Jaison Deepak

After a series of painful delays and re-tendering, the Indian artillery procurement appears to be moving forward, albeit at a slow pace. Nevertheless, the artillery modernisation plan which was born out of the Field Artillery Rationalisation Plan (FARP), still presents manufacturers with opportunities to supply huge numbers of systems unlike anywhere in the world.

The Indian Army has not procured any new artillery gun since the Eighties following the Bofors scam. The jinx was broken when the first M-777 howitzers landed up in India in May this year. A contract to buy K-9 Vajra Self Propelled Guns (SPG) had also been inked recently but a large portion of the requirement is still open across towed and truck mounted categories. To meet such huge void the Indian Army is looking at procurements through open tendering and indigenous development.

Towed Guns

The towed artillery gun procurement is termed as the ‘artillery deal of the century’ which might exceed USD One billion dollars. The Indian Army last procured its FH-77 155mmX39mm towed guns from Bofors in the Eighties, the guns proved very useful during the Kargil war but no new towed guns have been bought since then to replenish the dwindling numbers. The numbers of operational guns have dropped to 200 owing to cannibalisation and ageing. The procurement of 155X52mm towed artillery guns may be the most important of all the categories of artillery FARP. These guns will utilise better barrels, carriage, metallurgy, APU, recoil mechanisms and digital fire control and communications to provide higher range and accuracy over the existing guns.

The competing vendors are Nexter with the Trajan and Elbit with the Athos along with Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Bharat Forge as their Indian partners respectively. BAE Systems decided not to compete, citing relaxation in technical requirements which it claims would blunt the advantages held by its FH-77B howitzer. The relaxation might have been effected to allow more vendors to compete.

The trials have been held by the army and the eva