Indian Navy BrahMos Upgrade: Kashin and Veer-Class Ships Get New Launchers

On October 20, 2026, Naval News reported that India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) signed a contract worth ₹661.5 crore ($68 million) with BrahMos Aerospace for BrahMos fire control systems and launchers to upgrade the Indian Navy’s ageing Kashin-class destroyers and Tarantul-derived corvettes. The MoD said on social media that the project will carry more than 68 percent indigenous content, but the press release gave no further details. A photo from the signing ceremony, however, shows the contract covers “02 Veer and 02 Ranvir class ships”. It is unclear whether the missiles themselves are part of the deal, since the contract is described as covering fire control systems and launchers.

The Rajput or Ranvir-class ships are the Soviet-built Kashin-class destroyers the Navy bought between 1980 and 1987, of which three remain in service: INS Rana, Ranvir and Ranvijay. Ranvir and Ranvijay were among the first Indian vessels fitted with BrahMos, with an eight-cell vertical launch system at the stern, but they also still carry four inclined Styx missile launchers at the bow. Rana lost its Styx launchers during a 2025 visit to Sri Lanka and serves as the test platform for the DRDO’s VLSRSAM air-defence missile. Because of that, Naval News considers it highly probable that the contract is for new inclined BrahMos launchers on Ranvir and Ranvijay. If they follow INS Rajput’s layout of four twin-cell launchers, each would carry 16 BrahMos in total, matching the load of the modern Kolkata and Visakhapatnam-class destroyers, though that is the report’s inference.

The Veer-class part is the more unusual story. The Veer class is an Indian version of the Soviet Tarantul corvette, with five imported and eight built under licence between 1987 and 2002, and seven of the Indian-built boats are still in service. INS Vidyut was seen in December 2025 with two twin-tube BrahMos launchers taken from the decommissioned INS Rajput, and Naval News thinks INS Nashak may receive the other two. The likely recipients of the new equipment, it says, are INS Prabal and Pralaya, the youngest of the class, which are currently the only ones armed with 16 Kh-35E missiles in four quad launchers. Given the missile’s size, they would probably carry only four, the same loadout planned for the six next-generation missile corvettes now under construction. That would make them the lightest vessels to carry the roughly three-ton missile.

The logic of the plan is fairly clear. Fitting BrahMos to ageing ships puts a heavier, longer-range weapon on more hulls at a modest cost, and by my arithmetic the $68 million for four ships comes to about $17 million each, though that figure only covers what the contract describes. It also fits a pattern in which the Navy has been equipping older vessels, including the Delhi class, with BrahMos during their midlife upgrades. As we noted in our post on the Fleet Support Ship Surya, India is working to modernise both its fighting ships and the logistics behind them. But Naval News itself points out that the Veer and Ranvir classes are nearing the end of their service lives, which makes the investment noteworthy and also raises the question of how long the ships can carry the weapon. That is a fair reading rather than an official judgment.

BrahMos’s export momentum is part of the background, but it is a separate story. Naval News says the Philippines has finalised a $370 million contract, Vietnam has signed for roughly $630 million and Indonesia has agreed a deal worth between $450 million and $630 million, with further orders expected. That builds on the Akash sales to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan we covered recently. Separately, on October 15 the MoD signed a ₹1,543 crore ($160 million) contract with Bharat Dynamics Limited for Varunastra heavyweight anti-submarine torpedoes, expected to cover about 40 additional units after an initial 2016 order for 73.

Ultimately, the contract is a modest but telling step in how India is stretching its existing fleet. Three things will show how far it goes: official confirmation of which ships are being upgraded and when, whether the Navy extends the work to more Kashin and Veer-class vessels, and whether the retrofitted corvettes can carry the missile without compromising stability or range. Until then, the cautious summary is that India has signed to put BrahMos launchers on four older ships, and most of the details remain to be confirmed.

China vs US Naval Shipbuilding: China Built 2.4x the Tonnage in 2024-25

On October 20, 2026, Defense News reported that China built more than twice the naval tonnage of the United States in 2024-25, according to the World Defense Shipbuilding report published by Euronaval ahead of its 2026 show in Paris. The combined tonnage of combat ships China delivered in the two years to December 2025 came to 636,208 tons, against 270,509 tons for the United States, based on data compiled by Flottes de Combat and the French maritime industry association Gican. By my arithmetic that is about 2.35 times as much. China accounted for more than a third of all naval tonnage built worldwide, and U.S. lawmakers and congressional researchers have warned that its larger shipbuilding capacity, combined with delays and bottlenecks in American yards, could undermine the U.S. ability to keep pace.

The most striking part is how quickly the position reversed. In the previous edition covering 2022-23, the United States led with 245,703 tons against China’s 202,520. China’s output has therefore roughly tripled while the United States built about 10 percent more, again by my calculation from the report’s figures. The same report shows the effect on the fleets themselves. The U.S. fleet of combat vessels above 200 tons stood at 3.11 million tons on January 1, 2026, down from 3.22 million two years earlier, while China’s rose from 1.3 million to 1.44 million tons. So the gap is narrowing, but the United States still has a fleet more than twice as large by tonnage, about 2.2 times by my calculation.

Tonnage is only one way to read it, and the value figures tell a slightly different story. The report puts the value of Chinese combat-vessel construction at $43.5 billion in 2024-25 against $26.8 billion for the United States, a ratio of about 1.6 to 1, well below the 2.35 to 1 ratio in tonnage. One plausible reading, and it is only mine, is that American yards produce more expensive tons per ship, since the U.S. programme is weighted toward nuclear-powered submarines and carriers, though the report as described does not break the figures down by ship type. It could also reflect differences in cost, accounting and how Chinese values are estimated, which are hard to verify.

The wider picture is a naval building boom. Global combat-vessel construction reached 1.47 million tons in 2024-25, up from 959,671 tons in the previous two years, and its value rose from $81.8 billion to $123.9 billion. Russia ranked third with 149,056 tons, followed by India with 76,430 tons and Italy with 53,700 tons, and Türkiye, France, Japan, South Korea and Romania completed the top 10. Philippe Missoffe, Gican’s general director, said the industry is seeing a substantial expansion of naval forces and shipbuilding, with a particular increase in capability such as nuclear-powered attack submarines. For readers following Asia, it is notable that India is fourth, in a list that also includes Japan, which we covered in our post on the seventh Taigei-class submarine, and that India’s yards are busy with ships like the Fleet Support Ship Surya.

There are limits to what the numbers show. Tonnage measures what was built, not how capable, ready or well-armed it is, and the report says nothing about crews, munitions, maintenance or the quality of the ships. A two-year snapshot is also a narrow window, and large hulls such as carriers and big destroyers can swing the totals. Chinese yards also build for a single navy, while American naval power relies on allies, and the top-10 list includes several U.S. partners, though the article does not discuss how allied shipbuilding capacity might change the balance. The Defense News piece links to a June story about Congress seeking to limit U.S. Navy ships built in foreign yards, which shows how contested that question is. That is my own reading of the context and not a finding of the report.

Ultimately, the report quantifies something analysts have long said: that China’s shipyards are now producing at a scale the American industrial base is struggling to match. Three markers will show how far it goes: whether the next edition of the report, expected around 2028, shows the gap widening or closing, whether U.S. yards resolve the delays and bottlenecks that lawmakers describe, and how quickly China’s nuclear-powered submarine and carrier programmes, including the Type 004 we covered earlier, turn tonnage into capability. Until then, the fair summary is that China is building faster, the United States still has the larger fleet, and the distance between them is shrinking.