Tessy Thomas of Alappuzha Was Project Director of Agni-IV, Which Finished Its Development Launches on 20 January 2014, and Project Director (Mission) for Agni-V's First Flight on 19 April 2012

Tessy Thomas is an electrical engineer from Alappuzha, Kerala, who joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in 1988 as a junior scientist in its inertial navigation group and went on to run a cluster of its aeronautical laboratories. A profile published by IIT Kanpur says she designed the guidance scheme used in all Agni missiles. The Defence Ministry’s releases of 15 November 2011 and 20 January 2014 name her as project director of Agni-IV. The same IIT Kanpur profile lists her as project director (mission) for Agni-V, the long-range missile that took off on 19 April 2012.

From a school picnic at Thumba to Hyderabad

Thomas told the news agency IANS in April 2012 that her school picnics included the Thumba rocket station near Thiruvananthapuram, and that she wanted to study engineering from her school days. Watching rocket tests as a child fascinated her, she told AFP. In the IANS interview she said her mother, a trained teacher, brought up the six children after her father, an accountant, fell ill when she was in Class 8.

Her degrees are listed in IIT Kanpur’s profile. She took a BTech in electrical engineering from Calicut University in 1985, after studying at Thrissur, according to Gulf News and Indian Bureaucracy. Next came an ME in guided missiles at the Institute of Armament Technology in Pune (now the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology) in 1986, and she joined that institute as a faculty member the same year. In 1988 she joined DRDO in Hyderabad as Scientist B, a junior grade, in its inertial navigation group. Later came an MBA in operations management from IGNOU in 2007 and a PhD in missile guidance from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, in 2014.

Her posting came through A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who was director of the Defence Research and Development Laboratory in 1988 and, she told IANS, was the one who directed her to the inertial navigation group. Kalam’s own story is told in our profile of the missile man and president. In the July 2026 YourStory interview she described the years she joined as a period of technology denial, when long-range missile technology was not available to India. DRDO was then running five missile programmes at once under its integrated guided missile programme, and she was assigned to design the guidance system for long-range ballistic missiles, which meant developing the algorithms inside DRDO.

Within a few months of joining, she recalled in the same interview, she bought a Kinetic Honda scooter, because the work had no fixed hours.

The guidance scheme used in every Agni

Guidance is the part of a missile that works out, during flight, how to steer it to the target point. Her initial focus at DRDO was the guidance systems of the Agni missiles, AFP reported, and the first Agni variant was flight-tested in 1989. According to IIT Kanpur’s profile, she has been associated with the Agni programme from its developmental flights and designed the guidance scheme for long-range missile systems that is used in all Agni missiles.

Another entry describes an energy management guidance scheme that she designed and developed, said to be the first of its kind in India for long-range missiles with all-solid propulsion. DRDO gave her its Agni Award for Excellence in Self-Reliance in 2001. Her work spans guidance, control, inertial navigation, trajectory simulation and mission design, the profile says. For the missiles that carry this guidance, see our account of the Agni family from the 1989 demonstrator to Mission Divyastra.

Agni-IV: named project director in the Ministry’s releases

IIT Kanpur’s profile describes Agni-IV as a state-of-the-art system with many new technologies for the first time, flight tested and proven, and says she led it as project director. YourStory’s July 2026 piece gives 2009 as the year she took the post. IANS wrote in 2012 that she led the Agni-IV team as project director for vehicles and mission.

A Defence Ministry release of 15 November 2011 reports the Agni-4 launch from a road mobile system at Wheeler’s Island off Odisha at 9.00 am. Rising to about 900 km, the missile reached its target in the Bay of Bengal, met all mission objectives and encountered re-entry temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees Celsius. First uses listed there were composite rocket motors in a two-stage solid-fuel missile, and ring laser gyro and micro navigation systems flown in guidance mode. Thomas, named as “Project Director AGNI-4”, and her team prepared and integrated the missile and launched it successfully, the text says.

Another release, of 20 January 2014, describes Agni-IV as a nuclear-capable ballistic missile with a range of 4,000 km. That launch, from Wheeler Island at 10.52 am, rose to over 850 km, covered the intended range in about 20 minutes and hit the target with what the release calls two-digit accuracy. That was the third consecutively successful trial and the last in the series of development launches. Tested in its deliverable configuration with Strategic Forces Command personnel taking part, the release says, the missile was ready for induction, with serial production to begin. Thomas, Project Director of Agni-IV, led the team of scientists during the operation.

Agni-V: project director (mission) on 19 April 2012

On 19 April 2012 the Defence Ministry called Agni-V India’s maiden long-range ballistic missile. Lift-off from Wheeler’s Island came at 8.07 am, and the release gives a range of more than 5,000 km. All three propulsion stages, which were composite rocket motors, were developed in India by DRDO, the release says, and they fell into the Bay of Bengal at the planned points. Guidance came from the ring laser gyro and micro navigation systems, with a high-speed onboard computer and fault-tolerant software.

Two documents state Thomas’s role. IIT Kanpur’s profile calls her project director (mission) for Agni-V, flight tested and proven, and IANS used the same phrase in April 2012. To IANS she called the launch a dream come true for more than 2,000 scientists who had worked on it for three years. AFP’s report carried her name in a photo caption as the key scientist for Agni-V and, in AFP’s words, the first woman scientist to head a missile project in India.

After the launch, AFP reported, President Pratibha Patil said that Thomas’s work in the Agni programme would, she hoped, inspire more women to choose careers in science. In January 2012, it added, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Thomas a woman “decisively breaking the glass ceiling”. Thomas said of her own career: “I always felt like a scientist and DRDO never made me feel otherwise.” She told IANS that women had been two to three per cent of DRDO’s scientific community in the past and were then 12 to 15 per cent.

By 18 January 2018, the Ministry reported, Agni-5 had flown five times and all five missions had been successful. Launch operations on that day were led by G. Ramaguru as project director and M. R. M. Babu as programme director.

How the record words her roles

That 2012 release names Avinash Chander as programme director and R. K. Gupta as the project director who guided the team through the launch activities. AFP called Thomas the project director for Agni-V, while IANS and IIT Kanpur’s profile say project director (mission). IANS’s wording for her two missiles, project director for vehicles and mission on Agni-IV and project director (mission) on Agni-V, shows the two posts were not identical. Sources opened for this article do not set out how project director duties were divided on Agni-V.

For Agni-IV, the Defence Ministry’s two releases name her as project director without qualification, and that is the post this article ascribes to her.

Honours, the aeronautical cluster and a university

IIT Kanpur’s profile lists the DRDO Scientist of the Year Award for 2008, the DRDO Performance Excellence Awards for Agni-4 in 2011 and Agni-5 in 2012, the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award in 2012, the India Today Woman of the Year Award in 2009 and the CNN-IBN Indian of the Year Award in 2012. She is recorded as a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, with seven honorary doctorates from 2012 to 2018. Before the cluster she was Director of DRDO’s Advanced Systems Laboratory, where she led the development of strategic systems.

A Mathrubhumi English report of 29 May 2018 said she had been chosen as DRDO’s Director General, Aeronautical Systems, to replace C. P. Ramanarayanan, who was due to retire on 31 May, and that she would take charge on 1 June. Its headline said the post covered the Tejas, Nirbhay and Rustom programmes. Indian Bureaucracy reported on 5 June 2018 that she had taken charge. In IIT Kanpur’s profile she is leading the Aeronautical Systems cluster laboratories as Director General. YourStory’s July 2026 interview describes her as a former Director General.

On 7 March 2024 Careers360 reported that NICHE University in Kanyakumari had appointed her vice-chancellor, citing the university’s press release.

From one re-entry vehicle to several

In April 2012 Thomas told AFP she was working on mission and guidance for the multiple independent re-entry vehicle, the technology that lets one missile deliver more than one warhead. IANS quoted her saying Agni-V had been done with a single re-entry vehicle and that DRDO was thinking about several. On 11 March 2024 the Defence Ministry announced Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of Agni-5 with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle technology, from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island. On 9 May 2026 it announced a flight trial, held on 8 May, of an Advanced Agni missile with multiple payloads aimed at different targets. Neither release names individual scientists, so this article does not attribute them to her.

On 6 August 2026 the Ministry announced that Agni-4 was test-fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Odisha under the Strategic Forces Command, and that the launch validated all operational and technical parameters.