At least 40 fighters will be equipped with BrahMos missiles

REUTOV: About 40 Russian-made Su-30MKI fighter jets of India’s Air Force will be armed with BrahMos-A air-launched missiles in the next two or three years, CEO and Chief Designer of Russia’s Research and Production Association of Machine-Building Alexander Leonov said on Tuesday.

"As for the plans, the serial production has been launched and rearmament will be carried out, as our Indian colleagues have promised on many occasions. About 40 planes as the first batch will be equipped with BrahMos missiles. Of course, this will require some time, no less than two or three years, to re-equip the planes and produce air-launched BrahMos missiles," the chief executive said.

Manager for Marketing at the Russia-India BrahMos Aerospace Joint Venture Praveen Pathak told TASS last week that the BrahMos-A air-launched missile, which the JV was developing, had hit a ground target for the first time during a test launch. In 2017, the BrahMos-A missile was test-launched for the first time, successfully hitting a naval target.

The chief executive of the Research and Production Association of Machine-Building said that the two test launches were "very important" as they had been held both against a naval and a ground target. "The universal nature of the BrahMos missile has been fully confirmed," Leonov said.

The BrahMos missile has been developed by Russia’s Research and Production Association of Machine-Building (the town of Reutov near Moscow) and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The missile’s name comes from the names of two rivers: the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia. The missile’s first launch took place on June 12, 2001 from a coastal launcher. The missile’s production has been arranged at enterprises in Russia and India.