Indian Navy gets submarine killer torpedo Varunastra

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar formally handed over the weapon to Navy Chief Sunil Lanba at a function held at DRDO headquarters. Parrikar said the event is significant as the indigenous torpedo is being inducted a day before the Indian Air Force was going to raise the first squadron of the home-grown fighter aircraft Tejas.

The Defence Minister asked the DRDO and its Naval Science and Technology Laboratory (NSTL) to ensure their participation in the production process so that the quality of the product is not compromised. 

Accepting the torpedo, Admiral Lanba complimented the DRDO for developing Varunastra, a 1.25 tonnes torpedo that can carry about 250 kg of explosives at a speed of around 40 nautical miles an hour. 

Varunastra is the first indigenous state-of-the art heavy weight ship launched anti-submarine electric torpedo designed and developed by NSTL, a premier lab of DRDO. 

It is capable of targeting quiet and stealthy submarines, both in deep and littoral waters in intense countermeasure environment. 

Varunastra has been designed with latest technologies such as high speed and long endurance propulsion, software driven intelligence, conformal array acoustic homing with wide look angle and advanced digital signal processing.