India achieved a significant milestone in the direction of developing a two-layered Ballistic Missile Defence system on Saturday by successfully test firing an interceptor missile designed to intercept and destroy hostile ballistic missiles in space. This further enhances India's capability of dealing with a nuclear attack threat. Here's all you need to know about it:

What is the

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What does BMD consist of?

Who else has a BMD system?

The Indian Story

* The Ballistic Missile Defence programme aims to provide an effective missile shield against incoming enemy ballistic and nuclear missiles.* A hostile missile needs to be intercepted at boost (launch) point, mid-course (flight through space), or terminal phase (during atmospheric descent).The BMD is a two-tier fully automated system which comprises of:* Overlapping network of early warning and tracking radars* Reliable command and control posts* Land and sea-based batteries of advanced interceptor missiles* Only a handful of countries like the US, Russia , China and Israel have effective BMD systems.* But no system is 100% full-proof.* The Defence Research and Development Organisation ( DRDO )began developing a two-tier BMD system in late-1990s.* An interceptor missile was first tested in 2006.* Since then, interceptor missiles have been tested around 10 times. At least three such tests are known to have failed.* The BMD system is designed to track and destroy hostile missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth’s atmosphere.* However, it has not yet been tested in integrated mode, with both exo and endo interceptor missiles together.* Phase-I of BMD system is geared towards tackling enemy missiles with a 2,000-km range. Phase-II will enable interception of missiles in 5,000-km range* But there has been a long delay in becoming operational. The DRDO had earlier promised the two-tier missile shield would be deployed in Delhi by 2014.