The Defence minister A K Antony will hand over the first batch of the ingeniously made Akash surface-to-air missile system to the Air Force on Saturday. Mr Antony will also hand over a newly-developed Advanced Light Weight Torpedo (TAL) to the Navy in Hyderabad. Our correspondent reports, this is a significant achievement for country's indigenous weapon development programme. Akash is considered as the Indian Patriot.

The Patriot is an American missile system which was used successfully in neutralising the Iraqi Skud missiles during the first Gulf War in the 90s.

The Akash missile was developed by DRDO as part of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) and is an all-weather, medium-range, Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) system.

The missile is expected to be the mainstay of the air defence batteries of the country's armed forces in next few decades.