Indian Air Force (IAF) has successfully test fired supersonic cruise missile BrahMos against a land-based target from a defence base in the western sector, paving the way for its maiden air launch from a fighter aircraft. With advanced guidance system and indigenously built software algorithm, this version of BrahMos land-attack system was launched from a mobile autonomous launcher from Pokhran range at about 12 pm establishing its supremacy in the world of supersonic cruise missiles.

The flight has met its mission parameters in a copybook manner reassuring its reliability consistency and accuracy. Fired from a land based platform, the weapon successfully hit and annihilated the designated target as coordinated.  The accuracy in mountain warfare mode of the missile system was recently re-established in an exercise conducted by the Indian Army in the eastern sector last year and the test was repeated last month.

• BrahMos missile, which derives its name from the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers, was developed by an Indo-Russian joint venture (JV) after the two countries signed an agreement in February 1998. The nine-metre long missile can travel at a speed of Mach 2.8.
• The missile, the fastest in the world, has a flight range of up to 290 km and carries a conventional warhead of 200 kg to 300 kg, thus delivering with high-precision, devastating power at supersonic speed.
• While the Army and Navy have already inducted the missile system, the launch of the missile’s air-version integrated with Su-30MKI aircraft will be carried out soon.