S400 only gap fillers, India to soon field its own 400 Km integrated Air defence system
Three regiments of the S-400 have already arrived in India and operationalised and the delivery schedule of the remaining two units should be completed by sometime in next year.
However the five regiments are just peanuts for air defence of entire country and these cover the most essential areas. IAF needs to deploy additional 15 + regiments to cover the mainland and the islands.
Therefore India too has been developing a layered range surface-to-air missiles defence system capable of taking down enemy aircraft and missiles from a distance of 400km itself. The project is already at advanced stages.
The missile system with three layers of surface-to-air missiles, will target different ranges, propelling IAF into one of an elite group of militaries with indigenous capabilities to strike down incoming airborne enemy assets from such distances.
The surface-to-air missile system development work has been taking place as DRDO worked with Israel and we already have developed the medium-range surface-to-air missile system which can hit aerial targets at 70 plus kms. The next missile in being perfected should cover upto 200+ km and the third one should cover upto 400km.
The Indian system, sources said, would be very capable and would certainly be in the class of the S-400 air defence system already acquired from Russia and deployed along the China and Pakistan border.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has made significant success in terms of developing air defence weapons for both ground-based and warship-based systems.
The IAF has already deployed the S-400 air defence systems, which can hit targets at 400 Km maximum distance and also have the capability to take out targets at shorter ranges too.
