Fact-Check : Has India’s New Deal of purchasing cruise missiles signed after Nirbhay missile project failures? Here are the Facts.

A pak-based handle took to social media platform X(formerly Twitter) and claimed that India would buy Kalibr cruise missiles from Russia after Indian-made Nirbhay missile project failures.

X handle named Tactical Tribune posted an image on X and wrote: “India will buy Kalibr cruise missiles from Russia after Indian-made Nirbhay missile project failures”

Fact-Check

In the probe, the DFRAC team found this claim to be misleading.

We conducted a keyword search on Google in this regard and came across some latest reports by Defense Mirror, Indian Defense News and Zona Militar.

The reports stated that India’s Ministry of Defense has signed a contract with Russia to procure anti-ship cruise missiles, likely to be armed on the Navy’s Kilo-class submarines. This new deal followed previous agreements, including the acquisition of Kalibr cruise missiles, also intended for the Kilo-class submarines.

Investigating further, we stumbled upon reports by HT & India Today from April 2024 regarding Nirbhay Cruise Missile. According to these reports, the DRDO conducted yet another successful test of the long-range Nirbhay cruise missile, this time powered by a made-in-India Manik turbofan engine. The indigenous propulsion system replaces the earlier Russian engine in the missile. Also known as Indigenous Technology Cruise Missile (ITCM), Nirbhay was test-fired successfully off the Odisha coast.

No such reason of project failure has been cited in the reports.

Conclusion

It is evident from DFRAC’s fact-check that the above-shared claim alleging that India would buy Kalibr cruise missiles from Russia after the Indian-made Nirbhay missile project failure is misleading indeed since no such fact has been mentioned in the latest reports. Moreover, the Indian-made Nirbhay cruise missile was successfully test-fired in 2024.
Analysis: Misleading