As reported by TOI earlier, the ongoing Phase-I BMD system is geared towards tackling enemy missiles with a 2,000-km range, Phase-II is being designed to intercept incoming missiles in the 5,000-km class range. But it will take some years for the BMD system to become fully operational.
Similarly, Agni-III will be ready only by 2012-2013. The first test of the rail-mobile missile, which is 16.7-metre tall and has a lift-off weight of 50 tonnes, in July 2006 had flopped miserably. But the subsequent two tests, in April 2007 and May 2008, were deemed successful.
Agni-III is crucial since it will provide India with the capability to strike deep into China, bringing cities like Shanghai and Beijing within its potent reach.
India's most ambitious strategic missile Agni-V, with a 5,000-km range, in turn, will be ready for its first test only by early-2011 or so.
Both Agni-III and Agni-V are primarily designed to bolster India's "active credible deterrence posture'' against China, especially since it has a clear-cut "no-first use'' nuclear doctrine.
China's expanding nuclear and missile arsenal, of course, has even the US worried. The Chinese DF-31A ICBM, with a strike range of 11,270 km, for instance, can target any location in the continental US.
The chinese and our pakistani brothers say Indians are the ones crying all the time, But this is what happens to everyone when it comes to defence. In lay mans term India wants a minimum deterence against China which nobody can stop