BEL completes Akash Air Defence System firing trials

BENGALURU: Firing trials of the Akash Air Defence System, designed and developed by DRDO, have been conducted successfully at the Integrated Test Range at Balasore in Odisha, Bharat Electronics Limited which manufactured it said.

The system has been designed to defend and protect the nation's assets from penetrating aerial attacks. The Akash missile can fly at supersonic speed.

BEL, a Navratna PSU, is involved in the manufacture and integration of highly complex and sophisticated Ground Radars for surveillance and tracking the control centers for the Akash Air Defence System.

In the trials conducted from November 17 to 22, the systems were tested successfully under extreme flight condition of near boundary low altitude, far boundary high altitude and multi-target and multi-missile scenario, BEL said in a release.

The flight trials were carried out on unmanned aerial target Banshee jet and para-flares and the targets were repeatedly destroyed by the Akash Missile System, it said.

This is the last in the series of flight trials carried out on the production version of the Akash Air Defence System for the Indian Air Force to validate complete intercept envelope of the Air Defence System.

The Akash Missile System is an all-weather, point/area air defence weapon system for defending vulnerable areas/ points against medium range targets penetrating from low, medium and high altitudes, the release said.