Successful missile trials have been conducted by Indian Air Force (IAF) off the coast of Chandipur, Odisha. Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) flight tested the Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) ‘Astra’ from Su-30 MKI platform. The trails were held from September 16-19, 2019, against Jet Banshee target aircraft, simulating all possible threat scenarios.

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Successful Missile Trials

A total of five trials were conducted over the course of this period, with missiles being tested in different configurations. During the campaign, three missiles were launched in combat configuration with warhead and manoeuvring targets were neutralised to establish the end game capability of the missile. The trial campaign also included a direct hit of the target by the telemetered missile at maximum range. All the subsystems performed accurately meeting all the mission parameters and objectives.

The present flight trials have proved the end to end performance of the missile system in various combat scenarios giving greater confidence to the users. The five successful trials of Astra will culminate into the induction of the missile system into Indian Air Force, which will certainly be a force multiplier considering its accuracy and effectiveness in neutralising aerial threats.

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Astra BVRAAM

Astra BVRAAM has a range of more than 100 km with modern guidance and navigation techniques. The missile has midcourse guidance and RF seeker based terminal guidance to achieve target destruction with pinpoint accuracy.

The user trial phase of the weapon system has thus been completed successfully. The state-of-the-art BVRAAM was built by DRDO along with IAF. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has played a role in modifying the aircraft for weapon integration. Apart from them, more than 50 public and private industries have contributed to building the Astra weapon system.

Dr. G Satheesh Reddy, Secretary, Department of Defence R&D and Chairman, DRDO, congratulated team ‘Astra’ for developing and flight testing such a formidable class of weapon system. The technologies developed under the programme will be the building blocks for the development of future variants of Air-to-Air and Surface-to-Air Missiles.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated DRDO and IAF teams for the successful trials.

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