India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) diligence in testing weapons reached a new level when India witnessed the new version of BrahMos on the testing pad. On Thursday, India successfully tested a new variant of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from the integrated test range at Chandipur off the coast of Odisha, the defense ministry announced in an official statement.
The test was conducted by BrahMos Aerospace Limited and the DRDO. The Ministry of Defense said this variant of the missile was equipped with more indigenous technologies than previous versions. BrahMos has aimed to increase missile range, accuracy and chart a whole new trajectory for enhanced impact and lethality, which has opened a new frontier of missile development, increasing India’s weapons capability potential.
“The flight test is a major milestone for the BrahMos program. The highly maneuverable missile cruised at supersonic speed for its maximum range and all mission objectives were met,” the statement said.
Focusing on maximizing the potential of its operational ability, the missile was engineered with new and state of art indigenous technologies and followed a modified optimal trajectory for increased efficiency and greater performance during flight. The missile has been fine-tuned with the modified control system to achieve enhanced capability, which results in better and adaptable user capabilities of the missile in all weather conditions.
With the ability to travel at more than 3-4 Mach speed today, BrahMos variants can be launched from land, air, sea, and underwater, proving its flexibility with different platforms and reliability for any tactical or strategic mission.
This latest test marks the beginning of India’s mission to bring BrahMos at its highest range envelope.
India has already developed an extended range BrahMos missile that can hit targets at a range of more than 400 km by tweaking the configuration of the existing weapon. This marked the first time BrahMos crossed its nominal range of 290kms.
India already laid the groundwork to develop a high-range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile capable of striking targets more than 800 km away, according to a recent number of tests of new subsystems onboard such as propulsion.
Increasing the missile’s range became possible after India’s induction into the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in June 2016.
