India plans an early indigenous anti-ballistic missile system
Press Trust of India
August 17, 2003

In an effort to speed up development of indigenous anti-missile system, India has asked the United States for "technical information" on its operational Patriot anti-missile system and also sought Washington's nod for involvement in the Israeli-US upgraded Arrow missile system.

Confirming that a request has been sent to the Defence Cooperation Agency of the US Government, Defence Ministry officials said they were "hopeful of an early response from Washington".

These efforts, officials said, were part of an action plan formulated by India to have an anti-missile system along the country's western border with Pakistan, at the earliest.

The plan was aimed at giving Indian armed forces a capability of rapid response in case of a nuclear or conventional missile attack and involved strategic meshing up of various deterrence systems like the already inducted Low Level Transportable Radars from Israel and plans to induct the Airborne Warning and Air Control system and hooking them to an indigenous Spy Satellite system, they said.

Conceding that "it is an extremely complex task", officials said a beginning was being made with project already underway to hook up all the radars - civil and military - in the country.

As part of recent Indo-US warming up in military to military relations, Indian experts specially from Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) have been observers at two big anti-missile workshop cum demonstrations held in the US, in which the Patriot as well as the Israeli Arrow missile system were in action.

At the just concluded second meeting of the Indo-US Defence Policy group, Defence officials from the two countries reaffirmed the shared view that " missile defence" enhanced cooperative security and stability.

The two countries have now decided to hold a missile defence workshop in India in the coming months as a follow-on to Multinational Ballistic Defence conference held in Kyoto, Japan recently. At the invitation of the US pacific command, India had sent observers to Kyoto conference too.

Defence Ministry officials said the request made to the US was on sharing technical data on the Patriot missile, but assumes significance with India reopening the trial of the Trishul missile, which earlier had been put
on backburner.

Trishul, which was earlier visualised for Surface-to-Air multi-target roll had later been earmarked by the DRDO scientists for anti-missile role, after some initial technical breakthroughs. The missile suffered a setback
after the US imposed sanctions post-Pokhran tests.

The missile has now been revived with DRDO undertaking five tests in a series. The defence scientists are also trying anti-missile system trials on the Akash missile.