BALASORE: After an abortive mission in August, the country succeeded in its much touted Agni Pariksha on Friday. Strategic Forces Command (SFC), a special wing of the IAF conducted a user specific trial of 2000 km range nuke capable Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) Agni-II from a defence base off Orissa coast.The indigenously built missile was test fired from the Wheeler Island based launching complex - IV of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at about 9.30 am. The launch was a hattrick after successful launches of Shourya and Prithvi-II, on September 24 and 26, respectively.Already inducted and a part of country’s arsenal for strategic deterrence, the Agni-II was launched as a training exercise by the Armed Forces and it was a successful trial launch, Director of Public Interface, DRDO, Ravi Kumar Gupta said. “The two stage missile equipped with advanced high accuracy navigation system, guided by a novel scheme of state of the art command and control system reached an apogee (peak altitude) of 220 km and hit the target. All the radar and telemetry systems tracked and monitored all parameters throughout the trajectory. Two ships located near the target point have tracked the missile in the final stage,” he stated.Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister and Director General of DRDO V K Saraswat, Agni Programme director Avinash Chander and Air Marshal KJ Mathews congratulated all the scientists, DRDO personnel and members of Armed Forces.Project director D Lakshminarayana and his team monitored all the launch operations. The event was witnessed by director of RCI S K Ray, director of DRDL P Venugopalan, director of ASL V G Sekaran, director of ITR S P Dash, senior officials of DRDO and Armed Forces.The DRDO had drawn flak from several quarters as two consecutive tests of Agni-II missile in May and November 2009 and the last attempt in August 29, 2011, had failed. However, after the successful test of Agni missile, defence scientists are now eyeing for the maiden launch of the country’s most ambitious strategic missile Agni-V which is planned to be tested in December. With a proposed range of 5,000-km, Agni-V will have the intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities.
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