India has flight-tested a homegrown intercontinental ballistic missile designed to drop multiple warheads on distant targets, bolstering its nuclear deterrence capabilities and entering an exclusive club of nations that possess this technology.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Monday that the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had conducted the first flight test of a version of its Agni-5 missile armed with Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.

“Proud of our DRDO scientists for Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with… MIRV technology,” Modi posted on X.

The DRDO had first tested the Agni-5 missile, which has a designed range of around 5,000km, in 2012. The Agni-5 — a successor to the earlier Agni series of missiles with ranges from 700km to 4,000km — is primarily intended to maintain nuclear deterrence against China.

The Agni-5 version with MIRV will allow a single missile to deploy multiple warheads, in contrast to a traditional missile ferrying a single warhead. Defence technology analysts consider MIRVs as effective countermeasures against ballistic missile defence systems that seek to take out incoming missiles.

The DRDO carried out the Agni-5 MIRV test from its missile testing complex on APJ Abdul Kalam island in Odisha. “Various telemetry and radar stations tracked and monitored the multiple reentry vehicles. The mission accomplished the designed parameters,” the defence ministry said in a statement. The statement did not specify how many reentry vehicles the missile had ferried nor the distance that they travelled.

Only the US, the UK, France, Russia and China possess MIRV technology, according to the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a US non-profit think-tank.