Brahmos

At the time when India has been looking for other potential weapon suppliers to reduces its dependency on a single country like Russia, there is a concern in the Russian departments and media that India is moving away to the western bloc. There has been articles on Voice of Russia saying that now Russia should look towards Pakistan as India has tilted towards US pole.

It would be too early to comment on India's position, but the statistics and ongoing deals and agreement between India and Russia shows that both the countries are still the biggest strategic partner of each other.


In 2014, India’s Air Force will start deploying supersonic BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, a joint production of Russia and India. The announcement came by the general director of BrahMos Aviation, Shivatanu Pillai at the Technology of Machine Buildinf 2012 forum held in the city of Zhukovsky in the Moscow region.

The cruise missile has already been inducted into Army and Navy and is undergoing further development. The missile has identical configurationf or land, sea and sub sea platforms and uses Transport Launch Canister (TLC) for transport, launch and storage.

At the current stage, India is planning to equip over 40 Su-30MKI fighter jets of the country’s Air Force with BraMos missiles. This partnership between India and Russia is the classicl example of successful military and technical cooperation between the two countries which has gained momentum in various forms for many years. Unlike other countries which have offered only buyer-seller relationship, Russia has offered a full 50-50 partnership in development and manufacturing. Russia is ready to cooperate with weapon producers abroad, director of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation Alexander Fomin said addressing the TMB-2012 forum.

Even though India has been exploring other markets, the partnership between India and Russia is the biggest partnership in the true sense. By the time India will induct Brahmos cruise missiles in the Air Force, Indian navy would have already received another massive military vessel from Russia, Aircraft Carrier INS Vikramaditya that would ensure Indian navy will remain a true blue water navy.

“Russia is ready to establish various types of cooperation. We have excellent examples of cooperation with many European countries – Italy, Germany, France as well as China, India and Israel. We wish to strengthen these mutually beneficial ties to promote our own technological development and borrow technology if necessary. In this sense, Russia is not a closed country,” Alexander Fomin the said. Foreign customers are making higher demands for exported military hardware.

“The share of exports in the overall production of the enterprise is up to 40 percent. Among these is equipment for tanks, especially for the modernization of tanks abroad. We are exporting T-90 tanks but we also offer various kinds of equipment, which is being displayed at the exhibition, to upgrade the tactical and technical characteristics of the tanks which were supplied earlier. We are displaying two types of equipment for the modernization of the T-90 and T-80 tanks."

"A combined search and targeting system for tank commanders has been designed. All parts were produced domestically,” Yuri Abramov said. The Russian military hardware displayed at the TMB-2012 exhibition has provoked great interest among military delegations from Africa, Asia and South America. Russia is a leader on the world’s weapon market. The volume of exports is consistently growing, says Alexander Fomin.

“Last year, Russia’s exports were estimated at 13.5 billion U.S. dollars. We are cooperating with our partners from 70 countries. Our key partners are India, China, Vietnam and the countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East as well as Venezuela, Brazil and Peru. Among the new partners of Russia in the past years are Argentina, Brunei and Bhutan. We are also strengthening relations with Myanmar in the military and technical area,” Alexander Fomin said.

In 2012, Russia is planning to exceed its previous year’s amount of arms exports.

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