NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Defence has signed a contract worth more than ₹660 crore with BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited for BrahMos fire control systems and launchers for Indian Navy ships, All India Radio reported on October 6.
The contract was signed in New Delhi in the presence of Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh.
Bought under the indigenous category
The purchase falls under the Buy (Indian-Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured) category, used for equipment designed, developed and made in India. The systems will have at least 68 per cent indigenous content, and the project is expected to involve a range of Indian industries, including micro, small and medium enterprises, according to the ministry.
The ministry did not say how many ships the fire control systems and launchers are for, or which ones.
The Navy's main strike missile
The BrahMos system, fitted on several frontline warships, is the Navy's primary surface-to-surface missile for maritime strike operations, the ministry said, and the new contract will strengthen India's maritime security and defence capabilities.
BrahMos is a supersonic cruise missile, powered by a ramjet, that flies at about Mach 3, roughly 3,700 km/h. It is built by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture set up on December 5, 1995, between India's Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyeniya, in which India holds 50.5 per cent and Russia 49.5 per cent. Its name joins two rivers, India's Brahmaputra and Russia's Moskva.
The missile can be launched from ships, submarines, fighter aircraft and land-based launchers. Ranges vary by version: about 290 km for the export model, 450 to 500 km for the air-launched version and 800 to 900 km for ship and land-launched versions, with longer-range versions in development. Navy ships fitted with it include INS Kolkata, INS Kochi, INS Chennai, INS Visakhapatnam, INS Mormugao, INS Imphal, INS Teg, INS Tarkash and INS Trikand.
Twenty-five years of the missile
The missile was first test-fired on June 12, 2001, from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur. Its first naval firing was on February 12, 2003, from the destroyer INS Rajput, after which the ship-launched anti-ship version became operational. The Army raised its first BrahMos regiment, the 861 Missile Regiment, on June 21, 2007, and the missile was first fired from a Sukhoi-30MKI fighter at a sea target in the Bay of Bengal on November 22, 2017. The Air Force received its first squadron of Su-30MKI jets equipped with the air-launched version on January 20, 2020.
An export product too
BrahMos has also become an export. The Philippines took its first delivery in April 2024 under a contract for three batteries worth about $375 million. A deal with Vietnam worth about $700 million was reported in December 2024, and talks with Indonesia, for a deal of about $450 million, have been reported. A lighter version, BrahMos-NG, is under development, and a hypersonic BrahMos-II could take seven to eight years to develop, according to the programme's record.
A busy day for naval procurement
The contract was signed on the same day that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh launched the Navy's first indigenously built fleet support ship, Surya, at Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam. Singh said there that India's defence manufacturing had moved over the past decade from dependence on imported platforms towards designing and building advanced systems at home, and called for a focus on timely delivery, indigenous design and resilient supply chains.
The ministry did not give a delivery schedule for the BrahMos fire control systems and launchers.
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