BrahMos missile production unit inaugurated in Lucknow, 5 days after Akhilesh Yadav claimed that BJP government could not even make a sutli bomb

Five days after Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav took a jibe at the BJP government, saying that after promising to manufacture missiles, they could not even make a sutli bomb (a firecracker), Defence Minister Rajnath Singh Uttar Pradesh today (11th May), virtually inaugurated the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile production unit and testing facility at the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor in Lucknow.

Yadav had attacked the BJP government during a press conference on Tuesday (6th May), claimed that BJP had promised to manufacture fighter pilots, rifles, arms and ammunitions in Jhansi and Bundelkhand region of the state, but they didn’t even make a “sutli bomb” there and the Centre is still importing defence equipment from different countries. He said, “They had lied that they would manufacture fighter pilots, missiles. If these missiles, arms, and ammunition were made in our Bundelkhand, then we wouldn’t need to import them from different countries. BJP has promised to manufacture all arms and ammunition. But we have heard that in Jhansi and Bundelkhand, they didn’t even make any sutli bombs and missiles and took the lands of the farmers,” said Yadav.

The BrahMos production unit

The newly launched Aerospace Integration and Testing Facility, built at a cost of ₹300 crore, will produce the BrahMos missiles with a range of 290 to 400 km and a top speed of Mach 2.8. The facility is designed to manufacture 80 to 100 missiles annually. In addition to that, 100 to 150 next-generation BrahMos missiles, having a range of over 300 kilometres, will also be produced within a year. The missiles, which will be developed by India’s DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya in a joint venture of India and Russia, are capable of being launched from land, sea or air.

The Brahmos production unit was announced as part of the Defence Industrial Corridor initiative launched by PM Modi during the 2018 Global Investors’ Summit. The defence corridor has six nodes– Lucknow, Kanpur, Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, and Chitrakoot. Its foundation stone was laid in 2021. The Defence Minister also laid down the foundation stone of the Defence Testing Infrastructure System (DTIS), a dedicated facility for testing and certifying a wide range of defence products.

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