India's Artillery Procurement Saga
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pdfcrowd.com open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API CENTRAL ASIA EAST ASIA OCEANIA SOUTH ASIA SOUTHEAST ASIA REGIONS BLOGS DIPLOMACY ECONOMY ENVIRONMENT FEATURES INTERVIEWS MAGAZINE PHOTO ESSAYS PODCASTS POLITICS SECURITY SOCIETY VIDEOS TOPICS CHINA POWER FLASHPOINTS BLOGS Image Credit: The U.S. Army via Flickr.com India’s Artillery Procurement Saga A deal with the US appears to have fallen through. Could a local supplier be ready to step up? Napoleon once said, “God fights on the side with the best artillery.” There is little doubt that the Indian Army’s artillery is in urgent need of modernization. That much was clear after the Kargil War, where artillery played a decisive factor. But delays in procurement are hindering the process. Take 155 mm towed howitzers, a key element of India’s artillery. India hasn’t purchased a new system since the Bofors in 1980s. Senior Indian army officials have also raised concerns over shortages of modern artillery systems, which they believe would be a crucial drawback in any future conflict. Even though the Bofors proved its utility in the Kargil War, the Army has been notably lackadaisical when it comes to acquiring these types of guns, with tenders cancelled in 2007, 2009 and 2010. By Debalina Ghoshal September 20, 2014 226 Shares 23 Comments THE PULSE MENU SEARCH
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Transcript of India's Artillery Procurement Saga
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India’s Artillery ProcurementSagaA deal with the US appears to have fallenthrough. Could a local supplier be ready tostep up?
Napoleon once said, “God fights on the side with thebest artillery.” There is little doubt that the IndianArmy’s artillery is in urgent need of modernization. That much was clear after the Kargil War, where artilleryplayed a decisive factor. But delays in procurement are hindering the process. Take 155 mm towed howitzers,a key element of India’s artillery. India hasn’t purchased a new system since the Bofors in 1980s. SeniorIndian army officials have also raised concerns over shortages of modern artillery systems, which they believewould be a crucial drawback in any future conflict. Even though the Bofors proved its utility in the Kargil War,the Army has been notably lackadaisical when it comes to acquiring these types of guns, with tenderscancelled in 2007, 2009 and 2010.
By Debalina GhoshalSeptember 20, 2014
226 Shares23 Comments
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So in 2012, with then Indian Army Chief, General V.K Singh warning of gaps existing in India’s militarypreparedness, the Ministry of Defence cleared a $647 million deal to acquire 145 M777 155-mm 38-caliberhowitzers under Washington’s Foreign Military Sales program, after the Army conducted a “series of rigoroustrials” of the gun.
In October 2013, however, it was reported that British multinational BAE Systems would be closing the U.S.factory that manufactures the gun, due the “absence of any order or commitment from New Delhi.” If NewDelhi wants the guns, it will have to pay to reopen the line, raising the price to as much as $885 million. Arecent strengthening of the U.S. dollar makes the deal even more expensive. Washington points out that ifIndia had been able to move more quickly, it could have had the guns at the lower price.
This battle-tested M777 has been called the world’s “largest sniper rifle” due to its range and accuracy, whichenables it to “hit windows from 25 miles away.” With a digital fire control system, the M777 has the ability tofire five rounds per minute.
This gun was used by the U.S. military during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in 2002. The M777 gunspossessed both tactical and strategic mobility that enhanced their survivability and enabled them to be usedfor both point and area defense. The low thermal and radar signature and low silhouette further enhancesurvivability, reducing reaction time for the enemy. Because they are easily concealed compared to the Bofors,the M777 could be useful in warfare in both desert and mountain terrains.
Although the M777 is light artillery, its firepower matches that of heavier towed howitzers. Its light weight isachieved by the use of titanium and aluminum alloy. That makes the M777 an ideal weapon for mountainwarfare, since it can be readily moved by helicopter and transport aircraft like the Indian Air Force’s C-130JSuper Hercules or IL-76. With that feature, the M777 was meant to be part of the Indian Army’s newMountain Strike Corps, for use in high altitude regions like Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. The failure of thedeal could well undermine the military capabilities of this corps. Mountain warfare is complicated by the non-linear terrain, which calls for light, maneuverable and accurate artillery. Yet the Army still lacks such asystem.
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Since the infamous Bofors scandal of the mid 1980s, the Indian Army has been unable to procure any 155mm howitzers. Controversies surrounding Denel and Singapore Technology Kinetics have also preventedIndia from considering these companies as potential suppliers. In the meantime, the role of artillery inchallenging terrain grows more important. As Brig. (retd) Gurmeet Kanwal points out, “of all the combat armsof the Indian Army, artillery will be the battle winning factor on future battlefields.” Regular contributor toThe Diplomat, Nitin Gokhale has argued that the Army needs more than 1,500 towed artillery guns.
Despite the Army recognizing the importance of the M777 system, the defense establishment is of a differentmind, believing that India could acquire less costly alternatives. In June 2014, the Ordinance Factory Board(OFB)-made Dhanush, considered to be the desi version of the Bofors, was reported to have enteredproduction phase. This 45-caliber gun is claimed to be “20-25% better” than the Bofors, and will apparentlyfeature an electronic sighting and laying system that would indeed represent a major enhancement. It can alsoapparently hit targets up to 38 km distant on plains. Moreover, the Dhanush would be far cheaper than theBofors.
It is reported that the OFB has received orders for 114 howitzers. Meanwhile, the Defence Research andDevelopment Organisation (DRDO) is partnering with the private sector in developing modern 155 mmhowitzers of 52 caliber under the Advanced Towed Artillery Gun Project. Private companies like Tata Groupand Bharat Forge are also working on systems. Clearly, the failure to strike the M777 deal has opened thedoor for Indian private firms.
Debalina Ghoshal is an Associate Fellow with the Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi.
Topics The Pulse
Tags India mountain strike corps India weapons procurement Indian Army Kargil War
M777 howitzer
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• Reply •
tteng • 6 months ago
It is a frigging TOWED artillery, not self mobile. Against any competent opponent, it will live until the 1st goodcounter battery fire, about 2-3 min after the first shot.
And India is about to pay $6M a piece? The US army paid $1.2M per, only 3-4 years ago.
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• Reply •
rwu • 6 months ago> tteng
$6M is almost 2x the cost of Korean K9, a very decent self-propelled system. But I'm sure most of the $6Mis kickbacks like any Indian weapons purchase.
Thanks to corruption India remains the only major military power without the capability to manufacturerits own artilleries. In fact even the ammunition has to be imported. I read that if a large scale war brokeout India only has 6 days worth of ammunition in reserve. One Indian general complained about this andhis higher up said don't worry no war will last more than 6 days. The general then asked what if India hasto fight a two front war against Pakistan and China? His higher up replied, in this case we will defeatPakistan in 3 days before China can mobilize and then we will defeat China in 3 days.
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Anjaan Aadmi • 6 months ago> tteng
Why do you think the American defense-industrial complex is a multi billion profit making machine ... ?... it is due to looting of those under developed countries that can not make it themselves ... !!
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... it is due to looting of those under developed countries that can not make it themselves ... !!
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• Reply •
Yolo • 6 months ago> tteng
Yeah thats the price for india! Do you imagine how much people they needed to bribe to eventually makethe deal?!
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• Reply •
Mark Thomason • 6 months ago> tteng
Too much defense thinking is focused on fighting those who can't fight back. It is a counter insurgencyweapon, not to fight a peer competitor. This is a legacy of the wars fought recently.
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Pounce • 6 months ago> tteng
tteng wrote:It is a frigging TOWED artillery, not self mobile."The remit is for towed artillery, I suppose that is allow Indian armed forces sling them under air assestsand move them into hard to get to areas such as...Kargil. Which is similar geographically to the indianareas that Chinese armed forces invaded the other week.
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tteng • 6 months ago> Pounce
Go to liveleak, and do a search on 'artillery', and you'll see clips of Ukraine rebels shooting towedartillery. In it you will see they shoot 6 rounds, with its truck inside the same picture frame, andhurried up the hookup and leave.
Let me ask you, when you lift your expensive piece of arty onto an inaccessible ground with noroad and no hurry-up-and-scoot capability, do you expect it to shoot 5-10 rounds and then 'die'.
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road and no hurry-up-and-scoot capability, do you expect it to shoot 5-10 rounds and then 'die'. that a plan, for real?
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• Reply •
Pounce • 6 months ago> tteng
TTeng wrote:
"Go to liveleak, and do a search on 'artillery', and you'll see clips of Ukrainerebels shooting towed artillery."
Why should I do that, when I am a Sgt Maj in the British Army.
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• Reply •
rwu • 6 months ago
India should buy Chinese PLZ-05. Its got 100km max effective range vs only 40km for the M777. It fires up to10 rpm vs up to 5 rpm for the M777. It is self-propelled and needs only 4 crews vs 8 crews for the towed M777.And it costs about the same as the M777. And since India will become a fellow SCO member, I am sure China iswilling to consider technology transfer/ local production- an aspiring great power like India should become self-sufficient in artilleries.
When it comes to artilleries nobody can match the Chinese combination of fire power, accuracy, effective range,shooting rate, and price. Some of the Chinese rocket artilleries have 400km max effective range, no Westernrocket artilleries even come close.
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Pounce • 6 months ago> rwu
RWU wrote:India should buy Chinese PLZ-05. Indian politics will never allow that to happen.
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Indian politics will never allow that to happen.It is self-propelled and needs only 4 crews vs 8 crews for the towed M777.The remit is for towed artillery, that is guns which can be slung under a Helicopter and flown intoposition, usually in places where self propelled guns can't go. Some of the Chinese rocket artilleries have 400km max effective range, no Western rocketartilleries even come close."Quantity does not mean quality, while the West were slow to come to using MRLS systems, the US M270MLRS has been combat proven to be exponentially much more lethal than any compatible system. Inother words more bangs for your buck. I'm not saying that Russian,Chinese are crap, but rather the USbased system is much more effective. The M270 is being slowly phased out by HIMARS with an emphasistowards effective direct targeted attacks rather than mass saturation of the target area with MLRSsystems.
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rwu • 6 months ago> Pounce
Indian politics is holding India back. Democracy doesn't work well for developing countries.
Light weightiness is an essential feature for the US which regularly fights half way across the worldbut its not an requirement for India. M777 is simply not a good fit for the Indian army.
HIMARS is another example of light weight, easy to transport artillery systems designed to fightterrorists and 3rd world armies. Its a 6 tubes wheeled system just like the WS-2D or the SY-400(both 400km range) but with only 70km range. Which means a single HIMARS TEL's area ofinfluence is just 4,900km2 vs 160,000km2 for WS-2D/ SY-400, in other words you will need 33HKMARS TELs to influence the same area as a single WS-2D/ SY-400 TEL.
Of course HIMARs is accurate, but so is everything else on today's market. Accuracy alone is notenough to ensure hitting the target, you also need advanced probing capability. WS-2D/ SY-400
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can launch probing rockets, each of which carries 3 small UAVs. These UAVs will help guide thefollowup attack rockets.
One type of WS-2D/ SY-400 rocket contains 6 independently targetable anti-tank sub-munitions.Which means one single WS-2D/ SY-400 TEL can wipe out an entire enemy artillery company byitself and from a safe distance.
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• Reply •
rocky stark • 6 months ago> rwu
India wants artillery guns to arm its artillery regiments as well as its newly raised mountain strike corpswhose main purpose is to guard the borders from Chinese incursions. Are you seriously saying that Indiashould consider buying Chinese guns??And how could you by even the slightest of sense think that the Chinese would want their guns to bepointed at themselves??Artillery guns for #mountain_warfare..
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rwu • 6 months ago> rocky stark
I think selling India PLZ-05, the best overall 155mm howitzer available anywhere, will be a goodway to build trust. And if they want, we should also consider selling them the assembly line. Andwe should offer Pakistan the same. If fact, we should encourage India and Pakistan to co-producePLZ-05 together and then export them to other SCO members.
All NATO countries uses pretty much the same weapon systems and a lot of them are neighbors.Russia sold China su27 and S-300 assembly lines which makes China more secure, which in turnmakes Russia more secure especially with the pressure Russia is facing in Ukraine.
Look, if the SCO is serious about being a regional anti-terrorism, anti-separatism organization its
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got to build trust with these new members.
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rocky stark • 6 months ago> rwu
Do you think China is capable of doing that?On one hand their President leads bilateral talks in India and while on the other theyprovoke India by making aggressive military moves in Ladakh. With provocations like these happening on a day to day basis in SCS and borders with India,we can safely conclude that China is not serious about SCO.
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• Reply •
rwu • 6 months ago> rocky stark
The overall relationship between China and India is improving. The overallrelationship between India and Pakistan is also improving. That's what reallymatters. For sure, there are still some wrinkles that need to be iron out, that's whythe Chinese president is in India.
The Western media can be incredibly biased. You read about Chinese "provocations"on a "day to day basis", but how many shots had China fired? How many bombshad China dropped? How many civilians had Chinese arm forces killed? I call tellyou the answer is NONE because if there's one if will be front page news all overWestern world.
Now let me ask you how many civilians had the US killed in Iraq alone? The answeris too many to count, and they simply don't care. If the Western media would applythe same standard on the US then the world's largest library won't be able to hold allthe articles on US "provocations".
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TDog • 6 months ago
Talk about trying to turn lemons into lemonade. I'm not sure that Indian defense companies will be able todeliver as promised given the history the Indian military-industrial complex has of over-promising and under-delivering. Items like the Tejas and Arjun were supposedly superior to all foreign alternatives and fell short due toa variety of issues. And even if the Dhanush performs as advertised, according to various Indian sources only 14-18 of the guns will be manufactured a year. To meet the demand for 144 guns, it will take roughly ten years atthose rates to fill the order. That's an awfully long time to wait given that India needs these guns for its newmountain strike corps. Given that time frame, they won't be doing a whole heckuva lot of striking for quite awhile and face the very real risk of being outgunned by the time they have all their artillery delivered.
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rwu • 6 months ago> TDog
All Indian weapon systems started out superior to anything in existence, because they always comparewhat they have on a piece of paper to what others have already in service.
I read that Dhanush has a max effective range of only 38km, this is even worse that the American lightweight M777. And only 14-18 guys a year? Seriously, India will be better off checking out Taobao forChinese military surpluses. Taobao will delivery within a week I'm sure.
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• Reply •
shanu khan • 6 months ago> rwu
ofb told that it increase its capacity after 3 years 50 gun manufactured per yearit is best gun
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MastRam • 6 months ago> TDog
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MastRam • 6 months ago TDog
India is yet to sign a deal for Chinnock helicopters which will be used to move M777. There is always anoption to manufacture M777 in India by transferring the factory , or take the Singapore firm out of blacklist. China should have patience, India is raising an entire strike Core for it, this will take atleast 5 years,maybe by that time Sino-Indian relations will improve and there will be no need for all this funfair-:) .Production capacity of Dhanush will gradually increase from 14 to 45, this gun is much better andcheaper than the highly rated Bofors.
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Aaron Harris • 6 months ago
I was a M777 fire direction officer and platoon leader in Iraq and a M777 battalion fire control officer in thestates. The weapon system requires quite a bit of training and technical support to maintain and operate thedigital fire control system. This is key to the deal because US contractors are typically used in this role. The USmilitary spends a lot of money hyping this weapon system up for our allies, but the newest thing is not always thebest. Our own military has great difficulty operating the digital systems, with on-call civilian contractor supportat our disposal. There are other cheaper 155 mm alternatives that have the same capabilities with less of theclunky digital crap. (The M198 comes to mind, because that's what my unit used prior).
And the rate of fire is not 5 rounds per minute. That's crazy. I wonder where that number came from. Thesustained rate of fire is 2 rounds per minute. You can watch artillery crew drills on youtube to see why it isn'tfaster.
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• Reply •
rwu • 6 months ago> Aaron Harris
Thank you for sharing your experience. And thank you for your service!
2 rpm sustained sounds about right. I think 5 rpm is the (theoretical) maximum under ideal condition fora short burst, kind of like 0-60 time with launch and 1 ft roll out in a race course.
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Aaron Harris • 4 months ago> rwu
I believe I looked it up when I made the comment (before I said 5 rpm sounds crazy). 4 rpmsounds more realistic off the top my head right now for the max rate of fire. I cannot picture acrew getting 5 rounds off in 60 seconds on a M777 no matter how ideal the conditions.
Your seem to know a lot about howitzers. More than I do at any rate. What's your experience?
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Partyforever • 5 months ago
Denel is willing to sell them the stuff, what is the problem? Corruption in India?
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