India Successfully Test Fires Akash SAM Missile

India has test fired its indigenously-developed surface-to- air ‘Akash’ missile today from the Integrated Test Range in Odisha with success. The Akash missile, which has a strike range of 25 km with a warhead of 60 kgs, was inducted into the armed forces in 2008. The trial of the surface-to- air missile was intended to “intercept a floating object supported by a pilotless target aircraft, flown from launch complex-II, at a definite altitude over the sea," according to a Defence Research & Development Organisation official. Akash in collaboration with the ‘Rajendra’ radar developed by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), a DRDO laboratory in Bangalore can simultaneously engage several targets. The DRDO has also developed the Air Force version of the Akash missile.