India wraps up 1st round of tests for missile that can shoot plane 30 km away

The DRDO completed the developmental trials for the short-range missile system with Friday’s test and wil soon start user trials by the army and the air force before its induction by the military

Updated on: Nov 13, 2020, 18:32:56 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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India on Friday successfully test-fired the all-weather Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missiles that has a range of 30 km, wrapping up the developmental trials that had been continuing for the last few years. In the next phase, the short-range missile will be tested by the army and the air force before going into production and induction by the military.

India test-fired Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missiles - QRSAM - from the integrated test facility in Odisha’s Balasore (DRDO/Photo)

The sophisticated missile was test-fired at about 3.40 pm from a mobile launcher at the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur near here. It successfully destroyed the target, people familiar with the matter said.

The missile, which can strike an aerial target cruising at a height of 15 km, is launched from a mobile two-vehicle system; one carries the missile and the second, the radar that helps acquire the targets. Because it is mobile, it can stay on the move and evade counter-attacks by the enemy.

The radar can simultaneously track 100 targets and engage 6 targets.

The first trial of the QRSAM was conducted on 4 June 2017.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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