India testfires n-capable missiles

India successfully testfired two nuclear-capable medium-range ballistic missiles Prithvi-II and Dhanush on Saturday from different locations off the Orissa coast,adding more firepower to the Armed Forces. “The tests were successful. Both the missiles test-fired early today met all the parameters,” the director of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur,S P Dash,said.

The missiles have been developed indigenously. The Prithvi-II was test-fired from ITR,Chandipur,15 km from here,at around 5.48 am from a mobile launcher from ITR complex-3 while the ship-based Dhanush was fired from INS-Subhadra in the Bay of Bengal near Puri at around 5.44 am by Navy personnel as part of user training exercise.

Prithvi-II has a range of 295 km while Dhanush,the naval version of Prithvi,can cruise up to 350 km.