"The Hypersonic BrahMos version of the cruise missile would be ready for flight testing in 2017", Sivathanu Pillai, chief executive officer of the Russian-Indian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace said here. The new missiles would be capable of flying at speeds of Mach 5- Mach 7.
"I think we will need about five years to develop the first fully-functional prototype (of the hypersonic missile)", he announced, adding "we have already carried out a series of lab tests at the speed of 6.5 Mach".
India and Russia appear to be close to the US which claimed last year to have successfully tested a missile that travels at five times the speed of sound.
After the test, media reports said that advanced hypersonic missile would be able to bomb anywhere in the world within an hour.
Pillai said that the new missile will be made in three variants