The Indian Navy has successfully test-fired its domestically-built nuclear-capable ballistic missile Dhanush, which possesses a range of 350km, from a naval ship in the Bay of Bengal off the Odisha coast, India.

During the test, conducted as part of a navy training exercise, the missile validated all radars, telemetry stations and electro-optical systems capability in real-time.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-built single-stage liquid propellant ship-based missile Dhanush is the naval version of the surface-to-surface Prithvi short-range ballistic missile system.

"The trial was a complete success and all the mission objectives were accomplished."

Press Trust of India has cited DRDO Directorate of Public Interface director Ravi Kumar Gupta as saying that the missile had been successfully launched by the strategic force command (SFC) of the Indian Navy from a naval ship.

"The trial was a complete success and all the mission objectives were accomplished," Gupta added.

Capable of carrying a payload of 500kg, the 8.53m-long missile can also carry conventional and nuclear warheads to hit sea and shore-based targets.

Dhanush missile also demonstrated its capability during a flight test in 2010 from the Indian Navy’s Sukanya-class patrol vessel, INS Subhadra, in the Bay of Bengal.

As well as being used as an anti-ship weapon, the missile was developed under the integrated guided missile development programme (IGMDP) and can be used for attacking land targets depending on the range.

Recently, the Indian Army successfully test-fired its nuclear-capable Prithvi-II missile from a launch complex-III at the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur, Orissa, as part of routine user trials to evaluate the missile’s real-time effectiveness.