Key Takeaways
- DRDO’s Solid Fuel Ducted Ramjet technology demonstration marks a significant milestone in India’s defence research.
- The technology has the potential to give India a tactical edge over its adversaries by enabling the development of long-range air-to-air missiles.
- The successful demonstration of SFDR technology places India in an elite league of nations possessing this technology.
New Delhi: The Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) carried out a successful demonstration of Solid Fuel Ducted Ramjet (SFDR) technology from the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur off the coast of Odisha, today.
The demonstration places India in an elite league of nations possessing this technology that enables developing long-range air-to-air missiles to give a tactical edge over the adversaries.
In a statement issued here, the Ministry of Defence stated that all the subsystems, including Nozzle-less Booster, Solid Fuel Ducted Ramjet motor and Fuel Flow Controller, performed as per expectations after being initially propelled by a ground booster motor to the desired Mach Number.
The performance of the system was confirmed by the flight data captured by several tracking instruments deployed by ITR, Chandipur, along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. The launch was monitored by senior scientists from various laboratories of DRDO, including Defence Research & Development Laboratory, High Energy Materials Research Laboratory, Research Centre Imarat and ITR.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh complimented DRDO and Industry on the successful demonstration of SFDR technology. Secretary, Department of Defence R&D & Chairman DRDO, Dr Samir V Kamat, congratulated all the teams involved in the successful flight test.
Earlier, on January 11, DRDO’s Defence Research & Development Laboratory, Hyderabad, successfully flight-tested the Third Generation Fire & Forget Man Portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile (MPATGM) with top attack capability against a moving target in KK Ranges, Ahilya Nagar, Maharashtra. The indigenously developed MPATGM consists of state-of-the-art indigenous technologies like Imaging Infrared (IIR) Homing Seeker, all electric Control Actuation System, Fire Control System, Tandem Warhead, propulsion system and high performance sighting system, which are developed by DRDO’s sister laboratories namely Research Centre Imarat, Hyderabad, Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory, Chandigarh, High Energy Materials Research Laboratory, Pune and Instruments Research & Development Establishment, Dehradun.
The DRDO also successfully conducted a long-duration ground test of an actively cooled, full-scale scramjet engine on January 10. The test, held at the Scramjet Connect Pipe Test (SCPT) facility of the Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL) in Hyderabad, achieved a runtime of over 12 minutes.
