India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) announced on Saturday, May 9, that the country has successfully conducted a flight test of an advanced Agni ballistic missile featuring Multiple Independently Targeted Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
The missile was flight-tested with multiple payloads on Friday. The Ministry of Defence, in its statement, said that they were targeted at different targets spatially distributed over a large geographical area in the Indian Ocean Region. MIRVs are engineered to cause more damage to the adversaries than traditional missiles with a single warhead.
It added that the telemetry and tracking were carried out by multiple ground and ship-based stations. These systems tracked the entire missile trajectory from lift-off to the impact of all payloads. The flight data confirmed that all mission objectives were met during the trial.
In the statement, the Ministry of Defence added, “With this successful trial, India once again demonstrated the capability to target multiple strategic targets using a single missile system. This missile is developed by DRDO laboratories with the support of Industries across the country. The trial was witnessed by senior scientists of DRDO and the Indian Army personnel.”
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated DRDO, the Indian Army, and the defence industry, saying the test would “add an incredible capability to the country’s defence preparedness against growing threat perceptions.”
The DRDO had for the first time conducted India’s first successful flight test of the Agni-V fitted with MIRV technology on 11 March 2024. Named Mission Divyastra, the test was carried out from the same Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island launch facility and involved the missile carrying between four to six dummy warheads.
With that test, India joined a select group of nations that possess MIRV capability.
The system is equipped with indigenous avionics systems and high-accuracy sensor packages, ensuring that the re-entry vehicles reach their designated target points with the required precision.
MIRV technology involves launching a single missile carrying multiple warheads, each of which can be programmed to strike a separate target several hundred kilometres apart, multiplying the offensive capability of every missile in a country’s arsenal.
The Agni-V is a three-stage, solid-fuelled ballistic missile capable of striking targets more than 5,000 kilometres away.
In August last year, the Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile Agni-V was successfully test-fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Odisha. The launch validated all operational and technical parameters and was carried out under the aegis of the Strategic Forces Command.