The Hindu : Anti-ship version of BrahMos proves its mettle

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 03, 2003

National

National

Anti-ship version of BrahMos proves its mettle

By T.S. Subramanian

Chennai Dec. 2. The anti-ship version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile proved its capability on November 23 when the missile blasted off from a warship of the Indian Navy off the Chandipur coast in Orissa, travelled 290 km and rammed a decommissioned ship of the Navy drifting in the waters of the Bay of Bengal and destroyed it.

The Navy's warship was cruising at a speed of about 12 to 15 knots an hour when BrahMos was launched from it and it gained a speed three times that of sound, that is, Mach 3. Thus, two tricky manoeuvres were achieved: launching the missile from a ship in motion and the missile hitting its target which was also moving.

"The missile hit the bull's eye. It pierced the hull of the decommissioned vessel," said A. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited. BrahMos is a joint product of the Indo-Russian cooperation. It is produced both in India and Russia.

There have been six flights of BrahMos so far. All the six flights have been successful. The first flight took place from the Interim-Test-Range at Chandipur, near Balasore, Orissa on June 12, 2001. This is the second time that BrahMos was launched from a Naval warship. The previous flight from a Naval vessel took place on February 12, 2003.

"This time a ship was given to us as a target and we hit it. The anti-ship version of the missile has now been proved. It was a textbook flight. The reliable performance of BrahMos has been established in all six tests," said Dr. Pillai, who is also the Chief Controller, Research and Development, DRDO, New Delhi. The missile weighs about eight tonnes. It can carry a conventional warhead of 200 kg to 300 kg.

Sources said the missile was already configured to be launched from submarines. "The submarine class is ready," they said. Thus, it can be launched from ground, ships and submarines without undergoing design changes. The BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited, which has established production facilities at Hyderabad, is now waiting for orders from users.

When the Indian Navy inducts the BrahMos after user-trials, it will be the first Navy in the world to possess a supersonic cruise missile.

In future, BrahMos will be fired from air-to-ground, ship-to-ground, submarine-to-ground and ground-to-ground. The air-to-ground version, viz its being fired from an aircraft towards a target on land or at sea, needed additional development, the sources said. "Its development is not easy because the aircraft will be flying at a speed and so the weight of the missile has to be reduced. The missile should be modified to be compatible with the aircraft. The development of the air-to-ground version will take about three years," they said.

BrahMos is a "universal" missile because it can be launched from a variety of platforms. Of the six flights, two were from ships, three from land and one from a mobile launcher called TATRA truck.

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