BrahMos land-attack missile strikes it big during launch No. 50

New Delhi, Nov 07: India's Brahmastra - BrahMos supersonic cruise missile - hit the designated target successfully during a test-firing conducted by the Indian Army today.

The successful test-firing was conducted today morning at Pokhran test range in Rajasthan, demonstrating the weapon's supreme operational capability.

The land attack cruise missile was test launched by a Mobile Autonomous Launcher (MAL) deployed in full configuration.

BrahMos Aerospace officials told OneIndia that this was the 50th launch of the missile, co-developed by India (DRDO) and Russia (NPOM).

Clean strike in user deployment configuration

"During today's test-firing, the missile met all mission objectives. It was a clean strike. The test was carried out in the user-deployment configuration by trained Army personnel," an official said.

BrahMos Aerospace said that senior Army officials witnessed the launch.

The fire-and-forget "missile has the capability to take on surface-based targets by flying a combined hi-lo trajectory, thus evading enemy air defence systems.

"The missile system, the most lethal and potent weapon system for precision strike available with Indian Army, has proved again its effectiveness in today's successful launch," Sudhir Mishra, BrahMos Aerospace head, said.

Interestingly, today's launch follows the missile's naval variant's launch on November 1 from Indian Navy's latest stealth destroyer INS Kochi.

During the successful launch last week - termed as part of an Acceptance Test Firing - saw the missile successfully penetrating the decommissioned target ship Alleppey.

Soon after the launch, BrahMos officials said that the latest test-firing from INS Kochi has validated the newly-commissioned ship's systems.

Key BrahMos facts and figures

* The missile has a range of 290-km and travels at Mach 2.8 speed.

* It can be launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against sea and land targets.

* Army has already inducted three regiments of BrahMos in its arsenal

* All are equipped with Block-III version of missile.

* The land-attack version of BrahMos is operational in the Navy since 2005 and Army since 2007.

* The air version is expected to test-fired for the first time from a Sukhoi soon.

OneIndia News