Interacting with the media persons during the flagging off ceremony of the BrahMos booster held at Solar Industries on Thursday, Dr Jaiteerth Joshi, Director General of BrahMos, DRDO and CEO & MD of BrahMos Aerospace, said that Russia is interested in inducting the supersonic cruise missile into its armed forces and discussions are under way on expanding production capacity to meet future requirements. “In addition to this, export negotiations for the missile with Vietnam are also in the final stages. “Only some clearances are remaining and we hope to close the deal very soon,” he said. Dr Joshi said discussions were also going on with several other countries for exports of the missile. “We are in talks with several other eastern and western countries. Once the Government approval comes, we will come out on the open forum,” he said.

 

Commenting on reducing the cost of the missile, Dr Joshi said efforts are being put to cut costs and increase indigenous content in the missile system. “Significant savings has been achieved through value engineering initiatives over the past 18 months. We made the processes more robust. Raw material costs have also been reduced significantly. Similarly, we are increasing the vendor base which is expected to further cut the cost. Overall, the Indian component cost is expected to decline by nearly 20 per cent over the next one to two years,” he said. Dr Joshi also said that in last 25 years, the country has succeed in establishing the quality and reliability of BrohMos. “We have made one-of-its-kind fastest missile and it was successfully tested during the recent ‘Operation Sindoor’. The entire world has seen it,” he said.