Paving the Way

Pravin Sawhney

BrahMos Aerospace, the makers of BRAHMOS supersonic cruise missile, which completes 20 years on February 12, has many firsts to its credit. It is the first successful joint-venture between India and Russia; it has met manufacturing and delivery time-lines, a rarity for the Defence Research and Development Organisation; it has been accepted by all three defence services — the navy, army and the air force; with its supersonic speed of 2.8 Mach, it is difficult to intercept; given its speed, weight and accuracy, its enormous kinetic energy would blow depth targets to smithereens making it a strategic weapon with conventional warheads; with Indian joining the Missile Technology Control Regime club, its advertised range of 290km can be increased to 600km and so on.

The question which begs an answer is this: can BrahMos be called a Make in India project? While the short answer is yes, some explaining on the 2014 Make in India policy as elucidated under the Defence Procurement Policy (DPP-2016) is necessary to qualify the assertion.

To begin with, there is a sea difference between Make in India and Create in India. The latter, as the name indicates, is about creating from scratch including design (based on general staff requirements of defence services), making and testing of prototypes, creating the desired eco-system by involving the national defence industry (to include both public and private sector