Nine months ago, India's big power ambitions suffered a setback. The 3,000-km range Agni-3, launched for the first time last July from Wheeler Island off Orissa coast, fell into the Bay of Bengal. The then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee looked at it positively. "Partial success," he called it. "The first part of the launch was successful, [whereas] in the second part there appeared to be a technical snag." Mukherjee's successor A.K. Antony, a perennial optimist, did not have to search in thesauruses for a euphemism on April 12. The test on that day was a true success. "It shows that Indian scientists have attained the capability to match any other developed nation," Antony told a beaming M. Natarajan, his scientific adviser and head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation. India can now deliver a 1.5 tonne nuclear warhead beyond 3,000km. The 15-minute flight of the 16-metre, 48-tonne Agni-3 was closely monitored from ground stations at Dharma, Balasore and Port Blair and two naval ships positioned in the Indian Ocean. The test was mainly to validate the performance of the two-stage propulsion, as also the flex nozzle control system, which was being attempted by Indian scientists for the first time. Later Natarajan gave a detailed technical briefing to Antony, explaining what had gone wrong last time, and how the problem was overcome. "We had put extensive telemetry even at that time," Natarajan told Antony. "So we could get sufficient data and we appointed [an] experts committee to analyse those data.... We had a number of issues relating to aerodynamics, telemetry, command-control system.... We went through the analysis and we were very clear that the primary problem was at the supersonic speed at the height of 35-40km." According to the experts committee, there was a recirculation of hot gas and the external costream mix at 35 to 40km altitude. A lot of gas got sucked into the cavity adjacent to the flux nozzle. "The temperature shot up to 700-800 [degrees] and more, and it burnt some cables of the controls... of the nozzle actuation, and that's why the problem occurred," Natarajan told Antony. Apparently, the engineering done on Agni-3 was the same as that on Agni-1 and Agni-2. But Agni-3 has a larger diameter of about two metres. "So we knew that now we have to bring in thermal barriers," Natarajan continued. "But this [was] not easy because this barrier has to be flexible to allow the nozzle to flex.... It cannot be solid. So we spent quite a lot of time and now we have developed new silica-based materials which are actually stitched like a skirt or umbrella. It moves along with the nozzle and at the same time insulates.... Also, some parts were moved-out to other locations so that they are away from heat." As Antony congratulated Natarajan, he protested: "More than me, the credit should go to the entire DRDO and especially to the programme director Dr Avinash Chander and his team, and also to many private and public sector companies who have contributed various parts. It is entirely indigenously designed, produced and configured"