BrahMos II Indian/Russian Short-Range Cruise Missile

BrahMos-II BrahMos Mark II (not to be confused with BrahMos-I, Block-2) is intended to be a hyper-sonic cruise missile currently under joint development by Russia and India, which have together formed BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited. It is the second of the BrahMos series of cruise missiles. The BrahMos-II is expected to have a range of 450 kilometers and a speed of Mach 7. During the cruise stage of flight the missile will be propelled by a scram jet air breathing jet engine. http://defencenews.in/article/Meet-BrahMos-II-The-Super-Hypersonic-Missile-Russia-and-India-May-Never-Build-583398 Russia’s military made headlines in 2018 when it announced it had hypersonic missiles that are ready for combat. While many nations are developing these advanced weapons, Russia appears to hold the lead and is not stopping, with Putin announcing that Russia plans to field even more in 2019 . But what about the joint Russian/Indian hypersonic missile project? Following the development of the supersonic BrahMos anti-ship cruise missile during the 2000s, the joint venture, BrahMos Aerospace, announced the development of a hypersonic BrahMos II in 2008 . But ten years later, as Russia fields its first hypersonic missiles, where is the BrahMos II? The short answer is that the BrahMos II is not coming any time soon. While Russian hypersonic missile programs have steadily proceeded, BrahMos II development has intermittently started and stopped multiple times, with deadlines and dates changing almost every year. It’s possible that it may never enter service. ...This was not to be. At Aero India 2015, the new CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, Sudhir Mishra said that scientists had quietly begun work on the hypersonic version of the supersonic BrahMos missile. He expressed the view that the India may be the first country in the world to field a hypersonic missile “in the next 7-12 years”. This pushed the timeline for the BrahMos II back to 2022-2027. But in 2016, the marketing director of BrahMos Aerospace, Praveen Pathak, suggested that this was not true in an interview with the Russian TASS news service. He said that work on the hypersonic BrahMos would begin in 2022 , and that a prototype would be ready two years later in 2024. At this point, it’s likely that earlier work on the hypersonic missile was wiped clean, since Pathak suggested that the missile’s shape and design were not known. During the interview, he stated that “the preliminary design is now being developed.” In 2018 this was pushed back further. Mishra told the Times of India that "We will require seven to ten years from now to become a hypersonic missile system,” suggesting that the hypersonic BrahMos would only reach service between 2025 and 2028. So where does the BrahMos II stand in 2019? In a report about the BrahMos at Aero India 2019, it was simply said that the hypersonic version would exist “in a few years.” While this is far more realistic, given that Russia has nearly completed development of its own missiles, time will tell if the BrahMos II is delayed yet again.