India gets a formidable missile shield, Army inducts indigenous Akash to thwart aerial threats

New Delhi: Adding more power to its armour, Akash missile system, a formidable shield against possible aerial threats was inducted into the Indian Army on Tuesday. The indigenous system has the potential to prevent aerial threats from enemy's fighter planes, helicopters, drones and unmanned aerial vehicles up to a maximum range of 25 km and upto an altitude of 20 km.

The system has been inducted into the Indian Army after a long wait of 32 years. It is a surface-to-air short ranged defence system developed by the Defence Research Development Laboratory. It can evaluate and track danger and is capable of launching missile on the basis of information obtained by the radar systems.

DRDO has been working on it since 1983. The Army will be getting two Akash regiments over a period of next two years.

The system is capable of simultaneously engaging multiple targets and is capable of providing comprehensive short range missile cover to the vulnerable assets in the field force of the Army.

"The core of Army Air Defense is responsible to provide air defense cover to the alotted vulnerable assets. Akash weapon system is a state of the art short ranged, surface to air missile system. The teeth of the system are the super sonic rocket ramget missile. This missile has a range from 3 to 25 km. It has an altitude from as low as 30 metres going upto 20 kms. It flies several macs, upto 2.5 mac."

"If you fire two missiles in a ripple it produces a single shot k - capability of 98%, we have a 3D central acquisition radar which looks far beyond upto 120 kms. As the target comes near, we have the state of the art face tracking radar that tracks the target, and the systems which control the missile precisely. Our regiment has 6 fire units, each fire unit has 4 Akaash launchers, each with three ready to fire missiles, so a lot of fire power goes along with each fire unit," Director General of Army Air Defence (DGAAD) Lt. General VK Saxena said.

Currently two regiments of Akash weapon systems are being looked at. The first production model, which is the first fire unit will be inducted on Tuesday and the balance will get inducted in a period of 2-3 years.