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“It has met all the mission objectives,” S P Dash, director of the test range, told Reuters news agency yesterday. “It hit the target with very good accuracy.”
It took the missile about 20 minutes to hit its target somewhere near Indonesia in the Indian Ocean.
The launch of the Agni V, which can carry nuclear warheads and has a range of 5 000km, thrusts the country into an elite club of nations with intercontinental nuclear capabilities.
Only the UN Security Council permanent members — China, France, Russia, the US and Britain — along with Israel, have such long-range weapons.
“The successful launch of Agni V missile is a tribute to the sophistications and commitment to national causes on the part of India’s scientific technological community,” Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, said.
Singh said he hoped Indian scientists and technologists would in the future contribute a “lot more to promoting self reliance in defence and other walks of national life”.
Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri, reporting from New Delhi, said the launch was “significant because Indian scientists have been working for years to get the programme off the ground”.
“It is the most strategic and ambitious programme this country has undertaken in recent years,” she said.
“What’s important is that this missile has been completely indigenously produced and designed. It’s cost the Indian government over $500m to do that.”
Harsh Pant, a defence expert at King’s College, London, described the launch as a “confidence boost”, adding that the mission “signalled India’s arrival on the global stage [and] that it deserves to be sitting at the high table”.
But Richard Bitzinger, a military specialist at Nanyang Technological University in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera that India would need to carry out
“several more tests” before it could declare Agni V missile operational.
“It’s not gonna happen overnight,” he said.
The launch came as India nears completion of a nuclear submarine that will increase its ability to launch a counter strike if it were attacked. Delhi insists its nuclear weapons programme is for deterrence only.
One of the fast emerging economies known as the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — India is keen to play a larger role on the global stage and has been clamouring for a permanent seat on the Security Council.
It has in recent years emerged as the world’s top arms importer as it rushes to upgrade equipment for a large but outdated military. — Al Jazeera.
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