From failed tests to a missile power

At the centre of this transformation is the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Established in 1958, it has grown into a network of 41 laboratories and five young  scientist laboratories.

The journey, however, was far from linear. India’s missile capability emerged through abandoned projects, failed tests, technology denials, foreign collaborations and decades of experimentation. Before the successful demonstration of indigenous missile technologies in the late 1980s, India’s early efforts included Project Indigo, an Indo-Swiss initiative in the 1960s to develop an intermediate-range surface-to-air missile (SAM). It was discontinued after India acquired Soviet SA-2 systems.

The real foundation-building began in the 1970s with Project Devil and Project Valiant, both aimed at building missile know-how. Project Devil attempted to reverse-engineer the Soviet SA-2 Guideline SAM, while Project Valiant sought to develop a missile with a range of about 1,500 kilometres (km). Although both programmes fell short of their objectives and were eventually abandoned, the efforts generated valuable knowledge and technologies that later contributed to the development of Prithvi. Conceived at a time when advanced technologies were largely inaccessible to India, Prithvi’s success was a bold assertion that innovation could overcome external restrictions. India subsequently mastered the wider missile ecosystem — propulsion, airframes, navigation, control, guidance, telemetry, tracking, seekers, launch systems and testing infrastructure — steadily reducing dependence on foreign suppliers and emerging as an exporter of advanced missile systems.

The decisive transformation came in the early 1980s. After V S Arunachalam became scientific advisor to the defence minister and A P J Abdul Kalam took over as director of the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) in 1982, earlier proposals for tactical missiles were revived and brought under one umbrella.

The government sanctioned the IGMDP in July 1983, approving five projects — Prithvi, Trishul, Akash, Nag and Agni — at one go. Instead of building one missile in isolation, India sought to create an entire technological base simultaneously under the leadership of Kalam, who later became the president of India.

Prithvi addressed surface-to-surface requirements, Trishul provided short-range surface-to-air capability and Akash targeted medium-range air defence. Developed with technologies like thermal imaging seekers, guidance and precision control, Nag focused on anti-tank warfare. The most ambitious, Agni, began as a re-entry technology demonstrator before evolving into India’s strategic ballistic missile family.

In its early years, the DRDO faced numerous challenges due to lack of state-of-the-art test facility and sophisticated tracking systems. India was then heavily dependant on foreign equipment. The transformation, however, began around the turn of the century. Established in 1982, the Integrated Test Range (then called interim test range) at Chandipur off the Odisha coast became an important part of that transformation.

B K Das, director general, electronics and communication systems at DRDO, said: “After the preliminary success of IGMDP, we started designing our own tracking systems. We made the country’s first electro-optics, followed by telemetry and radars. Gradually, we started developing all systems within the country. This was a crucial transition.”

Over the years, India’s scientists acquired expertise across sectors. “A missile’s effectiveness depends on its ability to detect, identify and track its target. Our guidance algorithm is probably one of the best in the world,” Das said.

That technological inheritance led to India’s most consequential missile initiative. The importance of IGMDP went beyond the five missiles as it created a mission-oriented structure in which Indian scientists had to solve problems in the missile ecosystem.

G Satheesh Reddy, former scientific adviser and chairman of the DRDO, said the decisive leap came with the IGMDP under Kalam. “The five-project programme was an attempt for simultaneous mastery over a lot of indigenous technologies. There were failures too. But the culture of treating them as data points rather than disasters was transformative. By the 2000-2010s, India had operational ballistic missiles, a medium-range SAM family, and the BrahMos joint venture (JV). In the 2020s, the focus shifted to layered air and missile defence, longer-range precision strike, and true system-of-systems architecture.”

On May 22, 1989, India tested the first Agni missile in what literally was agni pariksha for the country. The flight was important not only because a new missile had flown, but because Indian scientists demonstrated re-entry vehicle technology — a highly demanding capability involving the survival and controlled return of a vehicle through the atmosphere at extreme speed.

For years, Agni remained a technology demonstrator. India’s strategic circumstances changed after the 1998 nuclear tests, giving new urgency to the development of a credible delivery system. Agni-II was tested on April 11, 1999, with a range of more than 2,000 km.

India subsequently developed Agni-I, a shorter-range variant, followed by longer-range Agni-III and Agni-IV. The Agni family continued to evolve into sophisticated systems, the latest being the Agni-V, with a strike range of over 5,000 km, and its multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) capability. More than a decade after the first test, Agni-V’s induction marked a watershed moment. It extended India’s strategic reach far beyond South Asia to much of Asia, parts of Europe and the Indo-Pacific. 

The evolution of Agni is perhaps the clearest illustration of the DRDO missile programme’s transition from building a missile to developing strategic systems incorporating advanced navigation, guidance, propulsion and re-entry technologies. The next step in this evolution came with Agni Prime and MIRV technology, which enables a single missile to carry multiple warheads capable of striking different targets.

 The Agni series represents the backbone of India’s strategic deterrent, providing the country with the capability to respond decisively to aggression while adhering to its doctrine of “credible minimum deterrence” and “no first use”. With sea-based nuclear assets and air-delivered weapons, the Agni family forms one leg of India’s nuclear triad, ensuring the country retains a survivable second-strike capability even in the event of a surprise attack.

While the Agni family underpins India’s nuclear deterrent, the country’s conventional strike capability has undergone an equally profound transformation with supersonic cruise missile BrahMos. An Indo-Russian JV, BrahMos is among the world’s most capable operational cruise missiles. Travelling at nearly three times the speed of sound, it combines high velocity with precision and versatility.

Unlike ballistic missiles, which follow high-altitude trajectories before descending towards their targets, cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere and fly at relatively low altitudes, often skimming the sea surface or following terrain contours to avoid radar detection. “BrahMos adds another layer of complexity by combining these flight characteristics with sustained supersonic speed, drastically reducing the reaction time available to enemy air-defence systems,” said Sudhir Kumar Mishra, former CEO and managing director of BrahMos Aerospace.

The missile strengthened India’s global standing by transforming the nation from a major arms importer into a confident defence exporter and a key security partner in the Indo-Pacific region. If BrahMos represents speed and precision strike, the Pralay missile embodies manoeuvrability. Developed as a conventional quasi-ballistic missile, Pralay addresses a capability gap that has become increasingly evident in modern warfare. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles, Pralay performs terminal manoeuvres that improve the probability of reaching heavily defended targets and complicate interception.

Equally significant is the development of indigenous long range land attack cruise missile (LRLACM), which is expected to become a cornerstone of India’s future conventional strike capability. One of the most strategically important achievements from the programme has been the successful development of an indigenous small turbofan engine.

Complementing Akash is the Quick Reaction SAM (QRSAM), designed to accompany rapidly moving armoured formations during combat operations. Engineered for highly mobile warfare, QRSAM addresses the modern battlefield requirement with advanced surveillance radars and highly automated command systems that reduce reaction time while maintaining high engagement accuracy.

At longer ranges, India has pursued a collaborative approach through the medium-range and long-range SAM programmes — MRSAM and LRSAM, jointly developed with Israel. While the DRDO contributed significantly to the programme, the partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries accelerated access to advanced radar, seeker and interception technologies.

One of the most consequential extensions of India’s strategic missile programme came beneath the ocean with the successful trials of submarine-launched K-series missiles. This underwater variant of the ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads was developed to provide the sea-based component of India’s nuclear triad.

While Agni and the K-series ensured India’s ability to retaliate, another DRDO programme pursued the opposite challenge to stop an incoming ballistic missile. India’s BMD programme emerged from the need to develop an indigenous capability to detect, track and intercept hostile ballistic missiles. Both exo-atmospheric and endo-atmospheric interceptors have been developed to engage incoming ballistic missiles first outside the Earth’s atmosphere and, if necessary, again during their terminal descent. The technologies developed under the BMD programme also contributed directly to one of India’s most significant strategic achievements — Mission Shakti. In March 2019, India successfully destroyed one of its own satellites in low Earth orbit using an anti-satellite interceptor, becoming only the fourth country — after the US, Russia and China — to demonstrate such a capability.

For decades, India’s fighter fleet depended heavily on imported air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. Astra and Rudram changed that trajectory. The DRDO designed and developed its own beyond visual range air-to-air missile and anti-radiation systems, moving away from dependence on imported long-range air-combat weapons.

Speed being the next frontier, India is now developing air-breathing propulsion and hypersonic technologies. The DRDO’s current technology road map includes solid-fuel ducted ramjets (SFDR), active-cooled scramjet engines, long-duration scramjet propulsion and hypersonic glide-vehicle technologies. India has already demonstrated scramjet technology with the flight test of hypersonic technology demonstration vehicle. A long-range hypersonic missile designed to travel at more than eight times the speed of sound is also under development. If fully operationalised, such systems could give the armed forces a significant edge in speed, precision and survivability. “India’s missiles ecosystem in its entirety is a proud achievement and we are proud of all the programmes which were developed indigenously in the most trying times,” said Reddy.

The latest addition to the DRDO pipeline is Project Kusha, which represents the country’s ambition to build a long-range indigenous air-defence shield. In July 2026, the DRDO conducted the maiden flight test of Kusha, a surface-to-air missile system intended to provide another layer of India’s multi-tiered air-defence capability as part of Mission Sudarshan Chakra.

This mission’s another major component — the drone detect, deter and destroy (D4) anti-drone technology — has already proved its mettle during Operation Sindoor. It is one of the country’s quickest systems, developed and deployed within 24 months.

As warfare enters an era defined by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, photonics, quantum and directed energy weapons, the traditional metrics of military power are undergoing a profound transformation. This changing character of warfare has also prompted the DRDO to develop an integrated ecosystem of advanced technologies capable of dominating future battlefields.

“The DRDO is going for a metamorphosis — DRDO 2.0. The first photonics radar has already been developed. Laser field power and quantum systems are at advance stages of development. DRDO has also taken up a programme out of all mature technologies to deliver versatile weapons. With photonics, quantum and cognitive systems at play, the focus is more on future technologies,” added Das.