Make-in-India for the world: Philippines to get BrahMos Anti-Ship Missile System for its navy
In a major boost to India’s defence capability building prowess, the Philippines on Friday has accepted BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd’s to supply Shore-Based Anti-Ship Missile System Acquisition Project for its navy.
The proposal is worth $374,9 million. The Notice of Award has been communicated to BrahMos officials by the Philippines Department of National Defense.
The Indian Navy and the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) successfully tested the BrahMos Supersonic Cruise missile this week, on January 11. The missile is in a collaboration between India and Russia, with the Indian side represented by the DRDO. The missile was tested from INS Visakhapatnam- the first of four ingeniously designed and built Project-15B class stealth-guided missile destroyers, which was commissioned in November last year.
The development comes in the backdrop of the government’s push for Make in India in defence sector. Earlier, lauding the development, Defence Minister of India Rajnath Singh said the robustness of Indian Navy mission readiness is reconfirmed after the successful launch of the advanced version of BrahMos Missile from INS Vishakhapatnam.
About BrahMos
An amalgamation of the names of Brahmaputra river and Moskva rivers, BrahMos missiles are designed, developed, and produced by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture company set up by DRDO and Mashinostroyenia of Russia.
BrahMos is the main weapon system of the Indian Navy warships and has been deployed on almost all of its surface platforms. An underwater version is also being developed, which will be offered for export to friendly foreign nations as well as used by Indian submarines. The BrahMos missile travels at 2.8 Mach, or nearly three times the speed of sound.
The land-attack version of BrahMos has the capability of cruising at 2.8 Mach speed and with the upgraded capability, the missile can hit targets at a range of up to 400 kilometers with precision. Advanced versions of the range above 1,000 kilometers and speed up to 5 Mach are said to be under development.
Multiple versions of the supersonic cruise missile, including those which can be fired from land, warships, submarines, and Sukhoi-30 fighter jets have already been developed and successfully tested earlier. The ship-launched version of BrahMos and land-based system are in service of the Indian Navy and the Indian Army since 2005 and 2007 respectively.
Later on November 22, 2017, the air-launched version of Brahmos was successfully flight-tested for the first time from the IAF frontline fighter aircraft Sukhoi-30MKI against a sea-based target in the Bay of Bengal.
