26 Aug 09 Brahmos Missile explained

What kind of name is Brahmos?

BrahMos was named after the rivers of the two countries taking part in developing of the cruise missile.

The initial name being taken from the river Brahmaputra  in India and the later part being taken from the River Moskov in Russia

And hence the name BrahMos.

What is Bhramos ?

BrahMos is a supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft or land. It is a joint venture between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroeyenia who have together formed the BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited.

What is a Supersonic cruise missile?

A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and uses a lifting wing and a propulsion system, usually a jet engine, to allow sustained flight; it is essentially a flying bomb. Cruise missiles are generally designed to carry a large conventional or nuclear warhead many hundreds of kilometers with high accuracy. Modern cruise missiles can travel at supersonic or high subsonic speeds, are self-navigating, and fly on a non-ballistic very low altitude trajectory to avoid radar detection.

Your wikipedia copy paste answer did not satisfy my query..answer it properly !

Think of this missile as a low flying Kamakazi jet plane…filled with bombs.These missiles travel very close to the surface of the earth and there fore avoid radar detection.These are guided by GPS on how to reach the destined path and hit the target

A video will help explain

In the later part of the video you will see that the missile just cruises along the terrain and is very close to the surface of the earth.

This is what a cruise missile is.

So what is a super sonic cruise missile?

These missiles travel faster than the speed of sound, usually using ramjet engines. The range is typically 100-500 km, but can be greater. Guidance systems vary.

What does  “Guidance systems vary” mean?

Because these missile travel so close to the ground and they turn to avoid obstacles like trees and buildings they need a eye in the sky.They also need to have pin point description of their location so that they can accelerate or decelerate their speeds.

A global positioning system is used to provide this to the Cruise missile.

Here the problem is that the GPS is owned by the US and they can turn it off at their time and will and hence forth we cannot rely on them.

We are developing our own version of the GPS called Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS)

It should be done by 2011.And yes it will guide the Brahmos in event of a war.

Anything  else I need to know?

Well you might be interested in the fact that Bhramos 2 has been developed and tested and is curently being inducted in the Indian Army

here is a test video of it.

Hope you like it

BrahMos II is a hypersonic cruise missile that has been lab tested with a speed of 5.26 Mach making it the fastest cruise missile in the world. BrahMos II is expected to be ready by 2013-14 and will arm the Project 15B destroyers of the Indian Navy.

Bhramos 2 to be inducted by 2011

I want to see it in action !

Okay here is a video of it in action.

Please skip to 0:53 seconds for the actual test.

You can see how accurate the missile is.
It hits the triangly thing in the wall.

Tags: bhramos, Cruise, DRDO, missile