JODHPUR, India - India has tested an air defence missile at a site close to its tense border with Pakistan where it conducted a string of nuclear detonations in 1998, officials said on Wednesday. Military scientists tested the medium-range surface-to-air missile Akash, or Sky, from Pokhran, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) from PakistanÂ’s borders last week but gave details of the flight only on Wednesday.The flight was carried out in near-secrecy from Pokhran, where nine years ago India tested a string of nuclear weapons including a thermo-nuclear device.
“The test was a success and we hope Akash will be inducted very soon into the army,” Samir Sinha, spokesman of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation, told AFP in Jodhpur in Rajasthan state. Sinha did not say why the test was conducted in Rajasthan’s Thar desert and not at India’s National Missile Testing Range in the eastern state of Orissa, on the opposite side of the country where such tests are normally conducted.
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