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| Brahmos fired at Arabian Sea when air space was open |
November 3, 2015, NewsCrunch
Indian Navy test-fired its main attack weapon, BrahMos, on Saturday. The cruise missile, which has a strike-range of over 290 kilometres, was fired from stealth destroyer INS Kochi, and hit a target ship in the Arabian Sea.
Mumbai Mirror reports that for the three hours on Saturday afternoon when the Navy tested Brahmos, the air space in the area remained shockingly open. That is, as the missile was on its way to hitting its target, performing extremely complex manoeuvres, commercial planes flew by in the vicinity.
The Navy had reportedly sent a communication to Air Traffic Control in Mumbai seeking no-fly zone in the area between 1230 hrs and 1530 hrs on Saturday.
The Navy, according to Mirror, failed to specify that it had Indian Standard Time in mind and ATC assumed that it meant Greenwich Mean Time.
ATC closed the airspace between 6 pm to 9 pm three hours after the exercise ended.