Dr N. C. Asthana

India is reportedly going to import up to 13 5-inch (127mm) L62 Mark 36 naval gun on the Mark 45 mount (Mod 4) worth USD1.0210 billion (approximately Rs 7,265 crore) from the US. In a press statement, the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) had said that the US government had approved the sale of 13 guns with 3,500 D349 shells and MK-92 Mod 1 Fire control Systems. The principal contractor will be BAE Systems Land and Armaments, Minneapolis, Minnesota, manufacturing the gun in Louisville, Kentucky. Reportedly, there are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.

Extremely Limited Combat Utility of a Small Gun

The US media had reported that the MK-45 Gun System would provide the capability to conduct anti-surface warfare and anti-air defence missions while enhancing interoperability with the US and other allied forces. Any scientific, military, or historical evidence, however, does not support this belief.

The fundamental problem of the 5-inch gun is the extremely limited combat utility of a small gun like this in modern naval warfare. With the advent of ship-to-ship missiles of quite long ranges and greatly heavier explosive payloads, naval guns of almost all descriptions have lost whatever little value they had in naval combat. Moreover, in modern naval warfare, hardly any naval combat of any consequence takes place at ranges of 24 km, which this gun offers. We will elaborate on this in the following:

Even Great Battleships of Yore Fielding 16-Inch Guns were Actually Able to do Little

Famous battleships of the World War II era mounted formidable naval guns of 16-inch calibres firing massive shells of over a tonne (2,700 lbs) each to ranges of approximately 30 km. The guns had to be mounted on massive battleships (such as the Iowa class) displacing about 45,000 tonnes. They had some utility in ship-to-ship combat of that era—such as in the sinking of the HMS