NEW DELHI, Dec 12: India expects to have its missile defence shield ready in three years, a development that would help secure the country’s ‘high value assets’ and major cities like Delhi and Mumbai, the Press Trust of India said on Wednesday, quoting a key missile scientist.

The two-layered Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system to cope with threats from ballistic missiles as well as terrain-hugging cruise missile could be ready by 2010, India’s top missile scientist V. K. Saraswat said.

The assurance came in the backdrop of Pakistan building up an arsenal of missiles which would give India hardly a 3-4 minute reaction time, PTI said.

“An integrated test trial of the interceptor missile and its sub-systems would be conducted in June next year,” Dr Saraswat told newspersons on the recent successful test trials of the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missiles in endo-atmospheric mode.

He said three to four more flight trials of the AAD and another four trials of exo-atmospheric missiles were required before declaring the system as ‘operational.’

The missile scientist said the AAD system could also be configured to take care of threats from terrain-hugging cruise missiles.

Asked when BMD could be mass produced to cover the whole nation, Drc Saraswat said that within weeks of the system being validated the production lines would be ready to roll out the system in bulk.

He said there was a ‘substantial’ private sector participation in the BMD development programme.