India, Russia jointly developing small, hypersonic BrahMos variants

India, Russia jointly developing small, hypersonic BrahMos variants: Russian envoy; work on BrahMos-NG, very long-range variant on, will cut cost: BrahMoS Aerospace chief NEW DELHI: India and Russia are “jointly developing small and hypersonic variants of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile that will further enhance the multi-domain strike capabilities of the Indian armed forces”, Russian ambassador to India Denis Alipov has said, as quoted by Russian state-funded media RT India.He said this while India and Russia marked 25 years since the first test-launch of the jointly developed BrahMos was conducted on June 12, 2001, from the Chandipur test range in Odisha.According to a video on RT India’s X account, “India and Russia are working on a 800-km strike version of a BrahMos, a submarine-launched variant of BrahMoS under the P75I programme; a miniaturised lighter version of BrahMoS for integration with aircraft and a hypersonic BrahMos missile.”With the existing BrahMos cruise missile weighs nearly 3 tonnes and has 2.8 Mach speed, the BrahMos Aerospace, an Indo-Russia joint venture, in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is already working on BrahMos-NG (Next-Generation), which is a smaller, lighter and stealthier variant of the standard missile. Once developed, the miniaturised BrahMos-NG will weigh 1.2 tonnes, will have Mach 5 speed and can be easily fitted on a wider array of platforms, including LCA Tejas and Su-30MKI fighter jets. End of Article