Missile programs

Story hook

It is 02:38 IST on 11 March 2024. A 17-metre, 50-tonne missile rises out of the launcher at the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island off the Odisha coast. Within 90 seconds it has cleared the troposphere; within 4 minutes it has reached apogee at 600 km altitude; within 18 minutes it has discharged three independent re-entry vehicles over the Bay of Bengal — each landing within metres of its designated impact point. Mission Divyastra has just made India the fourth nation (after the US, Russia and China) to operationally test a ground-launched MIRV (Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicle). The missile is Agni-V Prime / Agni-V MIRV, designed by DRDL Hyderabad with re-entry vehicles from ASL and avionics from RCI.

Forty-one years earlier, on 25 February 1983, a man named APJ Abdul Kalam stood in front of a Cabinet meeting and pitched a five- missile programme — Prithvi, Trishul, Akash, Nag, Agni — at a cost of ₹388 crore. He was given the money. The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) had begun.

In between those two dates lies the story of how a country that imported Soviet SA-2 SAMs in the 1960s came to design, build, deploy and export hypersonic missiles, scramjets, anti-ballistic missile interceptors, supersonic cruise missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles — entirely indigenously.

Why this matters for UPSC

Missile facts appear in every Prelims since 2014 — usually "latest range of Agni-V" or "BrahMos export country" or "Akash vs Akash-NG difference". Mains GS-III tests strategic doctrine (credible minimum deterrence, no-first-use), the BrahMos export foreign-policy angle, and emerging hypersonic/MIRV technology. Interview boards probe NFU, nuclear triad, and Mission Shakti.