President A P J Abdul Kalam today pitched for Long Range BrahMos -II missile system and reusable class of cruise missiles.

While addressing the army on induction of Brahmos Missile, he said, “Time has come for BrahMos Aerospace to work on Mark-II version of BRAHMOS hypersonic cruise missile delivering pay loads and returning to the base after the mission, leading to re-usable class of cruise missiles within the next decade”.

The President also asked the BrahMos joint venture firm between India and Russia to aggressively market “world class” product which will have a market shelf life of not more than five years.

“What is market shelf life? Naturally, there will be competitors who would be developing contemporary products which will be detrimental to the market leadership.

“No smart developer can afford to lose the competitive edge which he has generated and hence increasing the orders and continuously improving the products have to be aggressively pursued,” he said.

Maintaining that the BrahMos programme was not a “soft” programme, the President said it had been a “hard” programme where a modest 250 million US Dollars were invested equally by India and Russia.

“Today we have an order book worth two US billion dollars and serious business interest exists for order of an equal amount,” Kalam said.

The President recalled that when India launched SLV-3 and later flight tested AGNI and carried out a nuclear test “we were the fifth or sixth country to develop and test these systems.

“I have all the time been asking, when we can be the first in the world? I am happy that BrahMos has given us that opportunity to be the first in the world,” he said.

BrahMos word was derived from the two great rivers — Brahmaputra and Moskv

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