With the Indian Army’s procurement of 155-millimetre towed artillery guns stymied again by CBI strictures against five international artillery vendors, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has pointed out that developing an Indian gun will bypass the problematic selection of a gun from the global arms market.
Business Standard has reported (July 29, “155 mm gun purchase: DRDO enters the fray”) that DRDO is joining hands with a private sector company to develop and manufacture an Indian gun. Now, DRDO Director General V K Saraswat has explained the rationale for the DRDO decision. He says that, amongst the foreign guns on offer, there is no clear winner. And given the cutthroat nature of competition for this Rs 8,000-crore contract for 1,580 guns, a drumbeat of corruption allegations will keep derailing any decision.
Saraswat told Business Standard, “The differences (between competing guns) are minuscule and people would like to exploit those minuscule differences… and (the defence ministry’s) life becomes more difficult. The (acquisition) process is today back to zero. This is not the first time it has come to zero; this has happened before… So, it is better to develop your own system.”
The purchase of artillery guns, the Indian Army’s most crucial component of combat power, was stalled for 16 years by the Bofors scandal of 1987. Restarted in 2003, the procurement process has remained dogged by scandals. Over the years, the CBI has asked the defence ministry to blacklist five of the vendors whose guns India was evaluating for purchase: Singapore Technologies Kinetics (STK); German giant, Rheinmetall; Israel Military Industries (IMI); another Israeli gun-maker, Soltam; and South African major, Denel. BAE Systems, a front-runner in this race, is offering the FH-77B-05 howitzer, a modernised version of the controversial Bofors gun.
“The armed forces felt that this gun system can always be acquired abroad, so why should DRDO spend time and effort (on developing the gun)?” asks Saraswat. “We too thought it better to focus our efforts on (technologies that could be denied to us). But now, Indian industry and DRDO, along with the Army, should make a concentrated effort to cut this Gordian knot.”
Business Standard has learned that the DRDO laboratory that will spearhead the development of an Indian 155 mm gun — the Armament Research & Development Establishment (ARDE), Pune — is finalising its development partners for this project.
This will not be the first time that an Indian consortium will have come together to develop an artillery gun. In the 1950s, the so-called Gun Development Team was constituted by the defence ministry. Functioning from the Ordnance Factory at Khamaria, the Gun Development team oversaw the “Indianisation” of two of the Indian Army’s most successful artillery guns: the 75/24 howitzer; and the 105-mm Indian Field Gun. Inexplicably, this successful experiment was wound up around the time that the Bofors FH-77B gun was imported.
Since those early days, says the DRDO chief, the Indian private sector has dramatically honed its manufacturing skills.
