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BREAKING: First Astra test-firing from LCA Tejas just happened off India's west coast

Impressed to see the clean engine flames, almost Western style, instead of the Smokey Soviet/Chinese missiles. Chinese BVR/WVR smoke so much the entire plane becomes engulfed with the smoke. Not sure if it’s due to the type of propellants used or just the outdated technology.
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Last year India had placed an order worth $424 million for 400 Astra Mk1 BVRAAMs and their associated equipment, to be delivered by Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) within 4 years of the contract signature.

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Last month, India awarded a US$424.4 million contract to state-run Bharat Dynamics Limited to supply the homegrown Astra Mk1 beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air missile to its armed forces.

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Under the contract, Bharat Dynamics will supply 400 Astra Mk1 missiles and their associated equipment, to be delivered in four years. The missiles will be used on the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) Su-30MKI and LCA-MK fighters and the Indian Navy’s (IN) MiG-29K carrier-based fighters.

The missiles will be assembled in Bharat Dynamics’ 632-acre manufacturing facility at Bhanur, which was established in 2017 at a cost of $74.5 million.

Astra was developed by India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in the early 2000s and has since been manufactured by Bharat Dynamics. According to DRDO, India’s main agency for military research and development, the all-weather, night-capable missile is designed to engage and destroy fast-maneuvering supersonic aircraft.

It is equipped with a fully indigenous active terminal guidance system and advanced electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) to reduce the effectiveness of enemy jamming. The missile also features lock-on before launch (LOBL) and lock-on after launch (LOAL) capability, allowing launching aircraft to take advantage of its reported maximum range of more than 100 kilometers.

There will be larger orders for the Astra Mk1 down the line, given that it has to replace the R-77 and R-27 on the Su-30MKI fleet.

Next in line are the MiG-29UPGs and the IN's MiG-29Ks for the Astra Mk1.

And with the dual pulse 150+ km range Astra Mk2 soon to enter testing, BDL's order books for the Astra series will be in the billions of $.
 
Need to mass produce as make it standard BVR across the AF/Navy fleet. Astra also has huge export potential, considering the western missiles are quite expensive and since we would be arming on both Russian and Western platforms, we may get good number of foreign orders as well:cheers:.

Also I hope we make WVR too as soon as possible to complement ASRAAMs!!
 
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