NEW DELHI: Over the years, India has emerged as a superpower to reckon with. The warfighting capabilities with cutting-edge technological advancements have manifold increased India's potential at the global level. The man behind the success of India's missile program is none other than the Late President APJ Abdul Kalam. The BrahMos Aerospace CEO, Sudhir Mishra has also credited the success of Indian missile program to Abdul Kalam.

The deadly BrahMos is a stealth supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft or land. The strike-range of the missile is over 290 km and is ranked one of the most advanced missiles of this generation.

The project was a joint venture between Republic of India's Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russian Federation's NPO Mashinostroeyenia. The both these organization have together formed BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited. The name of the missile is taken out from the names of two rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia.

Let's take a look at some of the facts related to BRAHMOS Missile:

1. BrahMos missile is the world's fastest cruise missile in operation. The missile can travel at speeds of Mach 2.8 to 3.0.
2. The missile can zoom at a very low-cruising altitude of 10 meters at the terminal phase and can hit the target with pin-point accuracy.
3. BrahMos missile was first test-fired in 2001, at the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur and after that, the missile is tested by DRDO more than fifty times for various platforms.
4. The land launched and ship-launched versions are already inducted into service with air-launched and submarine-launched versions in their final phases of the trial.

1. BrahMos can travel at a low altitude of 10 meters. Wikimedia Commons

2. DRDO is also experimenting with a hypersonic version of the missile. It is expected that the new variant could attain a speed of Mach 7.
3. The land-attack version of BrahMos missile has been developed in many advanced forms of Block I, Block II and Block III variants.
4. The trajectory and speed of missile is very unique and thus makes it very hard to detect or stopped. The BrahMos can travel at a low altitude of 10 meters and is also known as terrain hugging missile.
5. As per to reports, it is believed that Russia and India are aiming to produce 2000 such supersonic cruise missile in the time frame of 8-1-0 years.
6. BrahMos missile is very much advanced in every concept as compared to much hype US' Tomahawk missile. BrahMos is 4 times larger than Tomahawk missile and 32 times more powerful than it.

1. Recently, Brahmos missile has been integrated in India's front-line aircraft, Sukhoi 30 MKI. Wikimedia Commons

2. DRDO has already started the work to integrate the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile on 40 Sukhoi combat aircrafts. BrahMos was successfully test-fired from Sukhoi on November 22. Sukhoi's are counted as the most potent aircrafts in the world.