The BrahMos, a medium range supersonic cruise missile, aimed at increasing its life, has been planned this month, stated a senior defence ministry official, recently. The statement was made after inaugurating a new plant of the defence unit of Larsen & Toubro. L&T has taken up the manufacturing charge of canisters for storage, transportation and launch of the missile. The test-firing is aimed at increasing the missile’s life from 10 to 15 years.
The test-firing is to “validate service life extension” of the missile which will take place from a test range at Chandipur in Odisha in the third week of July.
A joint venture of India and Russia, the world-class BrahMos is the first weapon system whose life has been extended from 10 years to 15 years. The technology will now make missile systems durable.
As part of service life extension programme, defence sources said, the missile was fired from a static inclined launcher positioned at Chandipur-based launching complex – III of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at about 10.40 am.
“The successful test will result in huge savings of replacement cost of missiles held in the inventory of Indian Armed Forces,” the Defence Minister,Nirmala Sitaraman tweeted.
Chairman DRDO S Christopher and Director General of BrahMos Sudhir Mishra have also congratulated scientists on the successful validation of life extension technology, which will benefit the Armed Forces maintain an economical inventory having long duration systems.
After two successful test trials of BrahMos missile from INS Kolkata in June 2014 and February 2015, the test firing from INS Kochi on September 30, 2015, had validated the newly commissioned ship’s systems.
The air launch version and the submarine launch version of the missile system are in progress. So far, the Army has placed orders for the BrahMos missile which are to be deployed by three regiments. Two of them are already operational.
The last land-based trial was conducted from the same base on March 11, 2017 successfully.