BrahMos land-attack missile tested by Army for second day

New Delhi: The Army on Wednesday successfully test-fired an advanced version of the BrahMos land-attack cruise missile in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, underscoring a huge force multiplier for the Indian Army as well as proving a “deep penetration” capability.

For the second consecutive day, the South Western Command’s “Strike One” corps carried out the firing, with the first successful firing conducted on Tuesday, in both the trials demonstrating its accuracy of less than one metre.

An Indian Army statement described it as “an incredible feat not achieved by any other weapon system of its genre”.

The test-firing of a long-range tactical nine metre long weapon was carried out in full operational land-to-land configuration from a mobile autonomous launcher at its full-range.

The test met “all flight parameters in a copybook manner while conducting high level and complex manoeuvres, the multi-role missile successfully hit the land-based target with desired precision”. This is for the fifth consecutive time when the BrahMos Block-III version has been successfully launched.

Significantly, on March 11, an extended version of the BrahMos was successfully test-fired from the integrated test range in Balasore, off the Odisha coast.

The range stipulation of 300 km was lifted after India signed the missile technology control regime treaty in June last year.

The Indian Army, which became the first land force in the world to deploy the BrahMos in 2007, has raised several regiments of this formidable weapon.

Jointly developed by India’s DRDO and Russia’s NPOM, the multi-platform, multi-mission Brahmos is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against surface and sea-based targets.

Three Brahmos regiments have been operational in the Indian Army since 2007 while the Navy’s 10 frontline warships have deployed the missile. India plans to raise three squadrons of Sukhoi-30 fighters equipped with Brahmos missiles within this year.