India Has Conducted Seven BrahMos Missile Tests In Less Than Four Months

BrahMos missile has been in the news over the last few months for one reason or another. Earlier this year, BrahMos got its first international customer as the Philippines signed a $375 million deal to equip its shore-based anti-ship batteries with the missile. More recently, the supersonic cruise missile made headlines after it was accidentally fired from an Indian Air Force base near Ambala during an inspection and landed in Pakistan.

However, what appears to have gone unnoticed is that India has conducted at least seven tests of the BrahMos missile this year.

April 19: Two different variants of the missile were tested on the same day. The Indian Air Force test-fired an air-launched BrahMos from a Su-30 MKI fighter based at the Thanjavur Air Force Station, and the Indian Navy launched the missile from its guided-missile destroyer INS Delhi.

March 23: An extended range version of the BrahMos missile was tested from a land-based launcher in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

March 5: An extended-range land-attack BrahMos missile was test-fired by the Indian Navy from its stealth guided-missile destroyer INS Chennai.

February 18: Indian Navy's stealth guided-missile destroyer INS Visakhapatnam launched a BrahMos missile in the Bay of Bengal.

February 2: The Andaman and Nicobar Command, a tri-service theatre command of the Indian Armed Forces, said on 2 February it had test-fired a BrahMos missile from a ground-based launcher. However, it did not say if the missile had been tested the same day or earlier.

January 20: A BrahMos missile with "increased indigenous content and improved performance" was test-fired for its maximum range.

While some of these were routine launches conducted to test the preparedness of the forces, others were conducted to test either new variants (extended range version, for example) or new components added to increase the level of indigenous content in the missile.

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