Indo-Russian Hypersonic missile
India and Russia have decided to develop and market a hypersonic missile can fly anywhere between five to seven times the speed of sound. This missile is the second part of the BrahMos cruise missile project and the fifth generation fighter aircraft. This project expected to complete its development stage by 2010 and hit world markets by 2015.
The sources said that the hypersonic missile would be the implementation of BrahMos-type financial concept with Russia investing 49.5 percent and India the rest of the total investment. Both India and Russia will release additional funding for the missile’s research and development.
Sources said that the hypersonic missile would feature advanced systems enabling its manoeuvrability through the most insurmountable defence systems. The both countries belive that they would sell those highly supersonic speed rocket in the coming years, would automatically upgrade their defences.
A.Sivathanupillai, CEO and managing director of BrahMos Aerospace, said that there was a great potential for hypersonic missiles in the next twenty years. The world had already started migrating from subsonic to supersonic missile technology, he added.
They said that they needed to develop a new engine for the hypersonic missile and they hoped to launch all works simultaniously. They also said that the priority was on developing engine and other platforms on which this could be mounted. The spcial fuel developed for BrahMos would be used for the highly supersonic speed rocket.
Like BrahMos, the country also hopes to market its advanced light helicopters and a range of UAVs under development.
