Sub-sonic Cruise Missile ‘Nirbhay’ Successfully Test-Fired

India’s first indigenously designed and developed long-range sub-sonic cruise missile ‘Nirbhay’ from a test range Chandipur, Odisha.

Nirbhay Missile

• Nirbhay missile has blended missile and aeronautical technologies which allows it to take off vertically like missile and cruise horizontally like an aircraft.
• The missile has a two-stage missile powered by solid rocket motor booster developed by Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL).
• Nirbhay Missile has an operational range of 1000 km and can carry warheads of up to 300 kg including nuclear warheads.
• It can be launched from various kind of platforms.
• It can travel with a turbofan or turbojet engine and is guided by a highly advanced inertial navigation system.
• It has the capability to loiter and cruise at 0.7 Mach, at altitudes as low as 100m.
• It is terrain hugging missile which keeps on encircling the area of its target for several minutes and then hits bull’s eye’ on an opportune time.
• It is difficult to detect by enemy’s radars. It is capable to engage several targets in a single flight.
• The guidance, control and navigation system of missile is configured around indigenously designed Ring Laser Gyroscope (RLG) and MEMS-based Inertial Navigation System (INS) along with GPS system.

It was the sixth experimental test of Nirbhay missile system and it achieved all mission objectives right from lift-off till the final splash, boosting the confidence of all scientists associated with the trial.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2019