It is unlikely that India will sell Brahmos to Russia because Delhi itself wants to earn from the export of weapons and does not want new attention from the world specially western countries.
The Russian Federation wants to purchase the BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, an Indian modification of the Russian Yakhont missile with better avionics and firepower, also known by its basic designation P-800 Onyx.
This was stated by Alexander Maksichev, co-director from Russia of the BrahMos Aerospace joint venture for the production of BrahMos missiles.
Russia often carried out missile strikes from the sea on Odesa and the Odesa region, using P-800 Onyx missiles. The coastal defense forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet are equipped with them – several complexes (up to two dozen S/PU) of the “Bastion” PBRK.
These complexes are located near the city of Anapa (11th Coastal Artillery Brigade), in the city of Sevastopol (15th BRAV Brigade), as well as the so-called object 100 near Cape Ayia — the Bastion-C complexes (index K300C) — a stationary version of a mine base.
In addition to the “Bastions”, several objects of the naval fleet were equipped with P-800 “Onyx” missiles. In particular, small missile ships of project 21631 “Cherry Wolf”, “Orekhovo-Zuyevo”, “Ingushetia” and “Grayvoron”. According to some data, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia had more than four hundred such missiles, and quite actively struck our coastal cities with them. But recently, launches of “Onyx” have become quite rare.
According to military experts right now Russia is out of P-800 missiles. And few P-800 missiles are left in storage and the conditions for storing weapons, ammunition and equipment in Russia are well known to everyone. Therefore, after such “storage”, all this must undergo additional maintenance and even repair.
Russia must have launched the P-800, which was removed from storage, and it turned out to be unusable. Having a significant shortage of such missiles, Russia began to urgently look for a place to quickly replenish their stock, and found such missiles
To begin with, let’s outline the characteristics of the Indian BrahMos missile in order to understand exactly which product Russia wants to buy for the new shelling of Ukraine. It is known that, depending on the modification, the firing range can vary from 300 to 450 km, the mass of the warhead – from 200 to 450 kg, and the starting mass – up to 3 tons.
It is assumed that the BrahMos can be used either from a ground launcher, or from a vertical ship-based PU, or from Su-30MKI aircraft. The number of PJ-10 BrahMos missiles produced is not disclosed in open sources.
Now it is worth outlining the conditions under which the shortage of missiles of the P-800 type arose in the Russian Federation. From open sources, we can calculate that during the entire war, Russians fired about 40 such missiles in the South of Ukraine. This is only 10% of the pre-war stockpile of P-800 missiles, which numbered up to 400 units, according to Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military-political observer of the Information Resistance group.
But Russia at the peak of its capabilities was able to produce a maximum of 55 P-800 missiles per year. “Onyx” missiles in the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation are used not only by coastal defense units – the 11th and 15th brigades of coastal defense troops, and “Object 100” – in total about 20 mobile and stationary launchers. But also – four missile corvettes of project 21631 “Buyan-M”, each of which has 8 universal launchers. In addition, evidence began to “come out” that the Rashist P-800s have problems with their technical condition, which directly limit the use of such missiles.
Apparently, against this background, the Kremlin decided to buy PJ-10 BrahMos cruise missiles from India. But India is unlikely to agree to sell such missiles to Moscow. And here it is not even a matter of Delhi’s desire to “fly in” under US sanctions.
The fact is that India itself needs its PJ-10 BrahMos missiles. To provide for its defense needs in the confrontation with China. And also – to fulfill export orders for BrahMos, which the Indian military has already received.