The Philippines asks India for BrahMos “tailored to its needs” – what Teodoro requested and how many missiles the new order may cover

Manila is not asking simply for another batch of the supersonic cruise missiles its Marine Corps already has. It is asking for a version of the BrahMos adapted to the geography of a country of more than 7,600 islands. Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro revealed that his country has handed Indian authorities a “wish list” so that the system becomes, in his words, “more suited to the Philippine environment.”

Mr Teodoro spoke on Wednesday, November 4, by video link to the third New Delhi Defence Dialogue, the annual forum of India’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). “We hope to increase the number of BrahMos units we have,” the minister said.

What exactly the list contains has not been made public. He did, however, describe the difficulties: heavy launchers must move between islands, on roads and bridges not designed for such loads, and the country has no working railway network to carry them.

For the Philippine minister the sale also has political significance. India’s decision to supply such a weapon shows, as he put it, that New Delhi trusts Manila to use it responsibly and only for defence. He likened it to a certificate of reliability for the receiving country.

The size of the new order has not been officially announced. Indian sources cited by the South China Morning Post speak of about five systems and nearly 60 missiles, worth $700 to $800 million, far more than the $375 million contract of 2022. Analysts note that the modifications may not depend on New Delhi alone, since BrahMos is a joint programme of India and Russia.

The first contract was signed in January 2022 by then Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and BrahMos Aerospace director general Atul Dinkar Rane. It covered three shore-based batteries, for 18.9 billion pesos. Each battery has three to six launchers, surveillance and target-tracking assets and a support vehicle. The first deliveries came in April 2024, followed by a second shipment in April 2025. The missile reaches about Mach 2.8, around 3,400 km/h, and carries a 200 to 300 kg warhead.

For the Philippine armed forces, the BrahMos fills gaps in sea control, denying access to hostile forces and coastal and island defence. That matters in the South China Sea, where tension with Beijing led President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to summon the Chinese ambassador over the remark “if we wanted to use force, we would win.”

Mr Teodoro proposed other fields of cooperation with India: ground-based air-defence systems, multiple rocket launchers and space technology. Mr Marcos has ordered a satellite acquisition programme for the armed forces, and the minister saw India as a potential partner. He also offered areas of the Philippines for testing space technology. The Indian missile has also been of interest to Greece, with the question of a Greek BrahMos arising from Greek-Indian defence cooperation.