"The missile was launched from the decks of INS Rajput at 10:30 a.m. and precisely hit a land target in one of the islands of Andaman and Nicobar," the statement said.

According to the ministry, scientists of the Defense Research and Development Organization "said the missile met all flight parameters during its launch, flight and zeroed in on the designated target among the group of targets, destroying it with a thunderous blast."

"This mission is very important as it has established the sea to land attack capability of the formidable weapon system. It was the 15th successive successful launch of the BrahMos missile, developed jointly by India and Russia," the statement said.

"The Indian Navy's Andaman and Nicobar Command provided the logistics support to the missile test," the ministry said. "The command deployed 10 ships, three aircraft and three helicopters for mission support. The parameters set for the mission were kept extremely difficult including the positioning of the target to achieve maximum output.

"The 100 percent success of the launch once again demonstrated the tremendous capability of (the) BrahMos weapon system."

As we have noted over the past two years, India continues to forge ahead with its ambitious program to become a major power with its own domestically produced intercontinental ballistic missile and cruise missile capabilities. India is even pushing ahead with its own ballistic missile defense programs, without buying from the United States the quantity and quality of BMD technology that other democratic nations such as Japan, Taiwan and Israel have all embraced.

At the pure research and prototype stages, as we have repeatedly documented in these columns, the Indian program has been crowned with impressive successes. However, we have also repeatedly drawn attention to the weakness of India's military-industrial base and the immense delays and even outright failures over the past 30 years of the DRDO to be able to successfully make the transition from prototype achievements to the steady, reliable production of large numbers of high-tech or complex heavy weapons like Main Battle Tanks, missiles or submarines for reliable operational use.

Having said that, the BrahMos offers a remarkable opportunity for India and the DRDO to break that pattern because it involves such close association with Russian heavy industry in a field where only the United States can contest Russia globally -- the production of many types of reliable military missiles.

The BrahMos-2 tactical cruise missile is named after India's Brahmaputra River and Russia's Moskva River. In the coming five years the Russian-Indian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace, founded in 1998, will produce the missile for India's Defense Ministry.

As Russian military analyst Andrei Kislyakov wrote last month for RIA Novosti, "At five times the speed of sound, the BrahMos-2 is fast enough to overcome any air defense system. More than 20 Russian plants and design bureaus, including the leading Russian missile producers Strela and Mashinostroyeniye research and production association, will be involved in the production of the new weapon."

"The main feature of this missile is its versatility: It can be based on vehicles, ships, submarines and aircraft. In other words, the BrahMos missile can be supplied to every branch of the armed forces," Kislyakov wrote.

In contrast to the sorry story of decades-long delays in getting previous, ambitious domestically produced advanced weapons systems into operational use, work on the BrahMos has moved into the testing and eleven operational stages with impressive rapidity.

"On June 21, 2007, India's ground forces received their first BrahMos-1 missile, mounted on a Tatra truck chassis. A series of successful test launches had already confirmed the high combat qualities and effectiveness of the new weapon," Kislyakov wrote.

And India has already made extensive preparations to produce the cruise missile on a large scale.

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