India and Russia are planning to export the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to the Philippines and several other countries, Russian Deputy Chief of Mission Roman Babushkin said on Thursday. The BrahMos missile is produced by an Indo-Russian joint venture and it can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft or from land platforms.
People familiar with the talks on export of the missile said India is likely to ink an agreement with the Philippines early next year to supply a batch of BrahMos to the Southeast Asian country. In the last few weeks, several tests of the new version of missile were carried out in multiple locations. The range of the new version of the missile has been extended to 400 km from the original 290 km.
However, its speed has been maintained at Mach 2.8 which is nearly three times that of sound. “All tests of contemporary versions are successful. They were carried out mainly to increase the range of this exclusive missile. We are exporting it to third countries beginning with the Philippines,” Babushkin said at an online media briefing.
It is learnt that India has held preliminary rounds of talks with the Philippines for supply of the missile. On October 18, a naval version of the BrahMos missile was successfully test fired from an indigenously-built stealth destroyer of the Indian Navy in the Arabian sea.
Days later, the Indian Air Force test-fired an air launched version of the BrahMos missile from a Sukhoi fighter aircraft in the Bay of Bengal. A number of countries including in the Gulf region showed interests in procuring the missile.
India has already deployed a sizeable number of the original BrahMos missiles and other key assets in several strategic locations along the de-facto border with China in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The IAF is also integrating the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile on over 40 Sukhoi fighter jets which is aimed at bolstering overall combat capability of the force.
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