Two little known villages in Alwar and Pali districts will soon gain strategic importance as they have been selected by the Defence Ministry’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for setting up radars to track enemy missiles.
The forest department has cleared the acquisition of 850 hectares of land in Khoa in Alwar district and 350 hectares in Roopnagar for installing ballistic missile defence grid that will protect the western and northern parts of the country.
This was done after the union ministry of environment and forest in 2014 cleared the DRDO proposal on the conditions laid down by the ministry.
According to A K Singh, additional principle chief conservator of forest, the state government following the clearance given by the union ministry has allotted then land to to DRDO.
The ballistic missile defence grid will help guard New Delhi and Mumbai.
The state government has also allotted 80 hectares of land in Pilani for setting up the Bramhos missile assembly line .
These two sites in the state have been strategically chosen by DRDO and has a stealth feature. The ballistic missile defence system can be put in place at short notice.
To counter air-borne threats, DRDO will put a mixture of counter-attack missiles which will be able to shoot down enemy missiles both within the earth’s atmosphere (endo-atmospheric) and outside it (exo-atmospheric).
The shield, developed by DRDO, has already undergone a series of successful tests and can destroy an incoming ballistic missile within the range of 2,000km.
The Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system will require minimum human intervention due to the complete automation of tracking devices and counter-measures.
During the test stage, DRDO used variants of Prithvi missiles as simulated targets and successfully intercepted them in mid-air.
All the necessary elements such as long-range radars and tracking devices, real-time data link and mission control system required for installing the BMD missile system have been also been successfully tested by the DRDO and was upgraded last year.
