India is weighing in on the plans of selling BrahMos missiles to Russia, according to a recent report. This move would be a probable switch of positions between the two strategic allies who had jointly created the powerful weapon.
Atul Dinkar Rane, BrahMos Aerospace CEO and managing director, in a Q&A with The Week, said that his organisation was continuously looking at Russia as a probable market for the air-launched BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, asserting that Russia currently has no equivalent in service.
“The Russian P800 Onyx missile is the precursor of the BrahMos. The BrahMos is a much better version. The P800 was produced in Russia, it still is. They moved from P800 to another area of work and they are happy. We have been continuously looking at Russia as a market for the BrahMos,” he said.
“If they had purchased it [before the Ukraine war], they would have had a lot of things to use in the current situation,” Rane said. “After the ongoing situation in Europe ends, we might get some orders from Russia, especially for the air-launched BrahMos,” he added.
Russia could probably use the BrahMos like its P-800 Onyx projectile, which is the Soviet-era precursor of BrahMos. Although the P-800 Onyx is created as an anti-ship missile, it has been employed against ground marks in Ukraine as well as Syria.
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Russia reimporting parts for tanks and missiles previously sold to foreign buyers in Asia
As per a report published by The Moscow Times in the month of June, citing Nikkei Asia, Russia had reportedly started to buy back parts for projectiles and tanks that it had earlier sold to India and Myanmar in order to improve its equipment and older weapons that were supposed to be deployed for use in the war against Ukraine.
The Russian defense industry manufacturers were reimporting equipment that they had produced and previously exported to buyers in Asia, according to the report.
Uralvagonzavod, a machine industry firm, which makes tanks for the Russian armed forces, imported nearly $24 million worth of its own products from Myanmar in the year 2022.
The equipment that was reimported, included around 6,000 sighting telescopes and nearly 200 cameras for installation in tanks, which as per analysts could be used to modernize Russia’s old T-72 tanks currently sitting in storage, according to Nikkei Asia.
(With inputs from agencies)
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