BrahMos Aerospace, the Indo-Russian joint venture, has embarked on initiatives to go in for hypersonic versions of missiles, a top official of the company said today.



"Having successfully inducted supersonic versions, which can travel at 2.8 Mach (2.8 times the speed of sound), plans are on to go in for hypersonic versions, which can touch Mach 5 or 7," Chief Executive Officer and MD of the company, Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, said on the sidelines of the inauguration of an exhibition of armoured vehicles by Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE), organised as part of the DRDO Golden Jubilee celebrations.

He said fuel for these versions would be a combination of aviation kerosene and atmospheric air,mixed at a proportionate volume. "The resultant propulsion thrust could be so heavy that a missile could be projected at terrific speed," he said.



Pillai said lab tests had already commenced and that modules for these versions would be ready by 2010. The test missiles would be flown over rocket motors injected into space After the successful 'Block II test' last week, the company and DRDO had fulfilled all parameters prescribed by Army and was poised to go in for mass production for inducting these into the Army. As Naval ships are all equipped with BrahMos missiles, the next focus would be to address the needs of IAF, he said.



 

 He added that the future wars would be fought with minimum people using high-powered weapons.



"It will be a network centric and fought with intelligent and autonomous systems", he said, adding cyber warfare and robotic systems would dominate the battlefield.



Later in the presence of Sivathanu Pillai, an MoU was signed between CVRDE and Anna University to develop various combat vehicles for future defence purpose.



The MoU would facilitate students of the University gain access to high technology labs of CVRDE at Avadi, Outstanding Director of CVRDE, S Sundaresh later said.