BrahMos A La Playa

BrahMos Aerospace said it has developed two additional air and sub-surface variants of its BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. These versions come in addition to the four types India already possesses: ship-to-ship, land-to-land, land-to-ship and ship-to-land.

BrahMos Aerospace chief executive and managing director, Sivathanu Pillai, said that they are very close to the launch of the underwater version and the navy has to ready the requisite platform for the testing. I am curious to find out what kind of platform will be this time. Will India make use of its supersonic submarines or will they conduct the launch again from their underwater launcher positioned in the Bay of Bengal, from which they already launched their Sagarika back in February?

I already wrote in an earlier post about the air-version of the BrahMos. Domain-b provides now some additional insight. It reports that

the development systems were ready and the integrated test would be undertaken after mock firing. However, the launch of the air version and commercial production would take some time as certain structural modifications were yet to be made in the Russian-built Sukhoi aircraft.

Another news source quoted Sivathanu Pillai saying that “by 2009 trials for the air version of BrahMos will start and it will be ready for induction in the Air Force by 2012”.

Let’s continue with our one-man-show: Pillai said furthermore that the company would also take up BrahMos-2 project under a major expansion program to produce hypersonic missiles that could cruise at speeds of 5-7 Mach.

India is eager to speed up the production of the BrahMos. The recent acquisition of an assembly plant in the state of Kerala from Kerala Hightech Industries Ltd in addition to the main plant in Hyderabad, would allow the company to increase production to 50 BrahMos missiles a year and fulfill the army orders on schedule. You can certainly guess who spread this piece of information …. Sivathanu Pillai.

Please stay tuned for the next episode of our one-man-show "The best toys of Sivathanu Pillai".



Top image: Sivathanu Pillau (left) © The Hindu Businessline
lower infochart: © RIA Novosti

Full spead ahead

India and Russia are in a leading position with their supersonic BrahMos. Now India’s DRDO has lab-tested the hypersonic version of this cruise missile, the BrahMos-2.

''We have achieved a speed of Mach 5.26 in our laboratory tests of the hypersonic version of the BrahMos. However, it will take some 15-20 tests under controlled conditions before the missile can be actually test-launched,'' BrahMos Aerospace chief executive officer, Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, said.

Monika Chansoria wrote an article for the yesterday’s issue of the Central Chronicle titled “Race for missile supremacy “. Her concluding paragraph reads:

For this reason, the [Shaheen-2] missile test by Pakistan is yet another trigger at altering the existing strategic equation in South Asia. On its part, India for decades has countenanced the Chinese-Pakistan nuclear and missile collaboration as one of the gravest challenges posed to its peace and security and the testing of Shaheen-II is the newest testament to the same. In all certainty, the near future is likely to witness counter reactions to this recent initiation by Pakistan, thereby plunging the subcontinent into yet another stage of a spiraling arms race.

It seems that the “near future” is indeed very, only a couple of days away.

The more visually oriented readers might want to watch the two following eight-minute clips on the supersonic BrahMos.

People who live in glass houses…

Russian President Vladimir Putin ratified yesterday a Russian-Ukrainian agreement to extend the service life of RS-20 (SS-18 Satan) intercontinental ballistic missiles. The law passed the Duma and the Federation Council on January 25 and January 30, respectively. RIA Novosti reports:

The agreement was coordinated during a visit by the Ukrainian defense minister to Moscow in 2006 and established that Ukraine would assist Russia in maintaining systems that have been on combat duty for the past 15 years for a further 10-15 years.

With this agreement in force, Russia will not need to decommission the existing missiles and manufacture more new Topol-M systems, which would increase the defense budget by $3-4 billion.

Still on the same day, Vladimir Putin expressed his appreciation for the Ukrainian assistance in a unique way with his Ukrainian counterpart being present: he said that Russia may target its missiles at Ukraine if its neighbor joins NATO and accepts the deployment of parts of the U.S. missile defense shield. Putin called the idea of targeting Ukrainian territory frightening but also referred to the "need to take retaliatory action". So Russia comes up with its own axis-of-evil: Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine. I doubt that we have reached the end. Georgia might also be a perfect candidate.

After the extension of his target-list, Mr. Putin had warned that a "new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world". People who live in glass houses… :

In 1998 the country founded its cooperation with India on the BrahMos cruise missile. These missiles were fielded with the Indian Navy and Army in 2006 and 2007, respectively. On January 1, 2008 the Indian Defense Ministry announced that the BrahMos would be soon supplied to the air force for Russian-built multi-role Su-30MKI fighters. It was also announced that the Brahmos-2 will be produced in the coming five years, lowering earlier predictions be two years. At five times the speed of sound, the BrahMos-2 will be fast enough to overcome any air defense system.

Picture: © AP, Russian RS-18 ballistic missile in a silo in Kazakhstan