MUMBAI: Godrej Aerospace on Tuesday handed over the 100th set of airframe assembly to BrahMos Aerospace. They also bagged the order of 100 units of airframes for the air-launched versions of BrahMos missiles.
“The designing part for the newer version of the BrahMos would be complete by 2019 and the delivery is scheduled to start by 2022,” said Jamshyd N Godrej, chairman of Godrej & Boyce.
“Our association with BrahMos dates back to 2000. We have invested time, money, energy, patience for the project,” Godrej said at a function to formally hand over the 100th airframe to Dr Sudhir K Mishra, the MD & CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, an India-Russia joint venture.
“While it took 17 years for the first 100 airframes, the 200th airframe would need another three years and the 300th airframe would come in another two-and-a-half years. The time schedule meets the requirement of our users,” Dr Mishra said.
Dr Mishra also said that efforts to increase the speed of the missile are going on and the missile system can go from supersonic to hypersonic in another 10 year’s time.
“Current BrahMos missiles have a speed of 2.8 Mach. In two years time, we would have a speed of 3.5 Mach. In the next three to four years time, we would have a speed of 5 Mach. Then we have to go hypersonic which would take seven to ten years,” he said.
The ‘fire and forget’ BrahMos missile is a stealth universal supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from ships, submarines, aircraft and land-based platforms. It can be used for precision strike to destroy targets on land and sea.
Besides the main airframe, Godrej supplies control surfaces and nose cap – and also the mobile autonomous launchers, missile replinishing vehicles for the land-launched versions.