India goes for ‘urgent’ purchase of anti-tank missiles

Posted on January 30, 2009 0 Comments154

New Delhi: With tensions with Pakistan yet to abate and the indigenous “Nag” missile still not operational, the Army has gone in for an “urgent order” of 4,100 French-origin Milan-2T anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs).

Defence ministry sources said the Rs 592-crore order for 4,100 Milan-2T missiles, pending for quite some time, was cleared after 26/11, with the government finally fast-tracking several military procurement plans.

Though tanks are slowly losing their relevance in the modern-day battlefield, and chances of face-to-face armoured confrontations diminishing, they will continue to play a critical role in the India-Pakistan context.

Both India and Pakistan, who share a long land border, are currently reorganising their mechanised forces to achieve strategic mobility and high-volume firepower for rapid thrusts into enemy territory.

India, of course, has plans to progressively induct as many as 1,657 Russian-origin T-90S main-battle tanks (MBTs), apart from the ongoing upgradation of its T-72 fleet.

But with Pakistan now looking to procure T-84 MBTs from Ukraine to bolster its already strong fleet of T-80UD, Al-Khalid and other tanks, India also wants its infantry battalions to have potent anti-armour capabilities.

This can be gauged from the fact that the latest order for 4,100 “advanced” Milan-2T missiles with “tandem warheads” to replenish the Army’s dwindling ATGM stock comes barely a few months after the Rs 1,380-crore contract for a staggering 15,000 Konkurs-M missiles.

Defence PSU Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL), incidentally, manufactures variants of the second-generation 2-km-range Milan and 4-km-range Konkurs ATGMs, under licence from French and Russian companies, at around Rs 4.50 lakh per unit.

As for the third-generation Nag ATGM, with a 4-km strike range, Army has already placed an initial order for 443 missiles and 13 Namicas (Nag missile tracked carriers). But the Nag is still to become fully operational almost two decades after it was first tested.

DRDO contends that Phase-I of Nag’s user-trials were successfully completed last month, with Phase-II now slated for May-June. “Pre-production of Nag is underway at BDL. It’s is a fire-and-forget missile, with potent top-attack capability to hit a tank’s vulnerable upper portion like the gun turret,” said an official.

Moreover, Nag’s range will be extended to over 7-km in its airborne version named “Helina”, to be fitted on “Dhruv” Advanced Light Helicopters, each configured to carry eight missiles in two launchers.

Incidentally, Nag is the only “core missile system” of India’s original Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), launched way back in 1983, whose development work is yet to be completed.

The IGMDP was “closed” in December 2007 after DRDO declared development work on all other missiles ― Agni, Prithvi, Akash and Trishul ― was over. While work on “strategic” nuclear-capable missiles like Agni-III (3,500-km range) and Agni-V (over 5,000-km) is being “undertaken in-house”, India is now increasingly look at foreign collaboration in other armament projects to cut delays.

This article by Rajat Pandit has been published in “The Times of India” on January 27, 2009.

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