project’s banner next year. The plan for next year is to test the M1 missile, which is a missile that is equipped with an interception range of 150 kms against incoming enemy aircraft, stealth fighters, cruise missiles, drones and precision-guided munitions.
Then the next year in 2027, M2 missile will be tested which has an interception range of 250 kms and after that in 2028, M3 missile with an interception range of 350 kms will be tested for the missile-based layered defence system being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
As per some sources, the Defence ministry aims to test all these three long-range surface-to-air missiles (LR-SAMs)) missiles under Project Kusha till the year 2028. This will then hopefully mark a path for them to be inducted by the year 2030.
This fully automated LR-SAM defence system that India plans to test out next year rivals the expensive S-400 defence system of Russian origin which is an important part of the defensive arsenal of the IAF. The LR-SAM will also be a very significant part of the MSC plan that aims to build a multi-layered integrated air and missile defence shield around key locations kind of similar to the ‘Golden Dome’ missile initiative of the United States.
