Indian Tomahawk missile has a textbook firing from Odisha

The LRLACM is a successor to failed Nirbhay experiment with longer range and top precision guidance.

Updated on: Jun 16, 2026, 12:45:26 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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After failure of “Nirbhay” cruise missile experiment, the DRDO achieved text-book success on June 15 when it conducted the first successful test firing of the Indian version of US Tomahawk subsonic cruise missile from ITR, Chandipur in Odisha. The Long Range Land Attack cruise missile (LRLACM), which has not been named as yet, hit the target at a distance of 1000 km with all past issues resolved.

The Long Range Land Attack cruise missile, which has not been named as yet, hit the target at a distance of 1000 km with all past issues resolved. (X/@DefenceMinIndia, representational image)

Authoritative officials said that the cruise missile, which can be launched from multiple platforms, is a successor to the failed Nirbhay but with more range and other guidance improvements. It is understood that the missile will undergo two more developmental trials, then two more user trials in the next two years before induction into Indian armed forces.

Also read | How India joined the elite club of nations with advanced ballistic missile defence capability

While the DRDO press release was economical with information, the cruise missile with speed upto 0.8 Mach is a much required weapon for hitting targets in excess of 1000 km at land skimming heights. The missile is a challenge to enemy radars as it cannot be detected due to low flying and has a 500 kg warhead which destroys the target.

While Pakistan has a 900 km range cruise missile named after Islamic conqueror Babur since 2010, China has a range of conventional and nuclear cruise missiles. The Pakistan weapon is reverse engineered from an unexploded Tomahawk missile recovered from a 1998 US strike against Al Qaeda terrorist camp in Khost in Afghanistan. Pakistan got full technical support from China to develop Babur and got the US Tomahawk technology in return.

Also read | India successfully demonstrates BMD capability to take down hostile ballistic missiles

With stand-off weapons becoming the order of battle these days, India needs to upgrade its conventional missilery with long range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. These conventional ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and rockets will be part of Army’s rocket regiments to counter PLA’s missile capability in the worst case scenario.

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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