New Delhi: India today said it has successfully test fired an anti-tank missile with laser guidance from the indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank, a technological achievement that could enable the Indian Army to induct the indigenous weapon soon.

The development comes at a time India is faced with an adversarial Chinese army at the de facto border in Ladakh region for the last over four months now.

“Laser-guided Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) was successfully test fired from MBT Arjun Tank at KK Ranges, Armoured Corps Centre and School (ACC&S) Ahmednagar on 22nd Sep. 2020,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

“In these tests, the ATGM successfully defeated a target located at 3 km. Laser-guided ATGMs lock and track the targets with the help of laser designation to ensure precision hit accuracy.”

The missile employs a tandem HEAT warhead to defeat Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA) protected armoured vehicles. It has been developed with multiple-platform launch capability and is currently undergoing technical evaluation trials from gun of MBT Arjun.

Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE) in Pune, in association with High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL), also in Pune, and Instruments Research and Development Establishment (IRDE) at Dehradun have developed the missile.

Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Chairman Dr. G. Satheesh Reddy congratulated the team for the success of the missile trials.

Abhyas flight tested

Meanwhile, DRDO also successfully flight tested Abhyas, a High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT), yesterday from the Interim Test Range at Balasore in Odisha.

During the trials, two demonstrator vehicles were successfully test flown. The vehicle can be used as target for evaluation of various missile systems.

Abhyas is designed and developed by Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE). The air vehicle is launched using twin underslung booster.

It is powered by a small gas turbine engine and has MEMS-based Inertial Navigation System (INS) for navigation along with the Flight Control Computer (FCC) for guidance and control. The vehicle is programmed for fully autonomous flight.

The check out of air vehicle is done using laptop-based Ground Control Station (GCS). During the test, the user requirement of five km flying altitude, vehicle speed of 0.5 Mach, endurance of 30 minutes and 2G turn capability of the test vehicle were successfully achieved.

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