After Philippines, missiles for Brazil, Chile: BrahMos CEO

In what could be a game-changer for India’s defence exports and its ambitions to be a major military equipment producer and seller, the total value of orders for the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile is likely to increase by another $4 billion in 3-4 years, writes Sanjib Kr Baruah

New Delhi:In a huge statement indicative of the successful narrative that the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile is most likely to script, the chief of BrahMos Aerospace is reported to have told a Russian news agency on Monday that the total orders for the flagship missile are expected to soar by another $4 billion driven mostly by exports to foreign countries.

“As for exports, $2.5 billion to $3 billion in the next three years. We expect that sort of volume of sales,” Atul Rane, CMD and CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, told the Russian news agency. After having inked a $375 million (Rs 2,770 crore) contract in January 2022 to sell three batteries of BrahMos to Philippines, negotiations are on with Brazil and Chile.

“Latin America (Brazil and Chile) may take a little more time, that will be maybe three or four years namely,” Rane said while naming other countries and geographies that are likely to buy the missile including Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, South East Asia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The news agency quoted Rane as saying that the negotiations are only with countries that have friendly economic relations with Russia. “We cannot talk to a country where Russia doesn’t have partnership or a sale,” he said, adding that a country must fall under the category of “friendly” in order to negotiate with it.

On fresh western sanctions imposed on Russia after the Ukraine invasion on February 24, 2022, Rane indicated that the possibility and the ways to overcome it were worked out much earlier. “When the Western world put the sanctions over more dollars going into Russia, we had already solved that problem much earlier. Don’t forget that the American sanctions and the Western sanctions on Russia have been there since Syria, since Crimea, and now with the current situation… BrahMos has lived through all these sanctions”.

The ‘BrahMos’—named after Brahmaputra river and the Moskva river in Russia—is a product of a joint venture set up in 1998 between the India government’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Russian state-owned NPO Mashinostroyenia. All ‘BrahMos’ missiles are manufactured in India by BrahMos Aerospace, where India owns a 50.5 per cent share while Russia has 49.5 per cent share.

The entire revenues generated from sale of the ‘BrahMos’ is to be kept aside for research and development (R&D) activity in order to further develop the missile and to keep on technologically upgrading it.