Indigenous subsonic cruise missile ‘Nirbhay’ test fired from Odisha

KalingaTV News Network

Balasore: India’s indigenous subsonic cruise missile, Nirbhay, which failed its last test in December 2016, was successfully test fired from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur in the district in Odisha on Tuesday .

The indigenously-designed and developed missile with a strike range 750-1,000 km was test launched from a specially-designed launcher from the launch complex-3 of the ITR at 10.30 am today.

‘Nirbhay’ missile can travel with a turbojet engine and is guided by a highly advanced inertial navigation system indigenously developed by the Research Centre Imarat (RCI), sources said.

The two-stage missile is 6 meters long, 0.52 metre wide with a wingspan of 2.7 meters. It can carry a warhead of 200 kg to 300 kg at a speed of 0.6 to 0.7 Mach. Its launch weight is about 1500 kg, the sources revealed.

The missile’s first test on March 12, 2013 failed as it fell after 20 minutes of flight. The second on October 17, 2014 was however successful. The third test on October 16, 2015 saw the missile nose-dive after covering 128 km in the Bay of Bengal.