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India's ICBM is at an advanced stage of development

Josy Joseph in New Delhi

The development of India's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, code-named Surya, is at an advanced stage, authoritative sources said today.

The recent claim by Bachi Singh Rawat, minister of state for defence, in Almora that Surya will be test-fired soon is "much closer to reality than the ministry's later denial", an authoritative source associated with the Defence Research and Development Organisation told rediff.com

The minister was only exposing his ignorance in handling sensitive government projects when he said the missile would be test-fired in the next few years, but he was not being misleading, the source said. The government has officially denied the existence of the ICBM project.

Surya is being developed as a national endeavour with the DRDO co-ordinating the work as the next step in the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, with heavy borrowings of technology from agencies such as the Indian Space Research Organisation.

The ICBM is being developed by combining the technology of the Agni II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile with that of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. It is expected to have a range of more than 8,000 km.

Already, the United States believes that India has built various gadgets needed for guidance, besides developing warheads for the ICBM. There is no confirmation of this. But America has been putting pressure on other countries, including Russia, not to assist India's much acclaimed missile programme.

The ICBM will be the final product of the IGMDP, which was set up to develop five missile systems, including Agni. The IGMDP was started in 1983 after Project Devil, a similar programme in the previous decade, had failed.

According to available information, various PSLV launches have already provided details of the temperature and other physical factors that would affect flights at those speeds. The manoeuvring warheads of Agni will be replicated in the ICBM, and attempts are continuing to mount multiple warheads as well.

Under IGMDP, five missile systems are being developed. Of them, already in the case of Prithvi and Agni, the DRDO has borrowed heavily from ISRO's techonology, and "that makes it easier to develop the ICBM", the source said.

Till now, only the Prithvi missile has been inducted into the army, with a missile regiment. The prime minister had claimed in his Independence Day speech this year that Agni too would be inducted into the armed forces. But the source said that "no developments have taken place till now" on that front.

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