DRDO’s Saraswat stings China

Beijing: Revealing the truly brittle nature of its much-hyped near super power status, the Chinese establishment has rushed to refute the contention of a top Indian defence scientist that aspects of India's missile development programme were superior to that of China.

The Global Times, a Communist Party-backed Chinese newspaper, has front-paged a report that quotes a top Chinese naval officer, who is also a defence analyst, as saying that India was at least a decade and more behind China in missile technology. The report was prominently splashed across the Chinese media.

In the Friday report, Chinese rear admiral, Zhang Zhaozhong, was quoted as saying, ''India's technology for its measurement and control system, which is used to trace launched missiles, remains at a very low level, and they are unable to constitute a complete and reliable missile defense system.''

This, of course, makes nonsense of all Indian achievements in the field of missile defence so far, as intercepts are not possible if you should have ''low level measurement and control systems to trace launched missiles,'' according to Adm Zhaozhong.

Indian missile defence technology initially relied on imported Israeli long range Green Pine radars to constitute its tracking apparatus. In the last round of tests Indian defence scientists revealed that they had developed a more advanced version of the Green Pine, a 'super' Green Pine so to speak, to track missile launches.

Adm Zhaozhong's assertion is in keeping with past displays of what may be characterised as a deep seated inferiority complex that China exhibits towards most Indian achievements. It may be recalled that at the time India launched its Chandrayaan-1 moon mission, the Chinese media went berserk with the 'news'  that the lunar orbiter had failed to reach the required orbit for eventual transit into moon orbit.  The 'news' was put down to some 'analysis' carried out by private Chinese space 'experts.'