said . His face lit up with a friendly glow . “ You are buying the blessings of Mother Earth for Agni ,” Defence Minister KC Pant quipped . “ We will succeed tomorrow ”, he predicted .
The next day Agni took off at 0710 hrs . It was a perfect launch . The missile followed a textbook trajectory . All flight parameters were met . It was like waking up to a beautiful morning from a nightmarish sleep . We had reached the launch pad after five years of continuous work at multiple work centres . We had lived through the ordeal of a series of snags in the last five weeks . We had survived pressure from everywhere to stop the whole thing . But we did it at last ! It was one of the greatest moments of my life . A mere 600 seconds of elegant flight washed off our entire fatigue in an instant . What a wonderful culmination of our years of labour . I wrote in my diary that night :
Do not look at Agni as an entity directed upward to deter the ominous or exhibit your might . It is fire in the heart of an Indian . Do not even give it the form of a missile as it clings to the burning pride of this nation and thus is bright .
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi called the Agni launch “ a major achievement in our continuing efforts to safeguard our independence and security by self-reliant means . The technology demonstration through Agni is a reflection of our commitment to the indigenous development of advanced technologies for the nation ’ s defence .” “ The country is proud of your efforts ,” he told me . President Venkataraman saw in the Agni success the fulfilment of his dream . He cabled from Simla , “ It is a tribute to your dedication , hard work , and talent .”
A great deal of misinformation and disinformation had been spread by vested interests about this technology mission . Agni had never been intended only as a nuclear weapon system . What it did was to afford us the option of developing the ability to deliver non-nuclear weapons with high precision at long ranges . That it provided us with a viable nonnuclear option was of the greatest relevance to contemporary strategic doctrines .
Great ire was raised by the test firing of Agni , according to a wellknown American defence journal , especially in the United States where Congressmen threatened to put a stop to all dual-use and missile-related technologies , along with all multinational aid .
Gary Milhollin , a so-called specialist in missiles and warhead technologies , had made a claim in The Wall Street Journal that India had made Agni with the help of West Germany . I had a hearty laugh reading that the German Aerospace Research Establishment ( DLR ) had developed Agni ’ s guidance system , the first-stage rocket , and a composite nose cone , and that the aerodynamic model of Agni was tested in the DLR wind tunnel . An immediate denial came from the DLR , who in turn speculated that France had supplied the Agni guidance electronics . American Senator Jeff Bingaman even went to the extent of suggesting that I picked up everything needed for Agni during my four-month stay at Wallop ’ s Island in 1962 . The fact that I was in Wallop ’ s Island more than 25 years ago and at that time the technology used in Agni did not exist even in the United States was not mentioned .