BrahMos to go Hypersonic

An important step during Wednesday's meeting was the decision to establish a Joint Working Group, which will meet before March, to work out the specifications for the next-generation of the 290-km range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.

'The present BrahMos flies at a speed of 2.8 Mach (almost three times the speed of sound), which no other cruise missile in the world does at present.

The new BrahMos will have a speed between 5 to 7 Mach. This will be important to maintain our superiority in this arena in the next decade,'said a top official.

Citing BrahMos as a 'successful joint venture', both Antony and Ivanov said the defence ties between India and Russia were no longer restricted to 'a simple buyer-seller'relationship but had transformed into one which revolved around joint R&D and development projects.

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I'm amazed that there hasn't been much said about this. How long might it take them to develop such a weapon? This certainly seems like Russia and India are becoming a growing threat.

Is there any other information? This stuff always seems kinda sketchy...

Here is some basic info about the BrahMos from wiki:



There is no proof of what is said to be mach 5 or mach 7, this seem to be overstated.

It's referring to the next generation of BrahMos in the article.

It's just an agreement that got signed last week during Putin's visit to India. They also etched out a lot of weapons deals with India such as more T-90s, SU-30MKIs, joint development of MTA, and made progress towards an agreement on Su PAK FA. Supposedly they also pushed the MiG-35 during the visit for that Indian fighter deal to compete with the U.S. and European offers. As well as an agreement on domestic production of the RD-33 engine.

However, this is probably the most significant. Given the success BrahMos has had, a hypersonic successor stands to have the same amount of success.

I think Russia and India got some valuable experiance with the BrahMos. But hypersonic is a different scale. You need new materials to withstand the heat and a new propulsion. Besides, such a missile would follow more a ballistic track, flying M5+ at low altitude is very difficult.
The USAF and DARPA are investigating a very long-range M4 cruise-missile project, called Falcon. The timeframe to come online is 2012-15. I don't think India/Russia will be faster.

Russia's always been better than us when it comes to hardware, especially engines. The Indians make up for Russia's less-than-stellar abilities with software.

BrahMos goes up to Mach 2.8, faster than any other cruise missile. You double the speed and you have Mach 5.6, bingo hypersonic. While, obviously it's not that simple, Russia and India's combined resources are a significant challenge to our capabilities. Russia has some of the most advanced missiles in the world, with regards to speed.

With India's growing economy and IT sector and Russia's increasing gas, oil, and nuclear revenues, they have a substantial money pool. This isn't even mentioning Russia's growing role in the arms market with sales to Venezuela, China, Iran, India, and Syria.

I understand it is a leap, but Russia and India are currently far better situated to achieve that leap than we are.

I agree, they pretty sure are. Especially Russia has expertise with supersonic CMs while the US has none in it's inventory, or have you?
M2.8 can be pretty threatening, but doubbling it and bringing it into service will not come before the next decade and some years into it.
It's somehow strange to me that this kind of development isn't really considered in "western" or NATO nations.
Well Harpoons or ASh Tomahawks are considered to be deadly enough, and I can believe they still are. But it takes them three times as long to cover the same distance, and I think time can be critical.

M2.8 can be pretty threatening, but doubbling it and bringing it into service will not come before the next decade and some years into it.

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Well, given how long from the agreement to the deployment I think BrahMos hypersonic will be deployed sometime around 2015, maybe earlier if they gain a lot of headway. It'll probably be made to work with Su PAK FA and deploy around the same time. I would expect them to at least double the range though. Russia and India will both use GLONASS now so they could give it a much longer range and keep it accurate.

According to what I know Indian's economy is far smaller than China's and it is the number 2 high population after China with so many extremely poor people. How do it have that much $$$ to support its military ambition without caring its people's poor life? China is putting economy as number 1 priority while in India things are completely different. But then, there is only China Threat, but no India Threat! May be to develop economy is more fearful than to purely develop military.

India certainly is overlooked as a threat. After all, the Su-30MKI is regarded by all counts as the better of Su-30MKK and even superior to Russia's Flankers. Not to mention India happens to be the country with a carrier and China isn't.

I guess it's politics. India's a democracy and China's not.

As for their spending, I think they do give economy a high priority, but they focus on a lot of more advanced matter and not the production and manufacturing, despite being a huge pool for labor markets.

I think their military spending is actually pretty low. That might not include foreign purchases though and those are substantial.