The Agni-III, which plunged into the sea after just five minutes of flight in July, will be tested again only towards mid-2007 as the teams at DRDL and the Integrated Test Range in Chandipur try to unravel the disaster.

As for the remaining three, anti-missile system Trishul is a closed chapter proving to be only a technology demonstrator, by former Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s own recent admission, after it was decided that persistent beam guidance glitches could not be put behind the project.

Even though the system’s radar is ready and functional, the Trishul team has never been able to correct the missile’s flawed trajectory — in all tests it has escaped out of its envelope. The project’s manpower has already been distributed among PSU Bharat Dynamics Ltd in Hyderabad, the Indo-Israeli Barak-II next generation missile project, the Project Nag and the submarine-launched missile, designated K-15.

A notional one-year extension granted to the project till December 2007, after hectic lobbying, is being seen as an outrage by the Army and Navy.

The Akash medium range surface-to-air missile, which DRDO publicly claims “is in the process of induction” will, according to the Ministry in testimony to a Parliamentary Standing Committee, only begin Phase-II user trials in December on a T-72 platform, a change that could pile up the massive time overrun further.

An exasperated IAF, which calls Phase-I user trials unsatisfactory, has decided to buy Israeli Spyder missile systems instead.

... contd.