LANGKAWI, /Malaysia/, March 28. /TASS/. The BrahMos cruise missile will get a maximum speed of Mach 5 during its upgrade to become a hypersonic weapon, Russian Head of the BrahMos Aerospace Russia-India Joint Venture Alexander Maksichev told TASS at the LIMA 2019 arms show in Malaysia on Thursday.
"We hope that in the coming years we will reach the boundary, which some scientists call the hypersound. Perhaps, somewhere in the area of Mach 4.5-5," Maksichev said.
The company is constantly dealing with the issues of increasing the speed of the BrahMos missile and building up its combat capabilities, he noted. The current BrahMos modification has a speed of Mach 2.8-3.
The PJ-10 BrahMos is a supersonic cruise missile with a solid-propellant booster. The missile has been developed by Russia’s Research and Production Association of Machine-Building (the town of Reutov near Moscow) and India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). The BrahMos is a modification of the Soviet Oniks anti-ship missile.
The missile’s name comes from the names of two rivers: the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia. The missile’s first launch took place on June 12, 2001 from a coastal launcher. The missile’s production has been arranged at enterprises in Russia and India.