India approved a plan to buy short-range man-portable air defense missiles and stated its intention to deploy along the Chinese border.
On January 10, India’s Ministry of Defense announced that the Defense Acquisition Council (DAC), headed by Minister Rajnath Singh, has approved the plan to purchase the VSHORAD man-portable air defense missile by the Research and Development Authority of India. Defense Development (DRDO) of this country produced.
“Recent developments along the northern border have raised the need for a concentrated concentration of effective anti-aircraft weapons that can be manned and deployed rapidly in difficult terrain,” the Indian Ministry of Defense said. Degree with the segment.
India’s VSHORAD man-portable air defense missile is designed to neutralize air threats at low altitudes or at close range, similar to the US-made FIM-92 Stinger.
The VSHORAD complex weighs 20.5 kg, is 2 m long, and carries a missile with a warhead weighing 2 kg. The missile has a maximum flight speed of 1,852 km/h, a maximum range of 6 km, and a ceiling of 3.5 km.
India’s new defense move comes as the region’s militarization increases and border tensions with China enter their third year.
The two countries fought a border war in 1962, but the agreements negotiated by the two sides over the next 25 years have helped to reduce tensions, creating conditions for the two sides to promote cooperation in many fields, especially. Economic and commercial.
After President Xi Jinping came to power, India-China relations are said to have entered a warm period. However, border tensions continued to escalate with small-scale confrontations between the two countries border guards in the following years, culminating in a bloody brawl in the Galwan Valley in June 2020.
At the end of 2022, soldiers of the two countries continued to fight at the border area in the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, not long after a joint exercise between Washington and New Delhi.
After the incident, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said the Chinese military was “unilaterally trying to change the status quo by violating the Line of Actual Control in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.”
Beijing did not comment on the clash, telling the media that “the situation on the border between the two countries is generally stable.”
VSHORAD
India’s Defense Research and Development Organisation created the VSHORAD (Very Short Range Air Defense) surface-to-air missile system for its armed forces (DRDO). It was built for use against helicopters, drones, and other similarly low-flying aircraft.
The missile ranges up to 2.5 kilometers and is launched from a shoulder-mounted launcher. Both the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force are now using the VSHORAD system.
The VSHORAD missile system is a weapon designed to protect troops and other ground assets from aerial threats such as low-flying aircraft, helicopters, and drones. It has a shoulder-mounted launcher that a single person may use. Its maximum range is 2.5 kilometers, and its maximum altitude is 5,000 meters.
It can function in both lock-on-before-launch and lock-on-after-launch modes, allowing it to follow and target the object either before or after launch, thanks to its infrared imaging seeker. When it comes to protecting against aerial threats at close range, the VSHORAD missile is a tried and true option.