Visiting some defence installations in southern part of the country, the Standing Committee on Defence headed by Satpal Maharaj reviewed the functioning and the progress made by the BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Limited (BATL) over the last decade, officials said here.
During the visit, the members of the Committee were shown the facilities and the product fabrication unit of the BATL, they said.
The Indo-Russian Joint Venture was established in 1998 to produce a supersonic cruise missile. Over the years, BrahMos Aerospace under A Sivathanu Pillai has been able to develop three variants of the land-based and warship-based attack missile.
The company is also planning to develop the under water and air launched versions of the world's fastest cruise missile in operation with capability to hit targets at high speeds of Mach 2.8.
An air launched variant of Brahmos is expected to come out by the end of this year whereas the underwater version is also planned to be tested in this time period only.
A hypersonic version of the missile is also presently under development with speed of Mach 7 to boost aerial fast strike capability and is expected to be ready by 2016.
The name BrahMos is derived from the names of two rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia.
