The Dhanush missile was successfully test fired at 11.31 am on Sunday, December 13, 2009. Photo Credit: ChinditsDecember 13, 2009, (Sawf News) - The Dhanush missile was successfully test fired at 11.31 am on Sunday, December 13, 2009.
The missile was launched from the Offshore Patrol Vehicle INS Subhadra that was anchored about 35 nautical miles offshore from the test range of Chandipur in Balasore district, 230 km from Bhubaneswar.
The test "met all the mission objectives" according to a DRDO official.
The missile flew for 520 seconds before hitting the target with a 10m CEP.
All the operations for the launch were carried out by Naval personnel.
"All the events occurred as expected and were monitored by the range sensors. It was a text book launch and a fantastic mission accomplished," an official said.
"Dhanush, being developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), was put to trial jointly by a team of scientists and officers from the Navy," said another official.
"Today's test launch has been tracked from its take-off to impact point through an integrated network of sophisticated radars and electro-optic instruments for post-mission data analysis," the sources said.
V.K. Saraswat, scientific adviser to the defense minister, and director general and secretary, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), was on-board the ship during the mission.
Dhanush lineage:
A naval variant of the Prithvi short range missile, Dhanush is a single stage, liquid fueled, 500 kg warhead missile with a range of 350 km.
Past Test Flights
The Dhanush was first tested on April 11, 2000 from the Chandipur range. The development test failed.
Following the failure, the missile was successfully tested four times.
Its last successfully test was from a naval ship off Orissa coast on March 30, 2007
On March 6, 2008 a PAD missile successfully intercepted a modified Dhanush surface-to-surface missile fired from INS Rajput anchored inside the Bay of Bengal. On that occasion, the Dhanush simulated a target "enemy" missile with a range of 1,500 km.
Operational Status:
The role of the Dhanush missile in the Indian Navy is not clear. Since it is a liquid fueled missile that takes a considerable time to fuel up and launch, its role can only be strategic. Its limited range of 350 km makes it Pakistan centric.
Considering that the Prithvi was built by reverse engineering the 1950s vintage SAM-2 missile acquired by India from the erstwhile Soviet Union, it is hard to understand what the missile is doing in the Indian strategic arsenal.
It is likely Indian Navy funded development of the missile to acquire an early stake in India's strategic defense.
The Navy will eventually acquire a major stake once India's nuclear powered boomer sub INS Arihant is commissioned armed with Saagrika missiles, something that will take a minimum of two more years.
The Dhanush has so far been tested using make shift platforms on Indian Navy ships such as the Rajput and INS Shubhadra.
In the past, the Dhanush has also been used for the BMD system under development by DRDO.
Though the missile has been launched from at least two naval ships of vastly different sizes - INS Rajput, a destroyer, and INS Shubhadra, an Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV), there is nothing to suggest that the Dhanush has been operationally deployed on any of the Indian Navy ships.
Most probably Dhanush is intended to be no more than a technology demonstrator to develop technology to launch a missile from a fast moving sea craft and guide it to its target with pinpoint accuracy. The use of an OPV to launch the missile is suggestive that DRDO and Navy want to validate launch from a relatively unstable platform.
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