On Saturday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will travel to Hyderabad to inaugurate India’s first hypersonic wind tunnel — a missile and aircraft testing facility so high-tech that only the US and Russia have them.
In September, India entered an elite group in the field of hypersonics when the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) flew its Hypersonic Technology Demonstration Vehicle (HSTDV) at a speed of Mach 6 (six times the speed of sound, or two kilometres per second) for more than 22 seconds.
However, the HSTDV test was a leap into the blue, with the only assurance of success coming from previous