India and russia are planning to start tests of their new air-launched version of the BrahMos cruise anti-ship missile, the BrahMos-MA. The tests are scheduled to begin in two years, in 2026, the co-director of the joint russian-Indian venture Alexander Maksichev said on the sidelines of the Armiya-2024 forum in russia. He specified the development stage of the airborne variant of this missile — they are currently preparing the detailed design documents.
"If everything goes well, in two years we will start testing the missile," Maksichev said. On the part of the russian federation, the NPO Mashinostroyenia design bureau takes part in the joint venture with India. Based in Reutov, Moscow Region, this enterprise is part of the JSC Tactical Missiles Corporation holding company.
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Accordingly, the russian side implies that the BrahMos-MA won't finish the tests until at least summer of 2026, despite India expecting it to conclude tests by the end of 2025, so the Indian military can adopt the missile in 2026 already.
Here we should point out the inconsistency between the Indian and russian parties, which lies not only in the plans for this project or statements but even in the name of this missile. In India, it is known as the BrahMos NG (Next Generation), and russians say BrahMos-MA and BrahMos NG are essentially one product. Although we should note, the first presentation of BrahMos NG was way back in 2013, so it's possible that russians got the names wrong, and these two are completely separate or interconnected projects.
In February 2024, Praveen Pathak, Market Promotion & Export Director at BrahMos Aerospace, told russian media about a large factory for producing BrahMos NG that was built in India at the time. The construction was to be finished by March–May, and all the equipment set in place and cranked up by the end of 2025 or in early 2026, with mass production commencing without further delay. However, a few other representatives of the company said these expectations were too high.
The idea was that while the plant is still in construction, the engineers were to make first experimental prototypes and start the flight tests in winter or summer of 2024 at the latest. The new series of tests were planned for the last weeks of 2024 and early 2025.
While it's still unclear if BrahMos-MA and BrahMos NG are different products or the same one, we can at least recall the key specifications of air-launched BrahMos NG, as announced earlier: the combat weight is 1,330 kilograms and the operational range is 300 kilometers, or roughly 160 nautical miles.
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