OREANDA-NEWS. Cruise missile BrahMos of joint Russian-Indian production will get the maximum speed, five sonic speeds, and thus will become hypersonic. Existing modification of BrahMos is to be modernized, its maximum speed is 2.8-3 Mach.

Russian media report about the planned modernization of cruise missiles BrahMos produced jointly by Russia and India. That was announced by Alexander Maksichev, Chief of the Joint Venture “BrahMos Aerospace” and Managing co-Director of the company, at the exhibition LIMA 2019 held in Malaysia.

Maksichev said that specialists of “BrahMos Aerospace” are continuously engaged in developing the higher speed of the missile and improving its combat performance. The existing model of BrahMos develops maximum speed 2.8-3 Mach [Mach number shows the dependence of the sonic speed on the flight altitude. - Oreanda-News].

"We hope that within the next few years we will exactly reach the point that some scientists named hypersonic. Somewhat, probably, from 4.5 to 5 Machs", Alexander Maksichev said.

BrahMos PJ-10 is a supersonic cruise missile equipped with a solid fuel propellant booster. It has been constructed jointly by the Scientific-Production Association of Machine Building (situated in Reutov town in Moscow region) and the DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organization, India). It has appeared as a modification of the USSR’s anti-ship missile Oniks.

The name of the project is combining the names of rivers - Brahmaputra in India and Moskva in Russia. BrahMos’ first test fire (vertical launch configuration) took place at the Chandipur test range (Odisha state, India) on June 12, 2001. Production of these missiles is established both at Indian and Russian enterprises.