How Can India Become Asia’s Principal Defense Supplier? Concerning the BrahMos Cruise Missile, Who Might Be a Buyer?

The Philippines, Vietnam, and now Saudi Arabia are among the countries with a strong desire to purchase BrahMos, a supersonic cruise missile. India hopes to export defense goods worth Rs 35,000 crore by 2025, and the sale of BrahMos might go a long way toward positioning India as the region’s primary defence provider.

On April 19, New Delhi fulfilled the $375 million agreement to purchase the BrahMos supersonic missile system from India by delivering the first batch of missiles to the Philippines. As per the agreement from January 2022, New Delhi would provide three missile batteries along with their launchers and related equipment.

Let us examine BrahMos’s genesis.

The Gulf War in 1991 was the main reason BrahMos was needed. Thus, in 1998, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the chairman of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), and NV Mikhailov, the deputy defense minister of Russia, inked an agreement between the two countries.

With 50.5% owned by the Russians and 49.5% by the Indians, BrahMos Aerospace was established as a joint venture between DRDO and NPO Mashinostroyenia (NPOM), a Russian space enterprise. BrahMos was called after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers, which are located in Russia and India, respectively.

The BrahMos missile was initially tested on June 12, 2001, at Chandipur, Odisha, using a land-based launcher. Since then, other missile iterations have been fired, improving it.

A STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
BrahMos is a two-stage missile that uses a booster made of solid propellant. In the first stage, the missile is accelerated to a supersonic speed (faster than sound) before breaking apart. The missile approaches three times the speed of sound in the cruise phase, thanks to the liquid ramjet in the second stage.

The missile can follow a range of trajectories and is stealthy due to its very low radar signature. The “fire and forget” kind of missile may reach a target at a terminal height of as little as 10 meters and a cruise altitude of 15 kilometers.

BrahMos has three times the speed and 2.5 times the flying range of subsonic cruise missiles. BrahMos missiles have already been created in versions that can be fired from land, warships, submarines, and Sukhoi-30 fighter planes. Both land- and sea-based targets may be struck by these missiles.

BrahMos’s first flying range was 290 kilometers. According to an Indian Express article, the missiles are being tested with an expanded range of around 400 miles. Additional variants with longer ranges—up to 800 km—are also in development.

An extended-range BrahMos missile test was successfully conducted by the Indian Navy in November from a vessel in the Bay of Bengal. According to The New Indian Express, the missile was fired by the eastern fleet from a stealth destroyer, and it struck its target exactly, allowing it to be inducted into the Navy.

In 2022, a frontline SU-30MKI aircraft conducted tests of an extended range variant of the BrahMos air-launched missile. A sophisticated sea-to-sea version of BrahMos was tested from the INS Visakhapatnam the same year.

The growing allure of Bramo
Africa and Southeast Asia have shown a need for supersonic cruise missiles. Reports state that a number of West Asian nations have also shown interest.

The Director General of BrahMos Aerospace, Atul Dinkar Rane, said in June of last year that up to twelve nations had shown interest in the missile system. The acknowledged interest of Vietnam and Argentina in purchasing the system is also well established. India reportedly held similar conversations with South Africa, Brazil, and Indonesia.

BrahMos is the “world’s ‘Supersonic Darling,'” as Indian Navy veteran Seshadri Vasan described it to Sputnik India. According to him, “it gives very little time to the enemy to respond or react to an attack from the missile” after it enters supersonic mode and reaches Mach-3 speed.

According to Pravin Pathak, the company’s export director, BrahMos’s portfolio of orders, which includes both Indian and export orders, topped $7 billion at the World Defence Show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in February 2024.

Furthermore, India produces missiles at a much lower cost than the majority of other nations. According to former DRDO scientist Ravi Gupta, the BrahMos is a “highly potent weapon for foreign nations to acquire from the South Asian country” because of its pricing and better technology, he told Sputnik India.

According to senior DRDO experts, the missile’s “extreme accuracy and versatility” are what set it apart: According to an Indian Express article, the combination of land-based BrahMos formations around borders, BrahMos-equipped Sukhoi-30s at bases in the Northern Theatre and Southern Peninsula, and BrahMos-capable ships and submarines deployed in the water creates a tirade.

WHICH FOUR VERSIONS ARE THEY?
System Based on Land: The four to six mobile autonomous launchers that make up the land-based BrahMos each have three missiles that can fire almost simultaneously. Since 2007, the Indian Army has operationalized the land-based variant. With its enhanced ground attack variant, which can cruise at 2.8 Mach, it can precisely strike targets up to 400 km away. According to The Indian Express, more advanced models with a greater range and a top speed of 5 Mach are reportedly under development.

Ship-Based System: Since 2005, BrahMos has served as the “prime strike weapon” aboard the Indian Navy’s front-line surface warfare ships, such as destroyers and frigates. Up to eight missiles may be fired from the BrahMos in salvo mode, with intervals of 2.5 seconds between each launch.

Air-Launched System: On November 22, 2017, the missile’s maiden flight test was conducted against a sea-based target in the Bay of Bengal from a Sukhoi-30 MKI. Sukhoi-30s outfitted with BrahMos, which can go 1,500 km without stopping in midair to refuel, are seen as essential strategic deterrents for enemies along land boundaries and in the Indian Ocean region. According to a report in The Indian Express, the Indian Air Force is integrating BrahMos with forty Sukhoi-30 fighter planes spread throughout several locations.

Submarine-Launched System: On March 20, 2013, a submerged platform in the Bay of Bengal, off the coast of Visakhapatnam, successfully conducted a test launch of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. For its whole 290-kilometer range, the missile launched vertically from the submerged platform. The launch distance for this variant is around 50 meters below the water’s surface.