India Sunday tested the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile, a specially developed high-speed interceptor missile, over the Bay of Bengal, defence sources have said.

As a part of its air defence exercise, scientists fired the high-speed interceptor missile a few minutes after a target missile blasted off from Chandipur-on-Sea near here. The target, a derivative of the Prithvi missile, was fired at 10.42 am from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur, located about 120 km from Wheeler Island, defence sources said.

The interceptor missile was fired at 10.44 a.m. from Inner Wheeler Island off the Orissa coast.

Defence sources described the Sunday test firings as a mock trial and said that the final tests would be conducted only after analysing data from this initial test.

These tests come a year after the successful tests conducted on Nov 27 last year, which had been dubbed as the Prithvi Air Defence exercise (PADE). These tests had used a modified version of the Prithvi to destroy an incoming target missile.

The AAD used on Sunday was a new missile, scientists said, and not a derivative or an update of any existing missile. According to defence sources, the missile was specially designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for this role.

Sources claimed that in performance, the AAD was slightly better than the US PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability) system in terms of interception, altitude and range.