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Army To Acquire VSHORAD Missile System, Will Improve Mountain Warfare Capabilities

VSHORADS is a man-portable Air Defence System designed and developed in-house by the DRDO to kill low-altitude aerial threats at short ranges

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) granted Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) on Tuesday to procure the Very Short Range Air Defence System or VSHORAD (IR Homing) missile system, designed and developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), as well as other weapon systems for the Army and Navy at a total cost of Rs 4,276 crore.

The development comes amid an ongoing military standoff with China along the LAC in eastern Ladakh and reports of Chinese air violations along the LAC last year.

Since 2018, India has been in talks with Russia to purchase Igla-S air defence missiles for USD 1.5 billion through the VSHORAD programme, in order to replace the Russian Igla-M systems currently in use by the Army.

However, defence officials indicated that little progress has been made on that front, and it has been put on hold for the time being due to the strong government pitch for Atmanirbharta (self-reliance) in defence. The most recent AoN granted for procuring the DRDO-developed VSHORAD attests to this.

In September of last year, the DRDO successfully conducted two test flights of the VSHORADS missile from a ground-based portable launcher at the Integrated Test Range, Chandipur, off the coast of Odisha.

According to the defence ministry, the missile, which is propelled by a dual thrust solid motor, incorporates many novel technologies, such as a miniaturised Reaction Control System (RCS) and integrated avionics, which were successfully demonstrated during last year's tests. The missile and its launcher were designed by the DRDO to be portable.



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