Editing Tipu Sultan (section)

===Mysorean rockets===
{{main|Mysorean rockets}}

[[File:Indian soldier of Tipu Sultan's army.jpg|thumb|upright|A soldier from Tipu Sultan's army, using his [[rocket]] as a flagstaff.]]
[[File:Congreve rockets.gif|thumb|Tipu Sultan organised his [[Rocket]] artillery brigades known as ''Cushoons'', Tipu Sultan expanded the number of servicemen in the various ''Cushoons'' from 1500 to almost 5000. The [[Mysorean rockets]] utilised by Tipu Sultan, were later updated by the British and successively employed during the [[Napoleonic Wars]].]]

Dr [[APJ Abdul Kalam]], the former [[President of India]], in his Tipu Sultan Shaheed Memorial Lecture in Bangalore (30 November 1991), called Tipu Sultan the innovator of the world's first war rocket. Two of these rockets, captured by the British at Srirangapatna, were displayed in the [[Firepower – The Royal Artillery Museum|Royal Artillery Museum]] in London. According to historian Dr [[Dulari Qureshi]] Tipu Sultan was a fierce warrior king and was so quick in his movement that it seemed to the enemy that he was fighting on many fronts at the same time.<ref name="hindu">{{cite news |url=http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/11/07/stories/2010110750210500.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029152509/http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/11/07/stories/2010110750210500.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=29 October 2013 |title=Tipu's legend lives on  |last1=Zachariah |first1=Mini Pant |newspaper=[[The Hindu]] |date=7 November 2010 |access-date=18 December 2013}}</ref> Tipu managed to subdue all the petty kingdoms in the south. He was also one of the few Indian rulers to have defeated British armies.

Tipu Sultan's father had expanded on [[Mysorean rockets|Mysore's use of rocketry]], making critical innovations in the rockets themselves and the military logistics of their use. He deployed as many as 1,200 specialised troops in his army to operate rocket launchers. These men were skilled in operating the weapons and were trained to launch their rockets at an angle calculated from the diameter of the cylinder and the distance to the target. The rockets had twin side sharpened blades mounted on them, and when fired ''en masse'', spun and wreaked significant damage against a large army. Tipu greatly expanded the use of rockets after Hyder's death, deploying as many as 5,000 rocketeers at a time.<ref name="5000 rockets">{{cite news |title=Over 5,000 'war rockets' of Tipu Sultan unearthed |url=https://www.deccanherald.com/state/over-1000-war-rockets-tipu-684169.html |access-date=16 September 2020 |work=Deccan Herald |date=28 July 2018}}</ref> The rockets deployed by Tipu during the [[Battle of Pollilur (1780)|Battle of Pollilur]] were much more advanced than those the British East India Company had previously seen, chiefly because of the use of iron tubes for holding the propellant; this enabled higher thrust and longer range for the missiles (up to 2&nbsp;km range).<ref name="5000 rockets"/><ref name=Narasimha/>

British accounts describe the use of the rockets during the third and fourth wars.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://indianexpress.com/article/research/how-the-mysorean-rocket-helped-tipu-sultans-military-might-gain-new-heights/|title=How the Mysorean rocket helped Tipu Sultan's military might gain new heights|date=5 August 2018}}</ref> During the climactic battle at Srirangapatna in 1799, British shells struck a magazine containing rockets, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements. After Tipu's defeat in the fourth war the British captured a number of the Mysorean rockets. These became influential in British rocket development, inspiring the [[Congreve rocket]], which was soon put into use in the [[Napoleonic Wars]].<ref name=Narasimha>{{cite web |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37179995 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727034357/https://www.nal.res.in/pdf/pdfrocket.pdf |title=Rockets in Mysore and Britain, 1750–1850 A.D. |last=Narasimha |first=Roddam |date=27 July 2011 |archive-date=27 July 2011 |publisher=National Aeronautical Laboratory and Indian Institute of Science.}}</ref>