• Defence Minister Rajnath Singh virtually inaugurated the BrahMos Aerospace Integration and Testing Facility at the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor in Lucknow.

• The Rs 300 crore facility is a key part of the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor and represents India's commitment to self-reliant defence manufacturing. 

• Completed in three-and-a-half years, the BrahMos production unit in Lucknow is spread over 80 hectares of land provided free of cost by the Uttar Pradesh government.

• The UP Defence Industrial Corridor, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018, has six nodes — Lucknow, Kanpur, Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, and Chitrakoot — where major investments are being made to boost defence manufacturing.

BrahMos missile

• BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd, an India-Russian joint venture, produces supersonic cruise missiles that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, or land platforms.

• BrahMos evolved out of the joint efforts of Indian and Russian scientists, under the joint venture company BrahMos Aerospace, DRDO and NPO Mashinostroyenia of Russia along with a consortium of Indian and Russian industries.

• The company came into existence consequent to an inter-governmental agreement signed between the two countries in February 1998. 

• The acronym BrahMos is perceived as the confluence of two great nations represented by two great rivers — Brahmaputra of India and River Moskva of Russia.

• The modular design of the missile and its capability of being launched at different orientations enables it to be integrated with a wide spectrum of platforms like warships, submarines and different types of aircraft.

• The missile can be launched from land, sea, or air.

• It operates on fire-and-forget principle, adopting varieties of flights on its way to the target. Its destructive power is enhanced due to large kinetic energy on impact. 

• BrahMos missile flies at a speed of 2.8 Mach or almost three times the speed of sound.

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