New Delhi: India’s indigenous nuclear attack submarine INS Arihant Friday carried out a successful launch of a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), a key element of the country’s nuclear deterrence capability.
The Ministry of Defence, in a statement, said the missile was tested to a predetermined range and impacted the target area in the Bay of Bengal with very high accuracy.
“All operational and technological parameters of the weapon system have been validated,” the defence ministry added.
Although the ministry did not put up an official statement on which missile it fired, sources in the defence establishment indicated it was the nearly 750-km range K-15, which is already in service.
Sources were responding to a query if it was the much-awaited 3,500 km range nuclear-capable missile called the K-4, which underwent its maiden test in January 2020 from a fixed underwater pontoon on the east coast, as reported by ThePrint.
India is also working on a nearly 5,000-kilometre range missile called the K-5.
The defence ministry said the “successful user training launch” of the SLBM by INS Arihant is significant to prove crew competency and validate the SSBN programme, which is a key element of India’s nuclear deterrence capability.
“A robust, survivable and assured retaliatory capability is in keeping with India’s policy to have ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence‘ that underpins its ‘No First Use’ commitment,” said the ministry in a statement.
This is the first time since its induction in 2016 that Arihant has conducted a test fire of its missile, at least publicly announced.
The INS Arihant is designed to carry 12 K-5 or four K-4 missiles.
India is among the six countries in the world to have the capability to fire a nuclear missile from land, air and undersea. The others are the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom.
The induction of INS Arihant into the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) — who is responsible for India’s nuclear arsenal — in 2016 has been one of the biggest developments for the armed forces in the last decade. With the induction, India has completed the nuclear triad.
Submarines-launched nuclear missiles are a force multiplier for any country because it is difficult to be tracked before launch.
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Source: The Print
