BrahMos Aerospace aims to develop hypersonic missiles

Tiruchirapalli: BrahMos Aerospace, an Indo-Russian joint venture, has initiated efforts to develop technology for hypersonic version of the BrahMos missile which can travel at five to seven times the speed of sound, a top company official has said.

"The company is roping in academics to develop the requisite technology before going in for designing and developing missiles which can travel at Mach 5 to 7 (five to seven times the speed of sound). It will be BrahMos II version next to the present variants of Mach 2.8 to 3.5," A Sivathanu Pillai MD & CEO of the company told PTI.

He said the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, would collaborate with the company with a 20 member scientists' team developing technologies for high temperature material required to build the missile, cram-jet propulsions and energy modules and the requisite algorithms. A separate centre has been created for this purpose in IISc while its Russian counterpart, the Moscow Institute of Aviation, would produce technologies for propulsion, kinetic energy modules for the hypersonic version.