A fighter aircraft's lethality in air-to-air combat is governed by the air-to-air missile that it carries. Since the Independence, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has mounted French, Russian and British missiles on its fighters. On Sunday, an IAF Sukhoi-30MKI fighter conducted the first test launch of the indigenous Astra air-to-air missile, which the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) is developing at its missile cluster in Hyderabad.
