Asia Defense | Security | Southeast Asia

India Has Signed BrahMos Missile Deal With Vietnam, Indian Minister Says

The country is set to become the third in Southeast Asia to purchase the powerful Indo-Russian missile system, after the Philippines and Indonesia.

India has signed a deal with Vietnam to equip it with the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile system, while a similar agreement with Indonesia is in the “final stages,” India’s defense secretary said on Saturday.

Responding to a question from a Vietnamese delegate at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense forum in Singapore, Rajesh Kumar Singh told reporters that an agreement with Vietnam had been signed – the first public acknowledgement of a sale that has been rumored for several years.

“My understanding is that with both Indonesia and with Vietnam, the deal is in the final stages, that in fact, for Vietnam, I understand that it has already been signed, probably not publicly announced, but it’s already been signed,” he said, as per a report by ThePrint, an Indian media outlet.

He added, “obviously you are in the category of friendly foreign country with whom we would be happy to share this kind of advanced technology.”

Singh did not disclose any specifics about the deal with Vietnam, but ThePrint cited sources in the defence and security establishment as saying that the deal to sell the BrahMos missile to Vietnam was signed last fiscal year. “They said that given the sensitivities involved, the deal was never publicly announced till now,” the outlet reported.

Last month, Reuters also reported that a deal ​with ⁠Vietnam could be worth about 60 billion rupees ($629 million), including ⁠training ​and logistical support. It said that the issue was likely to have been discussed during Vietnamese President To Lam’s state visit to India in early May.

Vietnam is set to become the third Southeast Asian nation to agree to purchase the BrahMos system, which was developed by BrahMos Aerospace, an India-Russian joint venture that was set up in 1998. The world’s fastest supersonic cruise missile, it can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, or land platforms, and flies at nearly three times the speed of sound, making it nearly impossible for targets to evade.

This has unsurprisingly made it attractive to a number of Southeast Asian governments that are in need of a potent deterrent against Chinese incursions into waters that these nations claim in the South China Sea.

In early 2022, the Philippines closed a $374 million deal to acquire three BrahMos missile batteries, with the aim of strengthening the ability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to........

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