Mumbai: India's first long-range surface-to-air missile (LRSAM) -designated Barak 8 - jointly designed and developed by Israel's IAI and India's DRDO has been successfully flight tested from an Israeli naval Platform, an official said here on Saturday.
The test flight was carried out on Thursday morning when it destroyed an incoming fast-moving air target, with all the subsystems performing as planned and achieving the desired goal of hitting the incoming target.
The DRDO has designed and developed the dual pulse propulsion system and other safe arm mechanisms for the first time.
The test achieved a major milestone in proving the missle system with complete participation of the ship-borne tracking equipment and other elements.
According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, the firing and interception carried out on Lahav, a Sa'ar 5-class Corvette, position near Haifa in the Mediterranean Sea, fired a Barak 8 and destroyed a fast-moving jet-powered drone at 7 am.
The missle configuration is the same for both LRSAM and its medium range variant, the official said.
More operational flight trials of the LRSAM will soon be conducted soon from the Indian Navy's newest destroyer, INS Kolkata, before it is inducted into various classes of vessels.
The LRSAM programme comprises missles, MFSTAR (radar), weapon control system, vertical launcher unit and two-way data link.
