India’s long-anticipated push toward developing the BrahMos-2 hypersonic cruise missile appears to be encountering significant headwinds, with BrahMos Aerospace—its Indo-Russian joint venture developer—reportedly pausing active development amid cost concerns, technological constraints, and shifting strategic priorities.
The BrahMos-2 program, envisioned as a next-generation hypersonic successor to the widely deployed BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, was expected to mark a major leap in India’s long-range precision strike capability. However, three interlinked factors are now understood to have contributed to a reassessment of its immediate viability: the sharply higher projected cost of the missile, the relatively incremental operational advantage over existing systems, and Russia’s continued reluctance to transfer critical scramjet propulsion technology.
At the core of the reassessment is the projected unit cost of the BrahMos-2 missile, estimated at around $12.5 million per missile. This figure represents a steep increase compared to the BrahMos-1 family, where unit costs are generally estimated between $3 million and $4.5 million, depending on variant and configuration.
Defense planners are understood to be evaluating whether the performance gains offered by a hypersonic upgrade justify such a significant price escalation, especially when considered at scale. In contrast, expanding production of existing BrahMos variants offers both cost efficiency and immediate operational utility.
The economics become particularly relevant in light of India’s doctrine emphasizing credible deterrence through volume as well as precision. A larger inventory of proven systems is increasingly seen as offering more predictable battlefield value than a smaller number of highly expensive next-generation missiles.
The existing BrahMos missile system has already demonstrated high accuracy and penetration capability in operational contexts. While official combat narratives remain limited, the system is widely assessed to have performed effectively in recent Indian operational deployments, including reported use in high-intensity strike scenarios.
Similarly, Russia’s P-800 Oniks, which shares technological lineage with BrahMos, has been actively used in ongoing conflict conditions in Ukraine and is reported to have maintained strong survivability and strike effectiveness.
Against this backdrop, analysts note that the BrahMos-2’s anticipated improvements in air defense penetration and speed—while technologically significant—may be incremental rather than transformational in real-world operational terms. The missile would reportedly offer higher velocity in the hypersonic regime, but not necessarily a proportional increase in mission success rates against modern layered air defense systems.
This has led to an emerging argument within defense planning circles that scaling up existing BrahMos production capacity may deliver a better cost-to-effectiveness ratio than pursuing a costly hypersonic transition in the near term.
A critical limiting factor remains Russia’s reluctance to fully transfer scramjet propulsion technology, which is central to sustained hypersonic flight. The propulsion systems under discussion are believed to be derived from Russian advancements associated with its 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missile program, one of the most advanced systems in its class globally.
Russia’s caution in sharing such technology is widely viewed as strategic. Scramjet propulsion represents a core high-end capability in modern missile development, and retaining exclusive or limited-access control preserves a significant military and geopolitical advantage.
Unsurprisingly, this has constrained the joint development pathway envisioned under the BrahMos-2 framework, which depends heavily on deep technology sharing between the two countries.
Rather than signaling a withdrawal from hypersonic ambitions altogether, the slowdown in BrahMos-2 activity may instead redirect momentum toward indigenous Indian research programs under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
India has already made measurable progress in both ramjet and scramjet propulsion technologies. Ramjet engines—used in the existing BrahMos missile—operate efficiently at supersonic speeds, while scramjet engines are essential for sustained hypersonic flight beyond Mach 6.
The DRDO-developed Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) successfully demonstrated short-duration scramjet combustion, marking an early but important milestone.
More recently, the Extended Trajectory–Long Distance Hypersonic Cruise Missile (ET-LDHCM) program has produced increasingly advanced results. Notably:
On January 21, 2025, the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) completed a 120-second full-scale combustor ground test
On April 25, 2025, a subscale actively cooled scramjet combustor operated for over 1,000 seconds
On January 9, 2026, DRDL achieved a major milestone with a 12-minute continuous run of a full-scale scramjet combustor at its Scramjet Connect Pipe Test facility
These successive achievements indicate steady progress toward a flight-capable scramjet propulsion system.
The distinction between ramjet and scramjet technologies is central to India’s hypersonic roadmap.
A ramjet engine slows incoming air to subsonic speeds before combustion, making it efficient in the Mach 3–6 range. A scramjet engine, by contrast, allows air to remain supersonic throughout combustion, enabling sustained flight beyond Mach 6–7.
An emerging hybrid concept, the dual-mode ramjet (DMRJ), can transition between both operating regimes, offering greater flexibility across speed envelopes. This is considered particularly promising for future missile and potentially even aircraft applications.
Reflecting this strategic direction, the Indian Air Force signed a Memorandum of Agreement on January 29, 2026, with the Foundation for Science Innovation and Development at IISc Bengaluru to develop an indigenous DMRJ system.
India’s formal pursuit of a hypersonic cruise missile dates back nearly two decades. In 2008, India and Russia agreed in principle to explore a follow-on system to the BrahMos during a high-level defense engagement. By 2009, technical requirements had been finalized through a memorandum of understanding.
Despite early optimism, the program has seen little concrete progress over the subsequent years, largely due to technological constraints and shifting priorities on both sides.
Meanwhile, Russia independently advanced its own hypersonic cruise missile capability with the development of the Zircon system, which has since been deployed operationally in maritime and coastal strike roles. Reports from ongoing conflict zones suggest that Zircon-class weapons are extremely difficult to intercept due to their speed and maneuverability.
Within BrahMos Aerospace, attention has increasingly shifted toward the BrahMos-NG (Next Generation) program, a lighter and more compact variant designed for deployment on a wider range of platforms, including Tejas and MiG-29UPG aircraft.
Company officials have previously indicated that hypersonic development remains part of the long-term roadmap, but not an immediate priority. As stated in earlier interviews, BrahMos-2 work would be considered only after successful realization of BrahMos-NG.
Recent reports, including those cited by Russian sources, suggest that preliminary design work on BrahMos-NG is underway, with autonomous testing expected to begin soon. However, flight testing timelines remain uncertain and are likely to extend over several years due to integration requirements.
While reports of a “pause” in BrahMos-2 development may suggest a setback, defense analysts interpret the move more as a strategic recalibration than a cancellation. The combination of high costs, marginal incremental benefits over existing systems, and restricted access to critical propulsion technologies has created a difficult trade-off environment.
At the same time, India’s expanding indigenous hypersonic research ecosystem suggests that the long-term objective of achieving hypersonic strike capability remains intact—albeit increasingly through domestic rather than joint pathways.
However, strategic considerations also complicate the calculus. Hypersonic weapons significantly reduce decision time in a conflict scenario, potentially compressing the nuclear escalation ladder in regions with existing strategic tensions. With India sharing borders with nuclear-armed adversaries, some analysts caution that widespread deployment of such systems could have destabilizing effects.
For now, India appears to be prioritizing a dual-track approach: consolidating and expanding proven BrahMos capabilities while investing in longer-term indigenous hypersonic research. Whether BrahMos-2 eventually re-emerges as a joint Indo-Russian program or evolves into a primarily domestic project will depend on both technological breakthroughs and geopolitical alignment in the years ahead.
