Agni III being test-fired on Wednesday. (PTI)

New Delhi, May 7: India today test-fired a missile that it believes is its main deterrent against a nuclear attack from Pakistan and/or China. The Agni III missile was test-fired for the third time by military scientists.

The test-firing happens even as right-wing hardliners allege that the Manmohan Singh government is cowardly and does not want to commemorate the May 1998 nuclear tests by the A.B. Vajpayee government.

India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation claimed the third test-firing was an achievement in its golden jubilee year. Today’s missile was fired at 9.56am from Wheeler Island, about 12km from Dhamra off the Orissa coast. The leader of the Agni III programme is missile director Avinash Chander.

The DRDO was asked to develop a system that can launch a missile with a nuclear warhead deep into enemy territory. Even if today’s Agni III launch cannot be compared to the dramatics of the “thermonuclear” experiments of May 11 and 13, 1998, it signals the continuation of a military doctrine.

The test of the Agni III — the missile has a range of 3,500km, more than the distance between Delhi and Beijing — fulfils both a technological and a political need.

By claiming that the missile “met all parameters”, India’s defence establishment is saying it has the wherewithal to stave off an adversary like China. India is also demonstrating it has a missile that can carry a nuclear warhead (a ‘nuke’) over a strategic (“long”) distance.

Second, Manmohan Singh’s government is trying to demonstrate that it is not as pusillanimous as the NDA is making it out to be.