Brahmos missile will breach mach 7 barrier in next decade: Official

MUMBAI: Brahmos, the fastest cruise missile in the world co-developed by India and Russia, will be breaching the mach 7 barrier to become a ‘hypersonic’ system in the next decade, a top official said. “We will require seven to ten years from now to become a hypersonic missile system,” Sudhir Mishra, the chief executive and managing director of the joint venture company Brahmos Aerospace, told PTI in Mumbai.

He said the missile, which currently travels at mach 2.8 (or 2.8 times the speed of sound), will touch mach 3.5 soon and mach 5 in three years. The current engine will have to be “tinkered” to achieve mach 5 and will have to be replaced to achieve hypersonic speed, he said. The intent is to come out with a missile that will be able to deliver to the nextgeneration warfare, Mishra said.

He said Indian institutions, including the DRDO, IITs and Indian Institute of Science, are

We will require seven to ten years from now to become a hypersonic missile system

SUDHIR MISHRA, MD of the joint venture company Brahmos Aerospace

working on technologies that will help to achieve the goals and added that Russian institutes are also doing similar work.

He said the company, which has a majority 55% holding by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the remaining with Russia, has an order book of over ~30,000 crore.

Over the years, the basic missile system has been modified in a such a way that it can be fitted on various platforms, including ships, submarines, the Sukhoi-30 aircraft as well as land, for launch, he said.