DRDO successfully test fires Barak 8 LRSAM missile

Bhubaneswar, Jan 24: Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO), on Thursday successfully test fired Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LR-SAM) from naval warship INS Chennai off the coast of Odisha.

LR-SAM also is known as Barak 8 is an Indian-Israeli surface-to-air missile. The missile is designed to defend against any airborne threat including aircraft, helicopters, anti-ship missiles, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and combat jets.

The Barak 8 LRSAM missile defense system has been jointly developed by IAI and India's state-owned Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in collaboration with defense contractors in India and Israel, including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The two countries began join work on the LRSAM in 2006 with a first successful test firing of the missile system taking place in May 2010.

The missile was last test fired by the Indian Navy from the 7,500-ton Kolkata-class (Project 15A) guided-missile destroyer INS Kochi in November 2017.

The vertically-launched two-stage Barak 8, fitted with advanced radio frequency/infrared homing seekers, is designed to deal with a wide range of incoming airborne threats and can intercept targets as close as 500 meters away from a ship. The missile has a maximum speed of Mach 2 and its maximum range is estimated at around 70 kilometers (an extended range version of the Barak 8 can reportedly intercept targets at a distance of up to 150 kilometers.)

LRSAM also features a multifunction active electronically scanned array naval radar system providing 360 degree coverage.

The Indian military is also slated to receive the land-based version of the LRSAM, dubbed medium-range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM). The Indian Army is expected to stand up five MRSAM regiments by 2023 which, next to missile launch platforms, will also come with command and control systems, and tracking radar systems.