DRDO Missile Testing Range Coming Up In West Bengal’s Junput, Project Gains Momentum

India is moving ahead with plans for a new DRDO missile and weapons testing facility at Junput in West Bengal’s Purba Medinipur district, adding capacity to an expanding network of defence-testing sites across the country.

Spread across 8.73 acres, the coastal facility was first proposed in April 2024 as an additional operational area for the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur in Odisha. The move was driven less by a lack of capability at Chandipur than by the growing pressure on its testing infrastructure, which DRDO had described as becoming saturated with work.

Junput’s location on the Bengal coast is expected to make it suitable for short-range missile and weapon trials, along with radar-related testing. However, the government has not publicly named the specific missile systems that will be tested there. A Defence Ministry response has described the facility as useful for testing missiles of “very high importance.”

India’s existing missile-testing network is already spread across several locations. The ITR at Chandipur supports a wide range of developmental and user trials, while Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island, also part of the ITR network, is particularly important for longer-range missile testing. Pokhran in Rajasthan is a major field-firing and weapons-testing area, although it is not a direct equivalent of the coastal ITR.

The country is also developing additional specialised facilities. A Nagayalanka range in Andhra Pradesh is being developed primarily to support Phase-2 Ballistic Missile Defence testing, while Rutland Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has also been identified for a new missile-testing facility.

Against this backdrop, Junput is best understood as an expansion of India's testing capacity rather than a replacement for Chandipur. Missile development requires repeated trials to assess propulsion, guidance, accuracy and flight performance, making access to range time increasingly important as indigenous programmes grow.

The Junput project has faced delays. Land acquisition and some basic infrastructure were completed before work was halted amid local unrest. The project has now regained momentum, but no official completion or operationalisation date has been announced.

The bigger objective is clear: creating more testing capacity could help India move more efficiently from indigenous missile design to repeated trials and eventual deployment.