Article Posted on : - Jul 14, 2014

Dr. A Sivathanu Pillai, CEO & MD, BrahMos Aerospace during the presentation of book - "The Path Unexplored" penned by him.

NEW DELHI (BNS): Dr. A Sivathanu Pillai, founder CEO & MD of BrahMos Aerospace on Monday presented the book "The Path Unexplored" penned by him to eminent journalists from the media at BrahMos Headquarters, New Delhi.

The book underlines the unique and historic journey of BRAHMOS from the birth of an idea to the world's best supersonic cruise missile system.

Dr. A. S. Pillai during a live presentation of the book discussed about his association with the BrahMos Joint Venture since its inception and the strides made under his creative leadership in an unexplored path.

The book, a noteworthy masterpiece, is dedicated to the formation, development, and prospects of the most modern forms of military-technical cooperation - a joint Indian-Russian project to develop cruise missile weapon complexes for different types of platforms.

The author, Dr. A.S. Pillai, has been at the forefront and has "actively participated from initial stages of the formation of this Joint Venture as irreplaceable leader", as noted by A. G. Leonov, DG, NPOM.

The book covers the journey of BrahMos that has positioned India as a World Leader in missile technology with the fastest, high precision Supersonic Cruise Missile, realised in a short period of time, with a novel collaborative effort between both the friendly nations. The efforts and hard work in this "unexplored path" has highlighted for the first time experience of the entire team and thus demonstrated the power of "We Can Do It."

During the presentation, Dr. Pillai, while sharing experiences of the project and various flight trials of the missile, said that BrahMos has established the "Mind to Market" concept with a meagre investment of USD 300 million and transforming the same to a whopping USD 6 billion worth orders from the armed force. The achievements have resulted into an integrated defence company in India, taking care of design, development, production, marketing and product support.

"We have successfully developed numerous variants of BRAHMOS - land-to-land, land-to-sea, sea-to-sea, sea-to-land, sub-sea and also the air-launched one which is going to be flight tested in the coming months," Dr. Pillai said, referring to BRAHMOS as a 'customer-oriented' programme.

Elaborating about the air-version of the missile, he said that after undergoing necessary modifications, the new missile is ready.

"We are planning to test the missile in air-to-land and air-to-sea configurations," he revealed.

The BrahMos Chief said that a number of projects are currently going on both in India and Russia for breakthrough technologies of the future even as the JV Company is planning to develop the futuristic variants of the supersonic cruise missile such as BRAHMOS-Mini and BRAHMOS-II (hypersonic).

The book also enlightens the readers about the story of the most-successful defence cooperation in the world which made India rise high and develop technology in-house while under strict sanctions from the developed nations.

The sanctions in disguise became a blessing for the country as BrahMos JV has proved to the world that "Technology Denied is Technology Gained."

BrahMos, with share capital investments of 50.5% from India and 49.5% from Russia, has ensured the speeding up of decision making process which ultimately resulted in the timely realisation and delivery of the product. This type of innovative collaboration provided the "Leap-Frog" effect in terms of technology development which thus proved as a win-win situation for both partners.

"The Path Unexplored" also talks about the initiative taken by BrahMos to have the first "Missile Industry Consortium" with a perfect blend of Public-Private Partnership giving 100% results never before accomplished.

"India should have a Military Industry Complex for the fulfilment of self-reliance mission in defence," Dr. Pillai remarked during the presentation of the book.

"The Path Unexplored" has focused on the fact India is a great nation, a powerhouse of knowledge and deeply-rooted civilisation heritage. India needs the strength of organisations and industries to be a world leader. The nation must learn and move ahead from role-model such as the BrahMos JV.