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Kalam Asks BrahMos Developers To Work On Mark-II Version
New Delhi (ANI) (SPX) Jun 26, 2007 President APJ Abdul Kalam has called upon the BrahMos Aerospace team to work on Mark-II version of the missile so that the country remains the market leader in supersonic cruise missiles. Congratulating the Indian Army for acquiring supersonic cruise missile BrahMos at a function marking the commencement of its delivery, Kalam said that in the emerging network centric warfare scenario, the fast deployment of supersonic missile systems would be "necessary to maintain our force level supremacy". "I visualize long range supersonic cruise missiles not only delivering payloads, but also returning to the base after the mission, leading to re-usable class of cruise missiles within the next decade. It is time that the three services work with the team of BrahMos Aerospace to evolve the Qualitative Requirements for such a system in a time bound manner," he said. He said that it is the first time in the Indian history that a world-class supersonic missile has been made available by the scientific and industrial community well ahead of time. President Kalam went on to express the hope that with such a capability, the missile can be "aggressively" marketed worldwide. Terming it as a historic day for the Indian-Russian cooperation and the Joint Venture BrahMos, he said the missile would definitely enhance the fighting capability of the army and the soldiers would have the "pride of using an indigenously developed missile system". Extending his greetings to the BrahMos team from India and Russia, Kalam said this is a unique cooperation. It was conceived and implemented for combining the core competence of India and Russia for realizing a high technology product in an extremely competitive global defence market with minimum investment from each side, he added. Commenting on the uniqueness of BrahMos Joint Venture Programme, he said it has not been a "soft" programme where MoUs get signed and the activities are allowed to take place in a natural pace. "BrahMos has been a "hard" programme for mutual benefit, where a modest 250 million US dollars were invested initially by India and Russia equally shared, and today we have an order book worth two billion US dollars and serious business interest exists for order of an equal amount," he added. The BrahMos has been developed in India by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in cooperation with Russia. The missile is being inducted into the Indian Navy, for which a series of ships have been identified, and the induction process has commenced. While the feasibility for the integration of BrahMos missile with SU 30 MK-I combat aircraft has been established. BrahMos-- named after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers of India and Russia respectively-- has evolved out of joint efforts of Indian and Russian scientists. The 2.8 Mach supersonic speed makes the BrahMos unique as all other cruise missiles are sub-sonic at present. It has a much-longer strike range, and is an ultimate force-multiplier. The missile can carry warheads up to 200 kg in weight and has a maximum range of 290 km. It is capable of being launched from multiple platforms based on land, sea, sub-sea and air. The modular design of the missile and its capability of being launched at different orientations enables it to be integrated with a wide spectrum of platforms like warships, submarines, different types of aircraft. The capabilities of the missile have been demonstrated in ten successive successful flight tests starting from June 2001. Combat firing of the missile were conducted in April 2005. (ANI) Source: ANI - Copyright 2007 Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links BrahMos Learn about missile defense at SpaceWar.com All about missiles at SpaceWar.com
Indian Army Commissions BrahMos Cruise Missiles New Delhi (RIA Novosti) Jun 22, 2007 India's Army put the BrahMos joint Russian-Indian supersonic cruise missile into service Thursday at an official ceremony in the capital. The missile has been developed as a joint venture between India's Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and Russia's Mashinostroyenia research-and-production center. |
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