India and Philippines are likely to sign the deal for at least BrahMos Supersonic missile batteries.
Instead of Vietnam, the Philippines is all set to become the first international customer of BrahMos. As per the media reports, Indian officials in Manila has almost completed the price negotiations and operational cost negotiations. So the deal is expected to be signed during the first quarterly 2021 bilateral summit.
The Submit will be attended by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in 2021. A team from BrahMos Aerospace is also expected to be present in Manila by December to sort out a few remaining issues. An important topic will be to discuss the issues regarding the deal to supply the world’s fasted and deadliest supersonic Cruise missiles to the Philippines Army. This could be the first Land-Based Missile System Battery for the country.
The BrahMos is a medium-range ramjet supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarine, ships, aircraft, or land. It is the fastest supersonic cruise missile in the world. The move has seen as a counter to the Chinese supply of arms to Pakistan, India’s No1 enemy in the region.
BrahMos claims it has the capability of attacking surface targets by flying as low as five metres in altitude and the maximum altitude it can fly is 14,000 metres. It has a diameter of 70 cm and a wingspan of 1.7 m. It can gain a speed of Mach 2.8 and has a maximum range of 450 km.
The ship-launched and land-based missiles can carry a 200 kg warhead, whereas the aircraft-launched variant (BrahMos A) can carry a 300 kg warhead. It has a two-stage propulsion system, with a solid-propellant rocket for initial acceleration and a liquid-fuelled ramjet responsible for the sustained supersonic cruise.
Air-breathing ramjet propulsion is much more fuel-efficient than rocket propulsion, giving the BrahMos a longer range than a pure rocket-powered missile would achieve. Being twice as heavy and almost four times as fast as Tomahawk, the BrahMos has more than 32 times the on-cruise kinetic energy of a Tomahawk missile, although it carries only 3/5 the payload and a fraction of the range, which suggests that the missile was designed with a different tactical role.
Its 2.8 Mach speed means that it cannot be intercepted by some existing missile defence systems and its precision makes it lethal to water targets.
Source : Wikipedia, Twitter, Open Source
