Kendrapada (Orissa): President A P J Abdul Kalam on Tuesday paid a visit to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Missle Test Range at Wheeler Islands near the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary in the Bay of Bengal.
The President had founded the testrange almost a decade back to see its various units.
According to junior scientist A Panda, the operation had also been set up to protect the endangered Olive Ridley Sea Turtles, which come in lakhs every year to Gahirmatha coast for mass nesting.
Had he not supported the project, the Missile Test Range which existed today in wheeler island would have been set up in some other state.
The President's visit to the island assumed much significancein view of the possibility of test fire of the much-awaited Idia's most sophisticated long-range ballistic missile Agni III.
The President in his book, Ignited minds: Unleashing the power within India, had written that when he was the Chief of DPRO in July 1995, the 4th consecutive successful testfire of Prithivi had moved them to ponder over what would happen next.
The then Lieutenant General Ramesh Khosla, Director General Artillery, suggested to him that the army needed a flight test on a land range with the accuracy of impact at the final destination within 150 metres, which is called Circular Error Probability (CEP) in technical terms.
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