DRDO's Missile Woman

The first woman in the country to head a missile project, Tessy Thomas has contributed in various areas, including guidance, control, inertial navigation, trajectory simulation and design, in 33 years with Agni missiles.

- P.B. Jayakumar

IN THE 1970s and 80s, bright and studious girls from well-to-do middle- and upperclass Christian families in Kerala aspired to become doctors, teachers or IAS officers. But dreams were different for Tessy Thomas, daughter of an accountant with a private firm. Her mother, a qualified teacher, was a homemaker. From the school grounds of Thathampally L.P. and St. Joseph’s Girls in Alleppey, Thomas would gaze in amazement at aeroplanes flying to and fro from the Thiruvananthapuram airport, and also at rockets shooting up from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) near Thiruvananthapuram.

Dreams finally came true. Years later, the school girl went on to make the most advanced missiles in the world with in-house technologies. A 33-yearlong career at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has seen Thomas begin her career as a young sub-system designer at the agency’s Hyderabad laboratory and rising through the ranks to become the mission director, indigenously developing, testing and inducting the Agni I-V series of missile systems into defence systems. Now, she has an even larger role to execute as director general of Aeronautical Systems, DRDO.