Technical snag delays twin test of Prithvi-II

A twin user trial of India's nuclear-capable Prithvi-II missile by the Army was deferred on Wednesday due to a technical problem at the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur near Balasore in Odisha.

"The test was postponed due to a technical snag," ITR director SP Dash told PTI, adding that the date for future trial will be decided after correcting the problem.

The ITR director's statement came in the midst of media reports that two missiles had failed to take off during the twin trial. "I don't know on what basis they have concluded that the trial had failed," Dash said.

Defence officials and scientists associated with the trial were tight-lipped on what exactly led to the postponement of the test.

Two indigenously developed surface-to surface missiles were planned to be fired from a mobile launcher in salvo mode from the launch complex-3 of ITR as part of user trial by the Army, defence sources said.

The missiles were randomly chosen from the stock of the Armed forces and the entire launch activities were to be carried out by the Strategic Force Command (SFC) and monitored by the scientists of Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) as part of training exercise, they added.

Prithvi, the first missile developed under India’s prestigious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) has the capability to carry 500kg of warheads.

It has a length of 9 meters with one metre diameter and thrusted by liquid propulsion twine engine, uses advanced inertial guidance system with manoeuvring trajectory and reach the targets with few meter accuracy.

The last trial of Prithvi-II was successfully carried out with very high accuracy of better than 10 meters from the same base in September, 2011.