Brahmos II / Zircon

Brahmos and Brahmos II have nothing in common apart from the name, and being a joint venture between India and Russia. Project for hypersonic missiles development was undertajen by "NPO Machine Building" in conjunction with the DRDO (India). September 29, 2008 after a meeting of the Russian-Indian Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation Head of the joint venture BrahMos Shivathanu Dr. Pillai said that soveschenii decision was made on joint development of hypersonic missile BrahMos-II with a flight speed of 5-7m. Creating the rocket was planned to be carried out within 5 years (in 2013).

President A P J Abdul Kalam said on 21 June 2007 that the time had come for BrahMos Aerospace to work on Mark-II version of BrahMos so that it remains the market leader in hyper-sonic cruise missiles. "In the emerging network centric warfare scenario, the fast deployment of hypersonic missile systems will be necessary to maintain our force level supremacy. I visualise long range hypersonic cruise missiles not only delivering payloads but also returning to the base after the mission, leading to re-usable class of cruise missiles within the next decade. It is time that the three services work with the team of BrahMos Aerospace to evolve the QR for such a system in a time-bound manner", he said.

In 2009, the DRDO planned to test hypersonic demonstrator HSTDV, established jointly with IAI (Israel), TsAGI and CIAM. The purpose of the tests - tests of a hypersonic ramjet combustor. There is the assumption that the basis of the joint development is the system created in the first place for the Russian Armed Forces in the "NPO Machine Building" - missile system with RCC "Zircon". The first application for the development of the complex in the media related to the 2010-2011.

The Russian-Indian joint venture Brahmos Aerospace will start developing a new Brahmos-2 hypersonic missile this year, Brahmos Aerospace Director Alexander Maksichev said on 12 June 2011. "During the year, we are planning to start work on a hypersonic missile, Brahmos-2. This will be a completely new missile,' he said on the sidelines of a conference on the 10th anniversary of the first launch of the Brahmos missile.

As of 2011, serial production of missiles of "Zircon" (and possibly BraHmos-II) in the coming years was planned at "Strela" (Orenburg, ist. - Annual Report, page 15). Before the opening Aviation Exhibition Aero India 2013 February 5, 2013 for the first time there was a photo model missile BrahMos-II. Later, on the opening day February 6 - there were already more detailed photos of the model rocket.

At the beginning of 2013, some believed that the identification of complex BrahMos-II as an analog RCC "Zircon" - is either a hoax or a mistake.