Defence GK Questions 2026

Astra is fired from a fighter aircraft at another aircraft that is still beyond the pilot's sight, which is what beyond visual range means, and it uses an active radar seeker in its final phase.

Akash was one of the five missiles of the IGMDP and is meant to destroy aircraft and helicopters at medium range.

Nag is a third generation anti-tank guided missile of the fire and forget kind, which means the operator can leave cover once the missile has locked on to the target.

BrahMos is built by a joint venture of India and Russia, and its name joins the Brahmaputra of India with the Moskva of Russia to mark the partnership.

The five missiles of the IGMDP were Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag. BrahMos came later and from a different route altogether, as a joint venture between India and Russia, and it is a supersonic cruise missile, while the IGMDP produced ballistic and guided missiles of Indian design.

The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, usually written IGMDP, was approved in 1983 and placed under the Defence Research and Development Organisation, with A. P. J. Abdul Kalam as its head.

In a scramjet, short for supersonic combustion ramjet, the air taken in from the atmosphere stays supersonic while the fuel is burnt in it, which is what allows sustained flight at hypersonic speed.

CVRDE, near Chennai, is the DRDO laboratory for armoured fighting vehicles, and the Arjun main battle tank was designed there and is produced at the Heavy Vehicles Factory in the same town.

GTRE is the DRDO laboratory for aero engines, and the Kaveri turbofan was taken up there for the Tejas light combat aircraft.

Trishul was designed as a quick reaction weapon to protect warships and forward army positions from low flying aircraft and from sea skimming missiles, so it needed very fast response over a short distance rather than long reach.

In Mission Shakti, on 27 March 2019, an interceptor developed for ballistic missile defence was used to destroy one of India's own satellites in low earth orbit, showing that the country could strike a target in space.

Astra is a beyond visual range air-to-air missile, which means it is fired from a fighter aircraft at an enemy aircraft the pilot cannot see with the eye, using radar to find and follow the target.

Nirbhay flies below the speed of sound but for a much greater distance than BrahMos, staying low to avoid radar, and it can change course in flight and loiter over an area before striking.

DRDO was formed in that year by bringing together the Technical Development Establishment of the Indian Army, the Directorate of Technical Development and Production and the Defence Science Organisation, so that defence research would be done under one roof.

BrahMos is built by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture formed in 1998 between DRDO and the Russian firm NPO Mashinostroyeniya, and the name joins a great river of each country.

Nag is a third generation anti-tank guided missile of the fire and forget kind, which means that once the seeker has locked on to the target the operator need not keep guiding it, and the crew can move away at once.

The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was approved in 1983 and Kalam, then at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory, was made its head.

Shaurya is the land based version of the submarine launched K-15 Sagarika, and it is stored and fired from a sealed canister, which lets it be moved by road and launched at short notice.

The 44th Chess Olympiad was played in 2022 at Mamallapuram near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, the first time India had hosted the team world championship of chess, and the Indian teams won bronze medals in the open section and in the women's section.

Arpad Elo was a Hungarian-born American physics professor and a strong amateur player who designed a statistical method to compare players, and FIDE adopted it.