India’s anti-tank missile Nag test-fired in Pokhran, ready for Ladakh deployment

The Nag anti-tank missile is ready for deployment by the military, ending the need for India to import this weapon from either Israel or the US for the range of four kilometres.

Updated on: Oct 22, 2020, 12:11:57 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) successfully completed the final trial of Nag anti-tank missile using a live warhead on a dud tank at Pokhran army ranges at 6.45 am on Wednesday. The shoulder launched four-kilometre range missile with imaging infrared seeker will now be inducted in Indian Army.

The Nag anti-tank missile, test-fired with a live warhead, destroys an old tank at Pokhran army range on Thursday morning (DRDO)

The Nag trial comes after the DRDO tested the helicopter launched Stand-off Anti-Tank Missile (SANT) with beyond 10 km range from Balasore testing range in Odisha on October 19. Although the missile will ultimately integrated with attack helicopters in future, the test was conducted from ground and was successful.

According to senior government officials, the Nag anti-tank missile is now ready for induction at locations such as the East Ladakh sector as it has completed 10 successful user trial with the weapon finding and then hitting the target.

The DRDO has been on a missile testing spree for a little over a month with only the 1,000 km range sub-sonic cruise missile Nirbhay, developing a snag during a test earlier this month. The missile is now expected to test fired in the coming months as the technical snag in the booster has been identified and rectified by the missile team.

The final trial of Nag anti-tank missile means that the Indian Army will no longer have to import this weapon from either Israel or the US for the range of four kilometres. It was due to unavailability of a credible anti-tank weapon, that India had to buy around 200 pieces of Spike anti-tank missiles from Israel as emergency purchases after the aggression by People’s Liberation Army in Ladakh. The Spike missiles were purchases after the Galwan flare-up on June 15 after which both India and China have deployed troops all along the 1597 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh.

The need for anti-tank missile was sorely felt after PLA amassed artillery, rockets and tanks in occupied Aksai Chin to deter India.

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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