It can carry a nuclear warhead weighing 1.1 tonnes

India's strategic missile, Agni-V, will be test-fired from the Wheeler Island, off the Odisha coast, on January 31.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which has developed the missile, will launch it from a canister mounted on a road-mobile launcher, which is a TATRA truck. A gas generator at the bottom of the canister will push the 17-metre long, 50-tonne Agni-V out of the canister. The missile, which can take out targets situated more than 5,000 km away, can carry a nuclear warhead weighing 1.1 tonnes. In the launch on January 31, 2015, it will carry a dummy payload.

The missile was earlier scheduled to be test-fired in the second week of January but was postponed to the last week of January or the first week of February due to “non-technical” reasons.

It is significant that the missile will lift off now on January 31 because it is the day that Avinash Chander, the Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister and DRDO Director-General, will be demitting office. Mr. Chander is the key architect of Agni series of missiles, all of which can carry nuclear warheads.