Posted on 01/03/2010 8:55:45 AM PST by cold start
New Delhi, Jan. 1: The government has authorised an outright purchase of 145 ultra-light howitzers from the US, a highly-placed defence ministry source said today.
The ultra-light howitzers are for the mountain artillery divisions of the Indian Army to be used in high-altitude frontiers opposite Pakistan and China. They can be transported slung from some helicopters.
The defence acquisitions committee has decided to take the foreign military sales route. Foreign military sales is a US programme of government-to-government sales of military hardware bypassing a lengthy system of competitive bidding. But bidders who lose out to foreign military sales orders allege that the system lacks transparency.
“We will also look at other options,” defence secretary Pradeep Kumar said.
The Indian Air Force has taken the foreign military sales route to contract six Lockheed Martin-made Hercules C130J air lifters and the army did the same to buy artillery fire-finding radars.
Two brands of ultra-light howitzers were initially in contention for the Indian Army’s estimated $2.5-billion artillery modernisation programme — ST Kinetics’ Pegasus and BAE Land Systems’ M777 made in the US.
BAE Land Systems has bought over the erstwhile Swedish firm Bofors that sold 410 155mm howitzers to India in 1986. The army has not bought a single big gun since the last of the Bofors howitzer was delivered in 1987, 22 years back.
ST Kinetics was blacklisted this year after the company figured in investigations into the deals struck by the former director general of the Ordnance Factory Board in Calcutta. The government has lifted the bar on trials in multiple-vendor situations.
If the government takes the foreign military sales route, the order is likely to go to BAE Land Systems. The source said the defence acquisitions council authorised the foreign military sales route before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the US last month.
The army wants to buy 145 ultra-light howitzers, 158 towed and wheeled, 100 tracked, and 180 wheeled and armoured guns in the first phase as part of its field artillery rationalisation plan, the programme to upgrade its artillery divisions.
Defence secretary Pradeep Kumar said the government has speeded up the buying of military hardware. Between 2007 and 2009, a total of 465 contracts have been signed. These are worth more than Rs 1,35,000 crore.
He said in 10 years, the defence ministry had doubled the capital expenditure for new acquisitions. The acquisitions were worth Rs 62,272 crore between 1999 and 2004. They total Rs 1,37,496 crore between 2004 and 2009. In the current year (2009-2010), Rs 41,000 crore was being spent on direct capital acquisitions.
The acquisitions have included Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control Systems, Sukhoi 30MKI fighter aircraft, aircraft for VIPs, missiles of different types and tanks.
...145 ultra-light howitzers, 158 towed and wheeled, 100 tracked, and 180 wheeled and armoured guns in the first phase as part of its field artillery rationalisation plan,...
That’s a lot of jobs making those.
Yep, Obama will probably have to let in more
illegal aliens.
Will they be allowed to buy more than one a month?
I am totally ignorant of this system. But the Swedes built terrific ordnance, notably the Bofors that was used by Allied forces of WW2 (and no doubt the Huns as well). The Swedes and Swiss have always been known for an “openness” when it came to weapons sales.
Umm, sorry...the M777 is a British-designed system. The reference to Bofors in the article is to the previous system that the Indian Army purchased.
The M777 started out as VSEL LW155 Howitzer in 1990. (VSEL is Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, Ltd, IIRC.) By the time the system was finally fielded in 2006, VSEL had been acquired by BAE Land Systems.
Despite the fact that the US Army is the designated developer of ground weapons for US armed forces, development of the M777 was led by the US Marine Corps. The USMC justified its independent development effort on its need for a lighter 155mm artillery piece for expeditionary purposes (specifically ship-to-shore helicopter lift).
The M777 uses the same 155mm barrel and breech mechanism (and consequently, the same ammunition system) as the U.S. system it replaced, the overweight and largely unlamented M198. It’s lightweight (about 10,000 lbs) comes from the extensive use of large titanium forgings as components of the gun carriage.
When I first saw “M777”, my first thought was the troops will probably dub the gun “JACKPOT”, after the winning triple 7’s on a slot machine.
The US Marines think this is a good system, as does our Army. Must be something to it, eh?
Very cool.
Who makes the ammo?
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