The Indian Army on Tuesday, May 2, test-fired an advanced version of the BrahMos short-range ramjet supersonic cruise missile from the Andaman and Nicobar islands. BrahMos — created through a joint venture of India and Russia — can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft and land.
India has been testing several versions of the missile over some months now, and the most recent of these launches took place on April 21. While these launches generally serve as a show of strength for the army and achievement for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), they also act as a progress report of India's defence adavancements.
The BrahMos missile test-fired on Tuesday was the land-attack Block-III variety. It's anti-ship variety is currently the world's fastest cruise missile of its kind in existence. An official statement from the army has reportedly said that the test-launch revalidated "the formidable weapon's precision strike capability."
It also said: "The land-to-land configuration of BrahMos Block-III was launched from a Mobile Autonomous Launcher (MAL) for its full-range, demonstrating the weapon's unmatched lethality of hitting the centre of a designated target with 'bull's eye' precision." This was the fourth test of the Block-III iteration of the missile, which has an advanced guidance system and upgraded software.
The statement then went on to add: "Meeting all flight parameters in a copybook manner while conducting high-level and complex manoeuvres, the supersonic cruise missile successfully hit the land-based target with desired precision in a top attack configuration."
The land-attack variety of the BrahMos missile has been a part of the arsenal of the Indian Army since 2007.
