Astra missile News

Wreckage of China’s PL-15E missile - fired by Pakistan - lands in Indian hands, exposing Beijing’s tech secrets and giving Delhi a once-in-a-decade reverse-engineering goldmine.

The IAF had carried out a study to check if the airframes of the MiG-29s on offer were good enough for it to operate for a long time. MiG-29s are flown by the IAF and the pilots are familiar with it but the ones offered by the Russians are different from the ones in the Indian inventory.

With the test-firings, Astra missile has completed the user trial phase. Now, Astra BVRAAM will be inducted into the IAF with the DRDO sounding confident that it will prove to be force multiplier due to its pinpoint accuracy and long-range in taking out aerial threats.

While IAF's Su-30MKI is capable of firing the indigenously developed Astra missile, the other combat aircraft in the force's arsenal like the Mirage-2000, Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29 and Light Combat Aircraft CA Tejas will also be modified to carry the missile.

The missile was test-fired from a Sukhoi Su-30MKI combat aircraft of the Indian Air Force that took off from an airbase in West Bengal. The Astra missiles are equipped with mid-course inertial guidance and terminal active radar homing. They are capable of targeting the enemy aircraft or missiles at short-range (20 km) as well as at BVR (over 70 km).

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has postponed the trial series of visual range air-to-air Astra missile due to bad weather on Thursday.