Hypersonic Technology

India's hypersonic missile programme delivered two headline achievements in 2026:

  • DRDO's Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LR-AShM), a 1,500-km-range hypersonic boost-glide weapon developed by the Advanced Systems Laboratory for the Navy, was publicly unveiled at the Republic Day parade on January 26, 2026, and underwent a Phase-II flight test off the Odisha coast in May 2026.
  • DRDL's Actively Cooled Full-Scale Scramjet Combustor achieved a run-time of over 1,200 seconds (20 minutes) at its Hyderabad test facility in May 2026 — up from over 700 seconds in January — validating the engine's ability to sustain the extreme thermal loads needed for a genuine hypersonic cruise missile, and putting India in a select group of nations with this air-breathing propulsion capability.