India successfully tested on Sunday a new "manoeuvrable" version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile it developed with Russia, a report said.

The missile was fired from a naval ship in the Bay of Bengal off India's east coast, BrahMos aerospace chief A. Sivathanu Pillai told the Press Trust of India news agency.

"The missile... manoeuvred, successfully hitting the target ship. It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission," he said.

India has thus become one of the few countries to possess such a "manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile", he said.

The BrahMos can carry a 200-kilogramme (440-pound) conventional warhead and has a range of 280 kilometres (175 miles). Indian and Russian experts started development work on the missile in 2001.

A variant of the missile, which gets its name from the rivers of India's Brahmaputra and Russia's Moskva, has been in use with the Indian military since 2007.