BRAHMOS to make UP defence capital of India

The number of histories unrolling before the eyes of lucknow is only unimaginable. The slogans of the nawab and the poet, of resistance and defiance, are slowly carving an imprint of themselves on its genetic structure. The Ganges, just a few kilometers away, is moving steadily southward, watching the birth of a force so undeterred, a supersonic force that is re-writing the skyline, seas, and lands of a nation on the cusp of a global awakening. This is not a production line; this is a crucible factory. Stretching on a massive 200-acre canvas on the outskirts of Lucknow itself is the "India’s most potent conventional weapon—the supersonic BrahMos cruise missile—that is taking shape.”

Development of a Supersonic Citadel

This project was launched in the year 2018 when the state government of Uttar Pradesh offered 200 acres of the most prime land lying on the famous Lucknow Kanpur Highway as a part of the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor (UPDIC). This was an Indian-Russian joint venture company being managed by BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited (BAPL), a collaboration venture of Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), an organization of India, and a Russia-based firm named NPO Mashinostroyeniya. They had already maximized their production capacity in their units set up in Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Pilani, and Nagpur. They had demands pouring from their Indian customers – requirements from their Indian navy for more missiles capable of attacking ships and submarines alike from a distance, their forty Sukhoi Su-30MKI aircraft were modifying their arsenal with “Air Launched” BrahMos, their land attack models varying from longer distances, and most importantly from export sales signed and sealed agreements/intents.

The first battery was already received by the Philippines in 2024 under a 375 million USD contract. Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Argentina, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and UAE were at varying levels of negotiations. For BrahMos Aerospace, there were already firm sales contracts in excess of 800 missiles in the next five years. These could not be handled by the current production facilities.

Built at an estimated cost of Rs380 crores, this new campus is an oasis within an oasis, boasting gigantic integration halls, a booster production facility, warhead mating facility, high-speed sled validation facility for subsystem validation, and an environment-sheltered pre-dispatch inspection bay that looks and feels more like it is used in preparing a space-craft rather than for making weapons.

Every single variation of Brahmos series – from the original 290 km range applicable to land and sea mobiles to its range-enhanced variants of 600 km range and the lean Brahmos-NG in development – will stem out of here.

Inauguration and production

And to begin this year itself, that is, from May 11, defence chief Rajnath Singh also virtualised the inauguration of this very facility, which has been termed the ‘crown jewel of the UP Defence Industrial Corridor.’ The birth of this entity has been for the attainment of a single, major motivational factor—to be the ‘center of all activities pertaining to the rising demand for the BrahMos system.’

“A state-of-the-art BrahMos Integration & Testing Facility has been established in Lucknow to cater to the growing demands for BrahMos in the domestic market, as well as the international market. Its proximity to the national freight corridors, which can be considered its strategic location, ensures that the power created here can be easily conveyed to the borders,” according to an official source.

On October 18, the defence minister, in the presence of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, the department of defence R&D, and the chairman of DRDO Samir V Kamat, and the DG of Brahmos Jaytirth R Joshi, rolled out the first wave of the missile to the Indian Armed Forces, and that marked the advent of an entirely different era altogether. For so many years, the manufacturing of defence equipment had been regarded as something that only the traditional coastal industrial belts were capable of.

The campus has been set up at an estimated cost of Rs 380 crores and has been described as a “city within a city” since it is almost totally integrated. An environmentally controlled pre-dispatch inspection bay (clean room equivalent) “The plan is to develop and help not only different variants of the BrahMos system but the traditional one with a range of 290 km and the BrahMos-NG, which is under development.

There are around 300 to 500 direct employees in BrahMos Aerospace in Lucknow, but when it comes to trickle-down effects, it is nothing short of astonishing. Here's an excerpt from an article published in The Sunday Times of India, with an explanation by an eminent BrahMos official: “A missile is a complex system requiring, inter alia, industries, specialized materials, chemicals, rubber, electronics, mechanical subsystems, precision machining, and welding, and so on. BrahMos has, as of now, partnerships with over 200 different private and public sector companies in India for supplies of missile system components, sub-assemblies, COTS, and specialized fixtures.”