Silver Shower

Smruti Deshpande

At the Silver Jubilee celebrations of BrahMos Aerospace, CEO and MD Atul Rane, while speaking to FORCE revealed that the India-Russia joint venture had completed the preliminary design of the BrahMos-NG and that one could expect the full-scale production to begin anytime next year.

He said, “We have started off from the detailed design called the working documentation. We would be ready to start cutting metal within five to six months.” He added that the main thing about the new project is funds and that BrahMos was in the process of gathering funds at present and once the JV got the funds, the project would move forward.

“I see flight trials starting by end of next year,” he said, adding, “Full-scale production, if everything is successful, will commence three years down the line and we would be ready to start delivering to users who would be interested.” According to him, dummy trials will begin by the middle of next year.

According to Rane, indigenisation of the weapon system has come a long way. He said, “When we started BrahMos, the whole idea was that the ground complex would be of Indian design and Indian production and the missile system would be from the Russian side. But even when the missile system was designed and created and delivered to the navy, it had only about 13-15 per cent of the Indian content. Today, we have reached about 78 per cent indigenisation.”

He said the journey has not been easy. “You’re taking up the indigenisation of an already working item. Getting an industry to accept using a particular material, learning to work on those materials and creating new processes is complicated.”

Rane is confident that BrahMos will go places through exports. He said, “We have our first order from the Philipp