The Indian Navy successfully tested on Wednesday a highly-maneuverable version of a sea-based Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, an Indian defense source told RIA Novosti.
The missile was fired from an unspecified warship off the coast of Vishakhapatnam in Bay of Bengal in a 34th test by the Indian military.
The source said the missile made a “double-maneuver in S-form” and hit the designated target ship just one meter above the waterline, “ripping through the ship’s hull.”
India has recently updated BrahMos missiles by installing the advanced satellite navigation systems from Russia’s Kh-555 and Kh-101 strategic long-range cruise missiles, adding GPS-GLONASS technology to the existing doppler-inertial platform.
“After acquiring the target, the missile flies toward it with high precision, constantly receiving updated coordinates from a satellite navigation system,” the source said.
The BrahMos missile has a range of 290 km (180 miles) and can carry a conventional warhead of up to 300 kg (660 lbs). It can effectively engage targets from an altitude as low as 10 meters (30 feet) and has a top speed of Mach 2.8, which is about three times faster than the U.S.-made subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile.
BrahMos is based on the Russian-designed 3M55 Yakhont (SS-N-26) missile. Sea- and ground-launched versions of the missile have been put into service with the Indian Army and Navy. The flight tests of the airborne version were expected to be completed by the end of 2012.
The Indian Air Force is planning to arm 40 Su-30MKI Flanker-H fighters with BrahMos missiles.
Russia and India recently agreed to develop hypersonic BrahMos 2 missile capable of flying at speeds of Mach 5-Mach 7.
