NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday successfully tested the extended range version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which has emerged as a primary conventional precision strike weapon for the armed forces, from the integrated proving ground at Balasore.
Defense sources said the test, the second of the extended-range BrahMos missile, was carried out from a land mobile launcher at 10:30 a.m. It comes at a time when the original 290 km range BrahMos has already been implemented in Ladakh as much as Arunachal pradesh during the ongoing military confrontation with China.
The armed forces have already installed the 290km land and warship versions of the BrahMos missiles, which fly nearly three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8, over the past decade.
A more elegant version of an air-breathing missile was also tested from Sukhoi-30MKI fighter jets last year. These BrahMos air-to-ground missiles can possibly be used for targeted attacks on terrorist camps located deep within enemy territory, or to eliminate underground nuclear bunkers, command and control centers and other high-value military targets such as aircraft carriers on the high seas, from long distance.
The first Sukhoi-30MKI squad, armed with BrahMos missiles, was commissioned in Thanjavur in January this year. With a combat radius of nearly 1,500 km without air refueling, the Sukhois combine with BrahMos missiles to form a formidable weapons package.
The government had previously approved the deployment of the Block-III version of the BrahMos missiles, which have “steep dive capability, trajectory maneuvering and superior strike capability” for mountain warfare, in Arunachal Pradesh as a deterrent against China. , as TOI reported. .
With India joining the 34 nations Missile technology control regime (MTCR) in June 2016, which “removed the caps” on the missile range jointly developed with Russia, the missile range has been extended to 450 km. The MTCR basically prevents the proliferation of missiles and drones in the range of 300 km.
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