Vietnam and the Philippines are both set to purchase BrahMos missiles from India. Why? Because China.

I don’t think anyone is surprised that India is selling arms to China’s neighbors. India and China aren’t exactly on friendly terms, and even at this moment China continues to occupy Indian territory. Or at least, are attempting to… The frail ching-chongs don’t do so well in cold weather, or in mountainous terrain. So, you know, they’re basically target practice for the Indian soldiers. Sadly, India has refrained from aggressive actions. There have been some casualties of Chinese soldiers to date, but that was their own fault. Not many people realize this, but when you are in an enemy’s territory and you start attacking their troops, you get dead. Surprise!

By and large, neither nation wants to start a conventional war. And, as we all know, the best way to prevent a war is to give weapons to your enemy’s enemies. What could possibly go wrong?!

We can probably all agree that there is zero surprise when it comes to Philippines arming itself against China. I know at one point Duterte had been trying to cozy up to Beijing, but as far as I can tell that is no longer the case. Maybe Duterte isn’t even in power anymore, I honestly have no idea. Either way, there’s been some…conflicts of interest…involving China operating in Philippines’ EEZ. If I recall correctly, there was a tweet some months ago from the Philippines, addressing China’s presence in Filipino territorial waters. What was it? Oh yeah! “Get the F*CK Out!”. I lol’d.

Also, why is Filipino spelled with an F but Philippines is PH? What’s up with that? There’s probably some explanation that’s perfectly reasonable, makes sense, and is super mundane and boring. Moving on.

Now, Vietnam kind of surprises me a little bit. Apparently there’s been some serious tensions between the Vietnamese and China. Which, in and of itself, isn’t surprising. Aside from Pakistan, China’s neighbors aren’t exactly huge fans. However, last I heard (which is quite some time ago), there was more or less free travel in certain border cities between Vietnam and China. Not really free, per se, but something akin to the Ambassador Bridge in Michigan (Huge amounts of traffic between the US and Canada on the daily, with e-Passes and stuff like that for frequent commuters). But hey, I’m not exactly up to speed on Vietnamese economics and politics. I just sort of figured they were cool with communism. Heck, maybe they are.

Either way, they want to point big missiles at China. For defense, obviously. It’d be fun to explore the possibility that Vietnam is just fronting and are really down with the CCP, but no. Let’s talk about the BrahMos missile.

Brahmin, Brahmos…I can only assume the missile’s name stems from its ability to generate a very large boom. Just a guess, and I’m by no means a linguistics expert, but it’s a pretty fair stab in the dark. For now it’s time to take a short break, then return and copy/paste whatever I can find about the BrahMos missile.

The time is currently 4:41 PM, EST, on January 3rd, 2020.

The time is now 8:32 PM, EST, on January 3rd, 2020.

WTF took so long? AFK Arena and Pipeflare. AFK is an Android game, and Pipeflare is a crypto fountain/dapp site. I’d drop a link to Cointiply, but who knows how long I’d be gone. To the Missiles!

Oh yeah, and during all that time, a Gravitas clip was talking about Duterte. Basically what happened was that he just kept sucking up to Xi Jinping because it was working…until it wasn’t. Just like literally everybody before and after him, he has gotten burned trying to cooperate with the CCP.

Wikipedia tells us that,
The BrahMos (designated PJ-10) is a medium-range ramjet supersonic cruise missile.

Neato. What else?

It is the world's fastest anti-ship cruise missile currently in operation.

Well that certainly makes sense, and is a great idea given the size of the Chinese Navy. The PLN? PLAN? Wtf is it… oh hey, it is PLAN. Nice. People’s Liberation Army Navy . It seems…idk, whatever, I don’t honestly have a better suggestion.

Anti-air defense is, for those who don’t know, not something you really need against China. Sure, you need a few guns and missiles or whatever, but their planes suck. They don’t have the same good stat numbers of the jets they try to emulate. Also, they fall out of the sky. Obviously not a lot, but…I mean, it kind of is a lot if it happens more than say once every 25 years.

Planes being able to fly is just as important as ships being able to float.

Keltec (now known as BrahMos Aerospace Trivandrum Ltd or BATL), an Indian state-owned firm, was acquired by BrahMos Corporation in 2008. Approximately ₹1,500 crore (equivalent to ₹36 billion or US$471.7 million in 2020) will be invested in the facility to make BrahMos components and integrate the missile systems. This was necessitated by the increased order book of the missile system,

There is an estimate that BrahMos orders will total some $13 Billion. It doesn’t really give a timeframe or a cost per missile. Well, the article I bet does provide that data somewhere, but we’re just scanning.

BrahMos has variants. Not just delivery system variants, but also strain variants. I mean model variants.
(Given enough time and enough money from Dr. Fauci, Wuhan can engineer a BrahMos variant. Obviously they’ll pretend it mutated on its own. Possible, but, not likely. BrahMos is very specific even though it doesn’t exist yet. The covid variant, I mean. The Missile totally exists).

BrahMos-NG (Next Generation) is a mini version based on the existing BrahMos, will have same 290 km range and mach 3.5 speed but it will weigh around 1.5 tons, 5 metres in length and 50 cm in diameter, making BrahMos-NG 50 percent lighter a

Sweet. You gotta love a situation where you can take the original product, reduce the size and thus material required to construct, and retain all of the original performance values. I don’t even care about Mach 3 anymore, I’m just impressed by the economics.

n 2016, India became a member of the MTCR. India and Russia are now planning to jointly develop a new generation of Brahmos missiles with 1500 km-plus range and an ability to hit protected targets with pinpoint accuracy. The upgrade will also be applied to all existing BrahMos missiles.

That’s pretty cool. Does this include The BrahMos-NG? I sure hope.

rahMos-II is a hypersonic cruise missile currently under development and is estimated to have a range of 600 km. With a speed of Mach 8, it will have double the speed of the current BrahMos missile, and it will be the fastest hypersonic missile in the world. Development could take 7–8 years to complete

From the makers of BrahMos, India’s premier deterrent to illegal maritime activity, comes BrahMos-II. Half the range, twice, the speed. No need for complicated hyperbolic trajectories to avoid anti-missile fire when you can just zip right by, unimpeded! (*Not responsible for damage caused by avian interaction*).

UCAV Variant

The former President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam asked BrahMos Aerospace to develop an advanced version of the BrahMos cruise missile to maintain India's lead in the field. He stated that a hypersonic version of BrahMos would be needed that could deliver its payload and return to base

Oh man what a cost savings that would be. Is that a thing they can do? Like, does it already exist? I bet it does at lower speeds and smaller payloads. Who knows though. I’m not going to Google it.

Next, we’re going to paste delivery variants and production information. The boring stuff, but still kinda…no, it’s not the least bit interesting.

Variants[edit]

Vertically-launched BrahMos takes its signature trajectory after being fired from a warship.

BrahMos Block-III test fired

Surface-launched, Block I

• Ship-launched, anti-ship variant (Operational)

• Ship-launched, land-attack variant (Operational)

• Land-launched, land-attack variant (Operational)

• Land-launched, anti-ship variant (In induction)

Surface-launched, upgraded variants

• BrahMos Block II land-attack variant (Operational)

• BrahMos Block III land-variant (In induction)

• Anti-aircraft carrier variant (tested in March 2012) – the missile gained the capability to attack aircraft carriers using the supersonic vertical dive variant of the missile that could travel up to 290 km.

Air-launched

• Air-launched, anti-ship variant (Operational)

• Air-launched, land-attack variant (Operational)

Submarine-launched

• Submarine-launched, anti-ship variant – Tested successfully for the first time from a submerged pontoon on 20 March 2013.

• Submarine-launched, land-attack variant (under development, expected completion in 2011)

Production and deployment

Russia is participating in the P75I submarine deal with the Amur class submarine armed with BrahMos.

India and Russia intend to make 2,000 BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles over the next ten years through their joint venture company, and nearly 50% of them are expected to be exported to friendly countries. The Brahmos headquarters complex is located at New Delhi and consists of a design centre and aerospace knowledge centre. The integration complex is located at Hyderabad and a production centre is located at Thiruvananthapuram.[202] Another assembly line is being established at Pilani.

India

This goes on with armament counts and stuff, how many ships etc. That’s enough for me, though. One more picture and then it’s time to say goodbye.