Army to get BrahMos missile this year

New Delhi: The Indian Army will start inducting the supersonic cruise missile this year as the tests of the BrahMos complete successfully.

A total of 13 tests were conducted with the missile jointly developed by India and Russia and the Indian Army was satisfied with its "precision hits", BrahMos Aerospace CEO Sivathanu Pillai said in Moscow.

The army will get the missiles mounted on mobile platforms in "large numbers", said Pillai in an interview to weekly Nezavisimoye Voyennoe Obozrenie (Independent Military Review).

India and Russia are the only countries possessing a supersonic cruise missile, which will end the era of the much-hyped US Tomahawk cruise missiles, Pillai said.

Pillai said there were plans for exporting the missile, too. He pointed out that the country had a huge potential for exporting defence products, particularly to Asian countries.

Pillai also indicated that India is going to treble the production of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.

The Indian Navy has already inducted the anti-ship version of the BrahMos. An air-to-surface version is in advanced stages of development and the only task remaining is its integration with the on-board avionics of the platform that will deliver it, he said.

"With a range of 299 km, the BrahMos cruise missile flies at the speed of 2.8 Mach (almost three times the speed of sound), while the Tomahawk is a subsonic cruise missile with the speed of 0.8 Mach," as quoted by PTI, Pillai said.

The US had effectively used Tomahawks during the Gulf war, but active work has been underway across the world since then to counter the missile. However, there are no means to counter the BrahMos, which is much faster than the Tomahawk.

"India and Russia today have a monopoly in the field and BrahMos will end the era of Tomahawks," Pillai said in his interview published under the title "Moskva river becomes tributary of Brahmaputra to drown the much-hyped Tomahawk".

The name for the missile, a combination of Russia's quiet Moskva river and India's furious Brahmaputra, was suggested by President A P J Abdul Kalam, who initiated the BrahMos project as chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation.