Agni-II fails to make the mark at trial by night

In a major setback for the Indian missile programme, the first night trial of the nuclear-capable Agni-II on Monday has failed to hit the target. It fell off after embarking on a mid-air journey for nearly 90 km from Wheeler Island in Bhadrak district off the Orissa coast, about 160 km from here. The missile was test fired at 7.50pm.

The army was testing the missile after sunset to demonstrate whether it could be fired whenever required, defense officials said. The surface-to-surface Agni II missile is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets 2,000 km away, officials said.

Everyone associated with the missile were monitoring it from the Defence Research and Development Centre (DRDO) at Chandipur, about 100km from the testing site. They were relieved after Agni had a smooth take-off. The missile had three components. While the first two carried solid fuel, the last one carried the payload, which should have hit the target. After the take-off, there was a smooth first stage separation which gave the missile the necessary momentum to go ahead. But a problem cropped up in the second stage. Though the fuel started burning, the container carrying the fuel did not separate. It failed to give the necessary thrust and fell down on its own weight.

On being the reasons for the failure, a DRDO official said, “The missile might have failed to hit its target due to an operational problem. It has nothing to do with the time of the day.” An inquiry has been started to find out why the mission failed.

“There could be a thousand reasons for the debacle,” the DRDO official said. “We have to find out whether the material was at fault or whether there was a mistake on somebody’s part. We have started investigating the case,” he said.