The Hindu:
India’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system is in the final stages of development and deployment, Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister, G. Satheesh Reddy, said here on Sunday.
Delivering the 25{+t}{+h}G.S. Sidhu Science Lecture on ‘Trends in Missile Technology’ at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology here, he said BMD was a dream of former President late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Paying glowing tributes to him, he said Mr. Kalam always used to “think big” and recalled how he conceived and developed the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), missile testing range at Balasore and Research Centre Imarat (RCI) here. Describing the 5,000-km plus Agni-V Ballistic Missile as the “pride of India” with ICBM capability, he listed various missiles developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the technologies that went into them. The design goal for most of them was to lower the mass, increase the range, accuracy and lethality, while ensuring faster delivery, easy operation and lower cost of production and maintenance.
Touching upon new technologies, Dr. Satheesh said work was on to develop navigation on chip by 2017 (a single chip for the whole navigation) and another single chip for the entire avionics required for missiles.