Big desi guns booming: CCS clears mega deal of Rs 7,000 crore for big indigenous artillery guns | India News

NEW DELHI: Big indigenous guns are lastly booming. The PM-led cupboard committee on safety Wednesday cleared the Rs 7,000 crore deal to accumulate superior towed artillery gun methods (ATAGS) for the Army, in a serious increase for home-grown functionality to fabricate such heavy-duty howitzers. The deal for 307 howitzers, which have a strike vary as much as 45km, and 327 gun-towing autos, to arm 15 artillery regiments of the Army, will now be inked early subsequent week.
Bharat Forge and Tata Advanced Systems will produce the ATAGS, the primary indigenously designed and developed 155mm/52-calibre artillery gun by DRDO. Bharat Forge will manufacture 60% of the guns because it emerged because the L-1 (lowest bidder), whereas Tata will produce the remaining 40%. “ATAGS will replace outdated 105mm and 130mm guns. It will enhance the Army’s operational capabilities along the borders with China and Pakistan with its cutting-edge technology and superior firepower,” an official mentioned. “Over 65% of its components are sourced domestically, including key subsystems such as the barrel, muzzle brake, breech mechanism, firing and recoil system, & ammunition handling mechanism,” he added.
TOI was the primary to report that the ATAGS deal can be inked inside this fiscal after the CCS clearance. Orders for ATAGS are more likely to go up sooner or later as a result of the Army plans to induct “more advanced versions” for a complete requirement of 1,580 such guns. India, by the way, has additionally secured a pair of export orders for the ATAGs, which officers say have “excellent” accuracy, consistency, mobility, reliability and automation, and may hearth fiveround bursts as in comparison with three-round bursts by different up to date international guns.
With ATAGS having an “all-electric drive technology” to make sure maintenancefree dependable operations over longer durations of time, India will be capable to export the guns in giant numbers within the years forward, an officer mentioned. ATAGS, growth of which started in 2013, has undergone a collection of protracted area trials through the years. Finally, in 2021-22, winter trials have been efficiently accomplished at high-altitude areas in Sikkim, which have been adopted by summer time user-firing exams on the Pokhran area firing ranges.
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine struggle has once more pushed house the operational utility of long-range, high-volume firepower. Consequently, the Army is progressively stepping up induction of howitzers, missiles, rocket methods and loiter munitions, as reported by TOI earlier. In Dec final 12 months, for occasion, defence ministry inked a Rs 7,629 crore contract with L&T in collaboration with South Korean Hanwha Defence for the procurement of one other 100 Okay-9 Vajra-T selfpropelled tracked gun methods, which have a strike vary of 28-38 km & may be deployed in high-altitude areas alongside frontier with China.
Then in Feb, MoD inked contracts value Rs 10,147 crore for high-explosive prefragmented prolonged rockets (45-km vary) and space denial munitions (37km) for the indigenous Pinaka multilaunch artillery rocket methods being inducted by the Army. Pinaka, too, is being exported to different international locations.