BrahMos-II (also BrahMos-2) is a hypersonic scramjet-propelled cruise missile under joint development by India’s DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyenia (via the BrahMos Aerospace joint venture), conceived as a hypersonic-class successor to the supersonic BrahMos, aimed at delivering both dramatically reduced enemy reaction time and improved penetration against modern air-defence systems.[1]
BrahMos-II is designed around scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) air-breathing propulsion for its cruise phase, targeting a maximum speed of approximately Mach 8 — placing it firmly in the hypersonic regime — and a range of around 1,500 km. Scramjet propulsion at this speed regime represents one of the most demanding areas of missile propulsion engineering, requiring materials and combustion-control technology that only a handful of countries have successfully demonstrated.[1]
As a joint India-Russia programme building on the mature BrahMos partnership, BrahMos-II represents India’s most ambitious hypersonic cruise-missile effort, complementing DRDO’s separate indigenous hypersonic glide-vehicle and boost-glide programmes. Its long and technically demanding development timeline reflects the broader global difficulty of fielding operational scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise weapons.[2]
| Type | Hypersonic, scramjet-propelled cruise missile |
| Developers | DRDO (India) and NPO Mashinostroyenia (Russia), via BrahMos Aerospace |
| Propulsion | Scramjet (air-breathing, supersonic combustion) |
| Target speed | ~Mach 8 |
| Target range | ~1,500 km |
| Predecessor | BrahMos (supersonic cruise missile) |
| Status | Under development |