Agni V Success

Rajat Pandit TNN 

New Delhi: After the mischief played by the weather gods a day earlier, the god of fire, or ‘Agni’, came into his own on Thursday morning to hurl a potent fireball more than halfway across the expanse of the Indian Ocean at over 20 times the speed of sound. 
    India heralded a new era in its credible strategic deterrence capability by testing its most ambitious nuclear missile — the over 
5,000-km range Agni-V — that brings all of China and much more within its strike reach. 
    With the launch of the 50-tonne missile from the Wheeler Island off Odisha coast at 8.07am, and its 20-minute flight to an “impact point towards western Australia’’, India also yanked open the door to the super-exclusive ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) club that counts only the US, Russia, China, France and the UK as its members. 
    India can, however, sit at this high table only when the 17.5-metre-tall Agni-V, which just about meets the 5,500-km ICBM benchmark, becomes fully operational after 4-5 repeatable tests and user-trials. It will be around 2015 that the three-stage, solid-fuelled missile will be ready for deployment by the tri-Service Strategic Forces Command, sources said. 
Mixed reactions from China 
    The official Chinese reaction downplayed the Agni launch, calling India a “partner”, while its media slammed the success as a nationwide “missile delusion”. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Liu Weimin said, “China and India are both big emerging countries, we are not rivals but cooperation partners”. But state-run Global Times warned India against attempting “containment” of China. Non-critical US urges restraint 
    Refraining from criticizing India for its landmark Agni-V missile test, and instead praising its “solid nonproliferation record”, the Obama administration on Wednesday called on “all nuclear-capable states to exercise restraint regarding nuclear capabilities”, without explicitly naming India.