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With the planned induction of the
supersonic BrahMos missile in the Navy and Army, the Indo-Russian joint
venture plans to bring an air force version to be ready for tests by end of
2007.
The Navy has started fitting its
ships with the missile with INS Rajput being the first one. In addition, the
Navy said that all future ships will automatically be fitted with BrahMos and
the three Talwar class ships in Russia will be fitted with this missile.
The Army has placed an unspecified
order with BrahMos Aerospace. The missile can be launched from multiple
platforms such as ships, mobile land based launchers, and air. BrahMos
Aerospace has already demonstrated ship to ship and ship to land
capabilities. The missile flies achieves over Mach 2 speed.
BrahMos Aerospace said that it
expects to cross USD 2.2 billion by 2007. The company got a seed money of USD
11 million since 1998 and used private companies to deliver components and
participate in the process. It said that dozens of nations have showed
interest in the missile but a policy decision is required authorizing the
sale of this missile to other nations.
The growing private participation
in defense projects and the successes has attracted the attention of US
defense major Lockheed-Martin (LM). The company plans to start operations in
India to collaborate with public sector and private companies to make it more
competitive in the global market and projected a business opportunity of over
USD 10 billion in the next 5-10 years. LM is pitching for several Requests
for Proposals (RFPs) in India.
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