Indian Navy conducts user trials of ballistic missile 'Dhanush

The Indian Navy on Friday test fired the surface-to-surface ballistic missile Dhanush in full operational configuration from a naval warship positioned in the Bay of Bengal as part of its user training exercise.

The trial, third in the series, was conducted at about 10.52 am by the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of the Navy from an undisclosed location nearly 45 km from the Paradip coast.

Dhanush is a Prithvi variant and Friday's test was the third test of the missile this month and the second in the last three days.

On Wednesday,  the SFC of Indian Army had successfully conducted first night trial of Prithvi-II ballistic missile from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) off Odisha coast.

The test was intended to assess the performance of manoeuvring stealth warheads besides gauging the efficiency and killing probability of the missile in a real-time situation. The missile achieved close to zero circular error probability (CEP) accuracy.

Defence sources said the Dhanush missile met all the parameters like elevation, trajectory, azimuth, flight path and stage separation. The entire flight path of the missile was smooth in accordance with pre-decided coordinates.

''The missile was test fired from a naval warship while another warship provided all logistic supports for the test. It was a textbook launch and fantastic mission accomplished,'' according to the source.

Dhanush, the indigenously developed naval version of the 'Prithvi' short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) has a striking range up to 350 km and can neutralise both land-based and sea-based targets. It can carry a single warhead, conventional or nuclear up to 500kg.

Developed by the DRDO under its ambitious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), the missile is about 8.53 metres in length and 0.9 metre in diameter and has a launch weight of about 4.4 tonnes. This single-stage missile uses liquid propellant and can be used as an anti-ship weapon as well as for destroying closer land targets.

Dhanush is under production after it successfully completed several developmental and user trials. It has already been inducted into the Army.