NEW DELHI: The countdown has begun. Within three months, India will gatecrash the super-exclusive

ICBM

(inter-continental ballistic missile) club, largely the preserve of countries like the US,

Russia

and China that brandish long-range strategic missiles with strike ranges well beyond 5,500 km.

However, it will become a full-fledged member of the club only when its most ambitious nuclear-capable Agni-V ballistic missile, which will be able to target even northern China if required, becomes fully operational in 2014.

Gung-ho a day after the successful test of the new-generation 3,500-km

Agni-IV

missile, senior defence scientists on Wednesday declared that Agni-V, with a strike range of over 5,000-km, would be test-fired within the December-February time-frame.

"The three-stage Agni-V is undergoing integration at the moment…it's on schedule,"

DRDO

chief

V K Saraswat

said, adding that both Agni-IV and V were comparable to the best missiles in their class, including Chinese ones, as far as the technology was concerned. Agni programme director Avinash Chander said his team was "confident" of offering the 17.5-metre-tall Agni-V for induction to the armed forces by 2014. The much-lighter two-stage Agni-IV will be operational by 2013 after two to four more "repeatable" tests.

"Our aim is to take just two to three years from the first test to the induction phase," he said.

Once deployed, the 20-tonne Agni-IV and 50-tonne Agni-V will add the much-needed muscle to India's nuclear deterrence posture against China, which has a huge nuclear and missile arsenal like the 11,200-km Dong Feng-31A ICBM which is capable of hitting any Indian city. With higher accuracy, fast-reaction capability and road mobility, unlike the earlier largely rail-mobile Agni missiles, Agni-IV and V will give India the required operational flexibility against China since they will be capable of being stored and swiftly transported. If launched from the north-east, for instance, they will be able to hit high-value targets deep inside China.

India, however, is not in an arms race or "numbers game" like the US-Soviet rivalry of the Cold War era. "We are not looking at how many missiles China or Pakistan has. With a 'no first-use' nuclear weapons policy, we only want a sufficient number of missiles to defend the country in the event of a crisis. Ours is a defensive-mode strategy, even if others have offensive postures," Saraswat said. The DRDO chief added that "

indigenous

content" in India's strategic missiles had gone up to such a level, with ring-laser gyros, composite rocket motors, micro-navigation systems and their ilk, that "no technology control regime" could derail them any longer.

Then why not go for missiles that can fly around 10,000 km? DRDO claims that it has the capability to develop such missiles but the government does not want alarm bells to clang around the globe. India, after all, is interested only in "credible minimum deterrence" against the threats it faces. Saraswat said the current focus was on fine-tuning the Agni missiles to defeat anti-ballistic missile systems of potential adversaries. Towards this end, added Chander, the radar and other "signatures" of Agni-IV have been significantly reduced to make them "much more immune to counter-measures".

What will make the Agni missiles even more deadly is the development of

MIRV

(multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles) warheads on which the DRDO is working. An MIRV payload on a missile carries several nuclear warheads, which can be programmed to hit different targets. A flurry of such missiles can completely overwhelm BMD (

ballistic missile defence

) systems.