Chinese military experts said Monday that India's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) technology remained only a strategic deterrence, following the Sunday launch of a high-altitude missile capable of intercepting targets outside the atmosphere.
India "created history by test-launching state-of-the-art Gen-next interceptor missile from a defense base off the Odisha coast," the New Indian Express reported Monday.
"The trial was conducted successfully and all the mission objectives were met," Ravi Kumar Gupta, spokesperson for India's Defense Research and Development Organization, told the Press Trust of India news agency.
Officials said the missiles are ultimately aimed at engaging targets in the exo-atmospheric region, indicating an altitude of more than 120 kilometers.
The interceptor missile was test-fired at 9.08 am from the launch complex-IV on Wheeler Island, just over one minute after the target missile was fired from a ship located nearly 70 kilometers off the Paradip coast, the report said. Wheeler Island is in the Bay of Bengal, around 10 kilometers from the northeast coast, and is home to India's missile testing facility.
India's latest anti-missile test is more aimed at "strategic deterrence," as this technology will make their enemies feel the strike power of their missiles is diminished, Wang Ya'nan, a senior editor at Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times.
India is developing a two-tier missile defense system, which will destroy an incoming missile outside the atmosphere, and if that fails, go on to intercept it within the earth's atmosphere.
The missile is capable of destroying an incoming missile with a strike range of around 2,000 kilometers outside the earth's atmosphere.
"The missiles will get intercepted at range of more than 100 kilometers away, so that damage to our cities can be prevented," said Avinash Chander, the director-general of India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO).
Only a few countries have such a capability, the newspaper said.
While some Chinese military experts agreed that India has made progress in missile interception technology, others cast doubt over the significance of the latest launch.
"It's hard to conclude whether India's anti-missile technology has reached a certain level, as they also launched the target missile, so the launch time and ballistic data are all readily available," a Chinese missile expert, who declined to be identified, told the Global Times.
He said based on Russia's S300 system, China has developed relatively mature anti-ballistic missile capabilities that are ready for combat, but India is still experimenting with it.
China bid to sell its Red Flag-9 anti-missile system to Turkey last year in a potential $3.44 billion deal, although NATO then exerted pressure on Ankara to abandon the deal, which still hangs in the balance.
Song Zhongping, a former lecturer on missile technology and now military affairs commentator in Beijing, said India's new interceptor missile "could only be similar to the level of Chinese missiles in the 1990s."
Song said that the target missile was not advanced and lacks effective evasive techniques which had made it easier for the interceptor to strike the target.
In real combat, however, it is hard for even the most advanced interceptors produced by the US, such as the Patriot missile, to hit Chinese missile targets, the anonymous missile expert said.
India has tested seven interceptor missiles in recent years, and claimed success for six of them.
The expert admitted China's anti-missile technology is at least 15-20 years away from the US, in terms of the response time, the target accuracy and comprehensive information technology.
Currently, the US, Russia and Israel are world leaders in anti-ballistic missile technology.
India and its neighbors Pakistan and China are all equipped with nuclear weapons. India test-fired a nuclear-capable medium-range Prithvi-II ballistic missile on March 28.
Agencies contributed to this story