Context: Recently, India had successfully test-fires land-attack version of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.
About Land-attack version of BrahMos

• It is a surface-to-surface supersonic cruise missile BrahMos.
• The range of the new land-attack version of the missile has been extended to 400 km from the original 290 km.
• BrahMos Aerospace, an India-Russian joint venture, produces the lethal weapon that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, or from land platforms.
• The BrahMos missile has a maximum speed of 2.8 Mach and is difficult to intercept by surface-to-air missiles currently deployed from warships across the world.
• The missile’s cruising altitude could be up to 15 km, and the lowest it can fly is 10 metres above the surface.
• The missile is capable of carrying a conventional warhead (non-nuclear) weighing 200-300 kg.
• The BrahMos is a two-stage missile, with a solid propellant booster engine that kicks in in the first stage and brings the missile to supersonic speed before separating.

Significance of BrahMos

• India has already deployed a sizeable number of the original BrahMos missiles and other key assets in several strategic locations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
• The IAF is also integrating the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile on over 40 Sukhoi fighter jets which is aimed at bolstering overall combat capability of the force.