Article Posted on : - Feb 04, 2010

BRAHMOS missile during its vertical launch from a moving warship. A File Photo.

NEW DELHI (PTI): For the first time, 290 km-range BRAHMOS supersonic cruise missile will be test-fired in Russia in September during its installation on Indian Navy's warships.

Installation test-flight of the missile will be held in the Baltic Sea from Navy's Talwar Class stealth frigates being constructed in Kaliningrad in Russia, Defence Ministry officials said on Wednesday.

Till now, the various versions of the missile have been test-fired 21 times and have been inducted in the Navy and the Army.

This would also be the first time when the missile would be test-fired from a newly-built warship, they added. Till now, the missiles were being fired from warships that were retrofitted to carry out the launches.

India has ordered three Talwar-class warships to be built in Russia and all three of them would be fitted with vertical launchers.

The vertical launchers and fire control system for the September test have already been shifted to Russia, officials said.

There are four versions of BRAHMOS including the sea-to-sea, sea-to-land, land-to-sea and land-to-land and the joint venture company is working on developing the cruise missile for submarine and fighter aircraft.

For the air-launched version, the first missile is expected to be test-fired from a Su-30MKI in Russia by December this year and the trials are planned to be completed by 2012.

The submarine-launched version is expected to be tested in the next couple of months where it will be fired from a pontoon off the Orissa coast.

BRAHMOS is an Indo-Russian joint venture cruise missile and has a top speed of 2.8 mach. Work is also on for developing the hypersonic version of the missile, which will have a speed of over 5 mach.