Date:10/02/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/02/10/stories/2003021001420800.htm

National

'India developing ballistic missiles to counter threats'

BANGALORE FEB. 9. India is developing ballistic missile defence technologies to counter "threats from its adversaries" and has no Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) programme, a key official of a DRDO laboratory involved in weapon system programmes, said today.

"We are now trying to develop ballistic missile defence system like hypersonic class of missiles and long-range detection and tracking radars'', Director of Hyderabad-based Research Centre Imarat (RCI), V.K. Saraswat, told PTI here. "We are going to concentrate on that," he said.

"In offensive weapons (missiles), we have almost come to whatever needed by the country. Now we are looking at defensive weapons," said Mr. Sarswat, who spoke last evening at an international seminar, organised as part of Aero India 2003, an international aerospace exposition here.

According to him, with the defensive weapons under development, the nation would be able to counter "incoming missile threats". "You know, we have threats. Because our adversaries have (such missiles), we have to develop that," he said and also indicated that India was working on a layered defence system.

DRDO officials said such a system included many technologies, including using satellites for communications and a unique two-layer defensive line using surface-to-air missile for any incoming ballistic missile attack. But he categorically said that New Delhi had no ICBM programme and asserted that the country faced no ICBM threat.

— PTI