Against the backdrop of security situation at the Line of Actual Control (LAC), India successfully test-fired an improved version of the Brahmos missile on Tuesday. More such drills will be carried out in the coming days.
The test is part of the validation firing carried out by the scientists in the last few weeks of a whole range of missiles, including Akash and Nirbhaya, besides the indigenously designed and manufactured Brahmos missile.
The latest test of the land attack version of the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile with enhanced range of more than 450 km was conducted on Tuesday from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands territory, sources said.
The supersonic cruise missile was test-fired at 10 am and it successfully hit its target, which was on another island. This version is already inducted into the Army which has now raised some regiments of the missile.
When inducted some years back, the range of the supersonic missile, jointly produced with Russia, within the country was 290 km. The latest test has given the Army an edge over the adversaries with a range of more than 450 km, sources said here.
Incidentally, some batteries of the highly lethal missile rated to the fastest system in its class in the world are already deployed in some crucial sectors of the LAC facing China including Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in the last three months tested the new and existing Brahmos missiles apart from the Shaurya missile system. It has the capability of destroying a target at more than 700 km and technology demonstration vehicles for hypersonic missile technology.
The land, air and sea versions of the highly sophisticated missile are already inducted into the Army, Navy and the IAF. The Navy last month test fired the missile with a range of about 400 km from INS Chennai in high seas.
Known for its precision strike capabilities, the speed of the missile is 2.8 Mach or almost three times the speed of sound, they said. In the next few days, the IAF and the Indian Navy are scheduled to carry out separate test-firing of the new version of the air-launched and naval versions of the supersonic cruise missile respectively.
In the last two-and-half months, India has test fired a number of missiles including an anti-radiation missile named Rudram-1 which is planned to be inducted into service by 2022.
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. The IAF on October 30 test-fired the air launched version of the weapon from a Sukhoi fighter aircraft in the Bay of Bengal.
The BrahMos missile provides the IAF a much-desired capability to strike from large stand-off ranges on any target at sea or on land with pinpoint accuracy by day or night and in all weather conditions.
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.
Meanwhile, reports from China indicated that it may deploy more squadrons of its multi-role strike fighter jets J-16 on the LAC.
“A brigade attached to the PLA Western Theatre Command (WTC) Air Force recently conducted a confrontational air-to-air combat exercise in order to examine and enhance the unit’s comprehensive combat capability,” the State-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times reported citing an article on the official WeChat account of the PLA WTC. The J-16 is a third-plus generation fighter jet.
