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Russia offered India three additional Project 11356 or Talwar class frigates, after New Delhi made a formal request, Vladimir Spiridopulo, the general director working on this project at the Northern Design Bureau, said.  Negotiations have been taking place since this spring, TASS said.

Russia supplied India with two sets of three Project 11356 frigates, with the last one being the INS Trikand.

“Negotiations on the third set of three frigates have been taking place with the Indian side since this spring. India sent us a request and we presented a proposal in response,” Spiridopulo said. “I cannot talk about all the details of the third set of three frigates,” he added.

Spiridopulo also would not specify which shipyard might be given the order – the first three ships were built in the Baltic Shipyards of St. Petersburg, and the second set in Kaliningrad’s Yantar Shipyards.

The general director of the bureau reported that negotiations are underway for the modernization of the first three Indian Project 11356 frigates, handed over in the early 2000s. “But the contract for the modernization has not been signed yet,” said Spiridopulo.

Speaking about the other areas of military-technical cooperation with India, Spiridopulo said that the Northern Design Bureau is helping to install a combat information and control system, of its own design, on Indian Project 17 destroyers (Kolkata-class). According to him, this system is now being installed on the third ship of this project.

India would be looking for the next frigates to be equipped with BrahMos missiles. The Indian Navy’s existing Project 11356 frigates are not BrahMos-equipped because they were designed before the BrahMos naval variant could be developed.

These ships, a modification of Krivak III class Russian frigates, are designed to carry and operate one heavy duty early warning helicopter which can provide over-the-horizon targeting. The frigates can also have the indigenously built Dhruv light combat helicopter.

The frigate’s efficacy in anti-submarine warfare can be gauged by the fact that its RPK-8 rocket system has a firing range from 600 to 4300 metres and the depth of engagement of up to 1000 metres.

Its combat data system independently generates combat missions based on situation analysis, determines optimal number of missile firings, displays information on the state of ship-borne weaponry and transmits data to protection systems.

India and Russia are working on a new hypersonic strike missile system. Tactical Missile Corp of Russia is leading the joint R&D. Moscow is recruiting Indian specialists to work on this project in Russia. Russian and Indian specialists are examining the possibility of developing a hypersonic version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. Work on this hypersonic missile will continue over a 10 year period. The Tactical Missile Corporation is expecting to manufacture this hypersonic missile by 2020.

India successfully test fired the 290 km-range BrahMos supersonic anti-ship cruise missile from the country's largest indigenous warship INS Kolkata off the coast of Karwar in Karnataka.

NEW DELHI, February 06. /ITAR-TASS/. India's Navy has for the first time salvo-fired BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles from board the frigate Trikand built in Kaliningrad, a source close to the Indian Ministry of Defence told Itar-Tass on Thursday in the lobby of the DefExpo-2014 international exhibition of ground and naval armaments.

"This is the world's first salvo-firing of supersonic cruise missiles. The salvo-firing was effected on January 30 off the coast of India's southern state of Karnataka," the source pointed out. "It's just been confirmed that everything went off successfully. Two missiles were fired one after the other with an interval of three seconds".

The source said, "The first missile with a warhead successfully hit the target and the second one – with telemetry – followed the assigned trajectory". "We can launch almost simultaneously eight missiles one after another at three-second intervals", he specified.

The frigate Trikand was built for the Indian Navy at the Baltic shipyard Yantar (amber) in Kaliningrad. The ship was launched on May 25, 2011. The Teg, first of three frigates of Design 11356, built in Kaliningrad under a contract concluded with India in 2005, was turned over to the customer on April 27, 2012. The second one, the Tarkash, was received by the Indian side on November 9 of the same year, and the Trikand in June 2013. 

The ships of Design 11356 are designed to conduct combat operations in oceanic and sea areas independently and as part of naval force. The frigates are capable of effectively destroying enemy submarines, exercising anti-ship, anti-aircraft and anti-submarine defence of combat ships and vessels that support combat operations of ground troops, and ensuring amphibious landing. They all are armed with BrahMos strike systems (eight missiles).

BrahMos missiles have a range of up to 290 km and are capable of carrying explosive ordnance weighing up to 300 kg at a speed of 2.8 Mach. These are two-tier cruise missiles, 10 metres long and having a diameter of 70 cm.

The governments of India and Russia have agreed that BrahMos missile will be exported to a list of mutually agreeable countries for defensive purposes. There is also a negative list to which exports are barred.

The missile has been showcased in several countries to apprise the potential customers of its capabilities. “If any country approaches us we will look into it on a case by case basis. BrahMos Aerospace has the production capacity, game plan and skilled labour to supply. I would like to state that we are ready and waiting. It is for the government of India to decide”, Sudhir Mishra, CEO and MD of BrahMos Corporation said on Wednesday.

It has been learnt that three submarine manufacturers Amur (Russia), HDW (Germany) and Navantia (Spain) have approached BA for installing BrahMos on the new Project- 75I submarines should they bag the contract. The manufacturers have all assured that BrahMos can be installed on their submarines without affecting the quality of the missile or the submarine. Land attack capability is one of the requirements of the Project 75I submarines.

Asked about the deliverables for the next five to seven years, Mr. Mishra said, “We are concentrating all energies on the air launched variant to deliver it on schedule. Second is advanced land variants for the Army. We have recently demonstrated a steep dive capability at 65 degree to identify targets in a clutter. Next we are working on a near vertical and surround capability for use in the mountains.”

NEW DELHI: The Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace is ready to test by this year end a smaller version of its 290-km eponymous supersonic cruise missile for deployment on combat aircraft and submarines.

BrahMos chief A Sivathanu Pillai also supported the idea of the country relying on its own weapons and systems to meet the needs of its armed forces, saying that Indian defence scientists and production agencies have proved their capabilities in this regard.

At a function here to release a book on BrahMos he has penned, Pillai said the Indo-Russian firm was preparing for the trials of the BrahMos mini-missile on a combat aircraft by December. “The BrahMos-Mini would be developed by reducing the size of the booster and engine and reducing its weight. The missile will then be ready for deployment on submarines and smaller fighter aircraft,” he said.

Pillai, who has had a 15-year stint as BrahMos chief, said the company is working towards getting the missile fitted on the planned Indo-Russian Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft and smaller warplanes such as the MiG 29K of the Navy. He said modifications were being done by HAL on the Su-30MKI aircraft for firing the air-launched version of the missile and that significant progress had been made in developing its launcher and other related systems.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is working to ensure that BrahMos missiles are inducted into the Russian forces, despite a ban inducting any weapon system produced outside the country, he said.