Daily Current Affairs for UPSC
India successfully test-fires VL-SRSAM Missile
[GS Paper 3 – Space Science and Missile Technology]
Context – Indian naval warships just became more heavily protected and difficult to strike with aircraft and anti-ship missiles, with the successful flight-test of the Vertical Launch Short Range Surface to Air Missile (VL-SRSAM) recently.
Key Developments
- The VL-SRSAM, which the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) has indigenously developed for the Indian Navy, was fired from an Indian warship at a high-speed aerial target that was mimicking an incoming enemy aircraft.
- India’s most modern naval warships, such as the Visakhapatnam-class destroyers and Nilgiri-class frigates, are equipped with multiple layers of defence against their biggest threats: enemy aircraft and sea-skimming anti-ship missiles.
- The first line of defence is provided by the Indo-Israeli medium range surface to air missiles (MRSAMs), which are capable of shooting down hostile aerial threats at ranges out to 70 kilometres.
- If the MRSAM fails to destroy the incoming threat at long ranges, the warship launches its VL-SRSAMs at shorter ranges of 25-30 kilometres.
About MRSAM
- It is a high response, quick reaction, vertically launched supersonic missile, designed to neutralize enemy aerial threats – missiles, aircraft, guided bombs, helicopters.
- Supersonic missiles exceed the speed of sound (Mach 1) but they are not faster than Mach-3. It is used by the Army, Navy and Air Force as different variants.
- In May 2019, Indian Navy, DRDO and IAI conducted the maiden co-operative engagement firing of the naval version of the MRSAM. It is a land based variant of the Barak Air and Missile Defence System (AMD).
- India buys Barak AMD from Israel, it was designed and developed by Israel to protect its economic zones and strategic facilities from various threats.
- The missile’s management system uses the radar to track and correctly identify the target, calculates the distance from it and gives all the information to the Commander for a decision to be made on interception.