Indian Army gets supersonic fire power
Indian Army gets supersonic fire power missile
New Delhi: The Indian Army yesterday inducted the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile India and Russia jointly developed, with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam describing it a "world-class product" for the "international market" and urging scientists to work towards its second generation hypersonic version.
Speaking at a ceremony here at which he handed over the land version of BrahMos to the army, Abdul Kalam noted that it was for the first time in Indian history that a "world-class supersonic missile that the world needs has been made available by the scientific and industrial community well ahead of time.
'With such capability, I believe that we have to aggressively market this world class product," he added.
The army chief, Gen J.J. Singh received the missile. Defence Minister A.K. Antony was among a large number of dignitaries who attended the function.
According to the president, "the time has come for [manufacturer] BrahMos Aerospace to work on the Mark-II version of BrahMos so that you will still be the market leader in hypersonic cruise missiles."
In the emerging network centric warfare scenario, "the fast deployment of hypersonic missile systems will be necessary to maintain our force level supremacy", Abdul Kalam added.
He also visualised long-range hypersonic cruise missiles "not only delivering payloads but also returning to base after the mission, leading to a re-usable class of cruise missiles within the next decade".
In this context, Abdul Kalam urged the three services to work with the BrahMos Aerospace team "to evolve the QR [qualitative requirement or parameters] for such a system in a time-bound manner".
BrahMos, named after the Brahmaputra and Moskova rivers, was developed by a joint venture established in February 1998 between India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyenia. Abdul Kalam had initiated the project as the then DRDO head.
The naval version of the missile has already been inducted while the air force version is under development.
