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India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) announced Jan. 8 the closure of the country’s strategic Integrated Guided Missile Development Program. Responsible for a wide variety of missile types — from the intermediate-range ballistic missile known as the Agni-III to anti-tank guided missiles — the program was chronically behind schedule and ultimately produced inferior weapons. But its closure hardly means India is getting out of the defense game.
India’s efforts to field everything from its own surface-to-air missile to an indigenously designed and manufactured main battle tank have all too often proved underwhelming. The DRDO program to design and build a nuclear-powered attack submarine has languished for decades. New Delhi has consistently found that too much emphasis on domestic design and production efforts can be a black hole for time, money and resources.
The most notable exception to that is the recent success of the Brahmos supersonic anti-ship and cruise missile developed as a joint venture with Russia. Heavily leveraging a late-Cold War Soviet design that really had yet to leave the drawing board, the Indian military is now fielding a promising (though unproven) new missile and preparing to move toward sales abroad. More projects with Moscow are already in the works, including a fifth-generation fighter jet that will probably use the highly successful Sukhoi “Flanker” series as a jumping-off point.
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