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God, Napoleon said, fights on the side with the best artillery which formed the backbone of his Grande Armée in the late 18th and early 19th century and which for decades thereafter unleashed the fiercest firepower of his three arms upon his European enemies.
The brilliant French campaigner’s foot and horse artillery ably demonstrated its deathly capacity to inflict maximum damage on his adversaries in the least amount of battle time. His field guns appreciably degraded hostile formations ahead of providing his cavalry and infantry relatively resistance-free opportunity to effectively finish the job.
Applying Napoleon’s battle-tested adage to the Indian Army’s (IA) prevailing dismal artillery profile will be patently exaggerated. It will also, sadly, preclude God’s assistance to the Army considering that its inventory of at least six different calibers, which its 180 odd field artillery regiments employ, are either obsolete or fast approaching that status and are far from being a potent force.
These include, Soviet D-30 122mm guns, the locally designed and built 105mm Indian Field Guns (IFG) and its Light Field Gun (LFG) derivative and Soviet 130mm M46 towed field guns. The FH-77 155mm/ 39 caliber Bofors howitzers, 410 of which were imported from 1986 onwards, now reduced to half their original number due to the non-availability of spares and their ensuing cannabalisation, and 180 M46s — unsatisfactorily and expensively retrofitted by Israel’s Soltam to 155mm/45 cal standards, comprise the Army’s artillery assets.
The limited strike range of 17km, for instance, of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB)-produced IFG that has been the mainstay of the Army’s artillery regiments for over three decades is in today’s battlefield environment wholly irrelevant as the envelope of battle contact at the tactical level has almost doubled to over 30km. Besides, many militaries have inducted mortars with enhanced ranges of 12-14km, virtually neutralising at minimal cost the IFG/LFG’s marginally longer reach, necessitating thereby the induction of significantly more proficient artillery into the Army.
Procurement Impediments
“Slippages in the artillery procurement, delayed by over a decade are liable to slide further raising serious operational implications,” says retired Major General Sheru Thapliyal. The former artillery officer warns that if acquisitions are not decided upon imminently, the Army can face a situation where it simply has no effective long-range firepower in a turbulent neighbourhood in which its enemies are today far better accoutered.
The gestation period of inducting an artillery system into the Army is five-seven years following an arduous and, in India’s case, interminable period of issuing tenders, conducting trials and concluding price negotiations before inking the deal.
Despite the decisive and widely accepted efficacy of devastating artillery firepower let loose on Pakistani military emplacements by the FH-77B Bofors howitzers during the 1999 Kargil conflict, the IA’s long standing Artillery Rationalisation Plan stands stymied. Under this Plan, the Army proposes by 2020-25 to acquire a mix of around 3,000-3,600 155mm/45 cal ultra lightweight (ULW) and 155mm/52 cal towed, mounted, self-propelled-tracked and wheeled-howitzers capable of achieving ranges in excess of 40km through a combination of imports and local licensed manufacture for around 180 of its 220artillery regiments for an estimated USD 5-7 billion. The remaining artillery regiments are equipped with light guns and missiles.
All these acquisitions, however, have been continually deferred due to bureaucratic delays, vacillation, and a bewildering round of dispatching, withdrawing and re-issuing of tenders by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Inconclusive trials, Qualitative Requirement (QR) and inventory overreach by the Artillery Directorate at Army Headquarters have resulted in foreclosing options for both howitzer upgrades and acquisitions and, in one instance, litigation by a foreign vendor has collectively impeded modernisation in a critical area where shortfalls are alarmingly high and operationally worrisome.
This situation has been further complicated by the MoD either wholly or conditionally blacklisting at least four overseas howitzer vendors in a restricted market miserably failing to provide any clarity on their respective status or realistic acquisition guidelines.
“Blacklisting vendors reduces competition and forces the Government to resort to single-vendor procurements which is contrary to declared policy and disallowed,” says former Major General Mrinal Suman, India’s foremost authority on military acquisitions and offsets. But more importantly, the Services remain deprived of essential equipment which, in turn impinges adversely on the country’s war preparedness, he declares. Besides, floating fresh tenders entails major delays and cost overruns, he adds.
Even Defence Minister A.K. Antony was forced to declare last October that the Army has been trying to “frantically” to acquire new howitzers but, “faced a lot of hurdles.” He said that the MoD was attempting to find a solution to this long-pending howitzer requirement.“We have not fully succeeded, but we think there will be a breakthrough in the coming weeks or next few months,” Antony has admitted.
No Ladders, Plenty of Snakes
Acknowledging these delays and impediments, 25 years after the FH-77B Bofors howitzer import was enmeshed in allegations of corruption, resulting in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party’s defeat in the 1989 general election, India’s Army Chief, General V.K. Singh has employed the apposite snakes-and-ladder allegory to illustrate this predicament.
“The [equipment] procurement game is a version of snakes and ladders where there is no ladder but only snakes; and if the snakes bite you somewhere the whole process reverts to zero,” he declared at his annual press conference in mid-January ahead of Army Day in a direct assault on the MoD’s convoluted and protracted procurement policies.
He was referring to the persistent deferment of artillery purchases when reminded of his January 2011 assurance of signing the contract to import 145 BAE Systems M777 ultra lightweight Howitzer (ULH) from the US, via its Foreign Military Sales (FMS), programme.
At the time, the Army Chief blamed, “elements within the Army and outside” for the delay; but this year, he maintained that the problem was legal and had been referred to the Law Ministry. He also hoped that the proposed artillery assets would soon be inducted in consonance with the Army’s newly devised strategy.
“We have put in place a comprehensive and well thought out plan under which indigenous (Howitzer) development, (overseas) acquisition and joint ventures have been meshed together, so that in years to come we can get out of this type of problem,” General Singh stated.
Byzantine Acquisition Plans
This, however, is easier said than done considering the MoD’s Byzantine acquisition procedures that have become even more complex and bureaucratic under successive, updated Defence Procurement Procedures since 2004 and the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) inherent inefficiencies, inadequacies and interminable delays in designing new weapon systems.
Moreover, the artillery requirements are immense and the moneys involved equally substantial, rendering the entire procurement process not only complex and laborious but time consuming.For now, the Army plans on importing 400 155mm/52 cal towed guns which will be followed by the indigenous licensed manufacture of another 1,180 howitzers to equip 79 regiments to replace the outdated 105mm IFG/LFG and the Soviet D-30 122mm field artillery pieces.
Alongside, it proposes to procure some 200 155mm/52 cal mounted guns and locally build 614 to arm 40 regiments in addition to acquiring 180-odd self-propelled (tracked and motorised) for five regiments for deployment in the Punjab plains and Rajasthan’s desert terrain against Pakistan.
However, even a cursory examination of the extraordinary tribulations surrounding these delayed procurements illustrates the overwhelming chaos pervading the artillery modernisation drive.
The import, for instance, of the easily transportable, airmobile 145 BAE Systems M777 LWH and Laser Inertial Artillery Pointing Systems for USD 647 million to equip two newly raised mountain divisions deployed along India’s disputed Northeast frontier with China, is one such instance.
In what the Army thought was a done deal — the MoD had in May 2009 notified the US Defense Security Co-operation Agency regarding the M777 acquisition via the FMS route — has now become legally entangled after rival Singapore Technologies Kinetics (STK) filed a petition in the Delhi High Court last year challenging the purchase.
Fielding its rival Pegasus 155mm/45 cal LWH, STK was blacklisted on alleged corruption charges in June 2009 which remain under inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). STK denies all charges of any wrongdoing in the corruption case involving the former OFB head and in its legal petition is seeking clarification on its nebulously defined ‘blacklist’ status. The court, meanwhile has directed the MoD not to award the LWH contract without its permission, declaring that if STK was eventually cleared of corruption charges and deemed not blacklisted, it will be allowed to compete in the tender further complicating and postponing the already overdue acquisition.
Twist in the Tale
The trials were eventually called off for tenuous reasons and the contract retendered. But it remains in limbo after BAE Systems last April declined for commercial considerations to participate in trials for towed guns, claiming that the revised QRs had been ‘diluted’ thereby ‘compromising’ the customised capabilities of its FH-77B 05 gun achieved at great expense. BAE Systems has maintained that the re-issued tender included ‘technical and performance relaxations’ which allowed less capable weapon systems to enter the competition.
Earlier, BAE Systems fielded the same Howitzer for four rounds of trials, the last being in 2006. The first three sets featured South Africa’s Denel Ordnance G-5 Mk-2000 howitzer and Israel’s Soltam ATHOS 2052 autonomous towed howitzer system, but only Soltam and BAE systems participated in the unprecedented fourth and final round of ‘confirmatory and reliability’ trials which eventually proved inconclusive and the contract was re-tendered.
Blacklisted
Denel was unable to be included in the fourth round as it was blacklisted in 2005 after the newly elected Congress-led coalition suspended all dealings with it following allegations that it had resorted to ‘unfair commercial practices’ in the deal for 400 anti-materiel rifles under the previous BJP-led administration. The case remains under CBI inquiry and its status imprecise.
This blacklisting also led to the MoD terminating the limited series production of the 155mm/52 cal Bhim self-propelled howitzer project — a mating of Denel/LIW T-6 155mm/52 cal turret with the chassis of India’s locally designed Arjun Main Battle Tank — which the State-owned Bharat Earth Movers Limited was to build in Bengaluru.
Last year, the MoD shelved the ` 4,726 crore tender to acquire 180 lightweight motorized 155mm/52 cal howitzers mounted on six or eight-wheeled vehicles following alleged deviations in trials conducted in 2010. The Army submitted its trial report featuring the 48-tonne Rhein metall Wheeled Gun-52 and Slovakia’s ShKH Zuzana-A1 to the MoD which revoked it following an anonymous complaint to Antony regarding alleged technical snags in which the Slovakian gun barrel reportedly burst. This acquisition too is on hold.
Meanwhile, in a desperate bid to augment its severely depleted firepower, Army Headquarters is seriously mulling the acquisition of additional 130mm M46 field guns, developed in the 1950s from surplus stocks lying with former Soviet Republics and other East European states. India was the largest export customer for the M46 guns with an estimated 800 purchased 1960 onwards and successfully employed in the 1971 war with Pakistan.
Senior artillery officers say that M46s were cheaply available and could be easily upgraded either by the OFB or private defence contractors like Tata Advanced Systems or Larsen & Toubro (L&T) or all three to 155mm/45 cal levels similar to the retrofit executed by Soltam 2001 onwards.
But this controversial upgrade of 180 M46 guns by Soltam remains mired in controversy with the CBI tasked to inquire into ‘alleged irregularities’ in awarding the USD 45,524,137 contract by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2001. The outcome of the CBI inquiry, like many others before it, remains unclear but senior artillery officers say that the upgrade in which the OFB is involved is not only ‘over ambitious’ but ‘inefficacious’ as the retrofitted guns faced ‘obturation’ problems with their barrels and breech block and were unable to achieve the promised range of 40km as agreed upon in negotiations.
The attendant proposal to upgrade the FH-77B 155mm/39 Bofors howitzers to 155mm/45 cal standards too stands compromised due primarily to the overextended QR drawn up by the Artillery Directorate for the retrofit. The upgrade, which by raising its calibre, will enhance range, it also includes replacing the gun barrel, breech block, strengthening the under carriage and fitting it with a state-of-the-art sighting system allowing it to fire heavier ordnance to register greater damage.
“Some of the upgrade QRs are unrealistic these 25 year-old guns demanding more capability than even newer howitzers,” says an armament industry source associated with the project. The Army, he declares, is unwilling to revise or modify the Request for Proposal (RfP) even though many in the artillery directorate conceded that the QRs in the 2009 upgrade RfP were technically and financially impractical.
Earlier, a similar RfP in 2006 that required competing vendors like BAE Systems, which now owns Bofors AB — the FH-77B’s original equipment manufacturer (OEM) — and Tata’s — working with the OFB to develop an upgraded prototype howitzer within a year — lapsed unfulfilled. The RfP, re-issued in early 2009, led to BAE Systems, despite being the OEM, declining to respond to it due, reportedly, to ‘QR overreach’ leaving the upgrade in jeopardy.
More recently, the MoD and the DRDO have been working on projects to locally develop a 155mm gun despite indigenous technical incapability and know-how. Last September, the MoD raised the possibility of the OFB building the FH-77B 155mm/39 guns of which it acquired 410 in 1987 alongside the technology to make them but never did.
The OFB, to whom Bofors transferred the FH-77B blueprints and other technical details, never undertook their manufacture as the howitzer deal was mired in a corruption scandal involving senior Congress Party politicians, military and MoD officials that rumbled on for over two decades before being concluded last March.
The MoD wants the OFB to begin constructing at its Vehicle Factory unit in Jabalpur six prototypes: Two FH-77B 155mm/45 cal guns, two similar models but with advanced on-board computers and two upgraded 155mm/45 cal howitzers by end-2013.
A cross section of senior military and OFB officials are confident that the OFB’s Jabalpur unit is capable of making the FH-77Bs having earlier successfully built the 105mm IFG/LFG and more recently upgraded the 130mm guns after being provided the retrofit kits by Soltam. They claim that steel for the FH-77B’s barrel will be provided by the State-run Mishra Dhatu Nigam in Hyderabad and fashioned at the OFB’s unit at Kanpur.
Senior Army sources, however, caution that the FH-77B proposal could well be jeopardised by sensitivity over the Bofors issue in the prevailing turbulent political milieu and by the inconclusive arbitration over India’s outstanding dues to the Swedish company and complex patent rights.
A former three-star artillery officer has expressed skepticism over whether Bofors has comprehensively transferred the entire set of blueprints for the FH-77B gun and with the agreement between the MoD and former AB Bofors having lapsed, the inept OFB will be unable to exploit badly needed technical support from the OEM. “It seems the clueless MoD, along with the Army, is once more planning to walk down a blind alley by attempting to reverse engineer the FH-77B gun. This is a regressive move that will not only prove costly and time consuming but impractical and largely unachievable,” the artillery officer says, declining to be named.
The DRDO’s Armament Research & Development Establishment in Pune is considering a public-private-partnership involving Bharat Forge and L&T and Tatas, along with various other DRDO laboratories, to develop a 155mm/45 gun ambitiously called Metamorphosis. “The [acquisition] process for the 15mm howitzers is back to zero….. so it is better to develop our own system,” DRDO head V.K. Saraswat told the Business Standard in August 2010 but predictably this statement has failed to inspire confidence amongst the Army’s gunners.
DSI-Defence and Security of India
The brilliant French campaigner’s foot and horse artillery ably demonstrated its deathly capacity to inflict maximum damage on his adversaries in the least amount of battle time. His field guns appreciably degraded hostile formations ahead of providing his cavalry and infantry relatively resistance-free opportunity to effectively finish the job.
Applying Napoleon’s battle-tested adage to the Indian Army’s (IA) prevailing dismal artillery profile will be patently exaggerated. It will also, sadly, preclude God’s assistance to the Army considering that its inventory of at least six different calibers, which its 180 odd field artillery regiments employ, are either obsolete or fast approaching that status and are far from being a potent force.
These include, Soviet D-30 122mm guns, the locally designed and built 105mm Indian Field Guns (IFG) and its Light Field Gun (LFG) derivative and Soviet 130mm M46 towed field guns. The FH-77 155mm/ 39 caliber Bofors howitzers, 410 of which were imported from 1986 onwards, now reduced to half their original number due to the non-availability of spares and their ensuing cannabalisation, and 180 M46s — unsatisfactorily and expensively retrofitted by Israel’s Soltam to 155mm/45 cal standards, comprise the Army’s artillery assets.
The limited strike range of 17km, for instance, of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB)-produced IFG that has been the mainstay of the Army’s artillery regiments for over three decades is in today’s battlefield environment wholly irrelevant as the envelope of battle contact at the tactical level has almost doubled to over 30km. Besides, many militaries have inducted mortars with enhanced ranges of 12-14km, virtually neutralising at minimal cost the IFG/LFG’s marginally longer reach, necessitating thereby the induction of significantly more proficient artillery into the Army.
Procurement Impediments
“Slippages in the artillery procurement, delayed by over a decade are liable to slide further raising serious operational implications,” says retired Major General Sheru Thapliyal. The former artillery officer warns that if acquisitions are not decided upon imminently, the Army can face a situation where it simply has no effective long-range firepower in a turbulent neighbourhood in which its enemies are today far better accoutered.
The gestation period of inducting an artillery system into the Army is five-seven years following an arduous and, in India’s case, interminable period of issuing tenders, conducting trials and concluding price negotiations before inking the deal.
Despite the decisive and widely accepted efficacy of devastating artillery firepower let loose on Pakistani military emplacements by the FH-77B Bofors howitzers during the 1999 Kargil conflict, the IA’s long standing Artillery Rationalisation Plan stands stymied. Under this Plan, the Army proposes by 2020-25 to acquire a mix of around 3,000-3,600 155mm/45 cal ultra lightweight (ULW) and 155mm/52 cal towed, mounted, self-propelled-tracked and wheeled-howitzers capable of achieving ranges in excess of 40km through a combination of imports and local licensed manufacture for around 180 of its 220artillery regiments for an estimated USD 5-7 billion. The remaining artillery regiments are equipped with light guns and missiles.
All these acquisitions, however, have been continually deferred due to bureaucratic delays, vacillation, and a bewildering round of dispatching, withdrawing and re-issuing of tenders by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Inconclusive trials, Qualitative Requirement (QR) and inventory overreach by the Artillery Directorate at Army Headquarters have resulted in foreclosing options for both howitzer upgrades and acquisitions and, in one instance, litigation by a foreign vendor has collectively impeded modernisation in a critical area where shortfalls are alarmingly high and operationally worrisome.
This situation has been further complicated by the MoD either wholly or conditionally blacklisting at least four overseas howitzer vendors in a restricted market miserably failing to provide any clarity on their respective status or realistic acquisition guidelines.
“Blacklisting vendors reduces competition and forces the Government to resort to single-vendor procurements which is contrary to declared policy and disallowed,” says former Major General Mrinal Suman, India’s foremost authority on military acquisitions and offsets. But more importantly, the Services remain deprived of essential equipment which, in turn impinges adversely on the country’s war preparedness, he declares. Besides, floating fresh tenders entails major delays and cost overruns, he adds.
Even Defence Minister A.K. Antony was forced to declare last October that the Army has been trying to “frantically” to acquire new howitzers but, “faced a lot of hurdles.” He said that the MoD was attempting to find a solution to this long-pending howitzer requirement.“We have not fully succeeded, but we think there will be a breakthrough in the coming weeks or next few months,” Antony has admitted.
No Ladders, Plenty of Snakes
Acknowledging these delays and impediments, 25 years after the FH-77B Bofors howitzer import was enmeshed in allegations of corruption, resulting in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party’s defeat in the 1989 general election, India’s Army Chief, General V.K. Singh has employed the apposite snakes-and-ladder allegory to illustrate this predicament.
“The [equipment] procurement game is a version of snakes and ladders where there is no ladder but only snakes; and if the snakes bite you somewhere the whole process reverts to zero,” he declared at his annual press conference in mid-January ahead of Army Day in a direct assault on the MoD’s convoluted and protracted procurement policies.
He was referring to the persistent deferment of artillery purchases when reminded of his January 2011 assurance of signing the contract to import 145 BAE Systems M777 ultra lightweight Howitzer (ULH) from the US, via its Foreign Military Sales (FMS), programme.
At the time, the Army Chief blamed, “elements within the Army and outside” for the delay; but this year, he maintained that the problem was legal and had been referred to the Law Ministry. He also hoped that the proposed artillery assets would soon be inducted in consonance with the Army’s newly devised strategy.
“We have put in place a comprehensive and well thought out plan under which indigenous (Howitzer) development, (overseas) acquisition and joint ventures have been meshed together, so that in years to come we can get out of this type of problem,” General Singh stated.
Byzantine Acquisition Plans
This, however, is easier said than done considering the MoD’s Byzantine acquisition procedures that have become even more complex and bureaucratic under successive, updated Defence Procurement Procedures since 2004 and the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) inherent inefficiencies, inadequacies and interminable delays in designing new weapon systems.
Moreover, the artillery requirements are immense and the moneys involved equally substantial, rendering the entire procurement process not only complex and laborious but time consuming.For now, the Army plans on importing 400 155mm/52 cal towed guns which will be followed by the indigenous licensed manufacture of another 1,180 howitzers to equip 79 regiments to replace the outdated 105mm IFG/LFG and the Soviet D-30 122mm field artillery pieces.
Alongside, it proposes to procure some 200 155mm/52 cal mounted guns and locally build 614 to arm 40 regiments in addition to acquiring 180-odd self-propelled (tracked and motorised) for five regiments for deployment in the Punjab plains and Rajasthan’s desert terrain against Pakistan.
However, even a cursory examination of the extraordinary tribulations surrounding these delayed procurements illustrates the overwhelming chaos pervading the artillery modernisation drive.
The import, for instance, of the easily transportable, airmobile 145 BAE Systems M777 LWH and Laser Inertial Artillery Pointing Systems for USD 647 million to equip two newly raised mountain divisions deployed along India’s disputed Northeast frontier with China, is one such instance.
In what the Army thought was a done deal — the MoD had in May 2009 notified the US Defense Security Co-operation Agency regarding the M777 acquisition via the FMS route — has now become legally entangled after rival Singapore Technologies Kinetics (STK) filed a petition in the Delhi High Court last year challenging the purchase.
Fielding its rival Pegasus 155mm/45 cal LWH, STK was blacklisted on alleged corruption charges in June 2009 which remain under inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). STK denies all charges of any wrongdoing in the corruption case involving the former OFB head and in its legal petition is seeking clarification on its nebulously defined ‘blacklist’ status. The court, meanwhile has directed the MoD not to award the LWH contract without its permission, declaring that if STK was eventually cleared of corruption charges and deemed not blacklisted, it will be allowed to compete in the tender further complicating and postponing the already overdue acquisition.
Twist in the Tale
The trials were eventually called off for tenuous reasons and the contract retendered. But it remains in limbo after BAE Systems last April declined for commercial considerations to participate in trials for towed guns, claiming that the revised QRs had been ‘diluted’ thereby ‘compromising’ the customised capabilities of its FH-77B 05 gun achieved at great expense. BAE Systems has maintained that the re-issued tender included ‘technical and performance relaxations’ which allowed less capable weapon systems to enter the competition.
Earlier, BAE Systems fielded the same Howitzer for four rounds of trials, the last being in 2006. The first three sets featured South Africa’s Denel Ordnance G-5 Mk-2000 howitzer and Israel’s Soltam ATHOS 2052 autonomous towed howitzer system, but only Soltam and BAE systems participated in the unprecedented fourth and final round of ‘confirmatory and reliability’ trials which eventually proved inconclusive and the contract was re-tendered.
Blacklisted
Denel was unable to be included in the fourth round as it was blacklisted in 2005 after the newly elected Congress-led coalition suspended all dealings with it following allegations that it had resorted to ‘unfair commercial practices’ in the deal for 400 anti-materiel rifles under the previous BJP-led administration. The case remains under CBI inquiry and its status imprecise.
This blacklisting also led to the MoD terminating the limited series production of the 155mm/52 cal Bhim self-propelled howitzer project — a mating of Denel/LIW T-6 155mm/52 cal turret with the chassis of India’s locally designed Arjun Main Battle Tank — which the State-owned Bharat Earth Movers Limited was to build in Bengaluru.
Last year, the MoD shelved the ` 4,726 crore tender to acquire 180 lightweight motorized 155mm/52 cal howitzers mounted on six or eight-wheeled vehicles following alleged deviations in trials conducted in 2010. The Army submitted its trial report featuring the 48-tonne Rhein metall Wheeled Gun-52 and Slovakia’s ShKH Zuzana-A1 to the MoD which revoked it following an anonymous complaint to Antony regarding alleged technical snags in which the Slovakian gun barrel reportedly burst. This acquisition too is on hold.
Meanwhile, in a desperate bid to augment its severely depleted firepower, Army Headquarters is seriously mulling the acquisition of additional 130mm M46 field guns, developed in the 1950s from surplus stocks lying with former Soviet Republics and other East European states. India was the largest export customer for the M46 guns with an estimated 800 purchased 1960 onwards and successfully employed in the 1971 war with Pakistan.
Senior artillery officers say that M46s were cheaply available and could be easily upgraded either by the OFB or private defence contractors like Tata Advanced Systems or Larsen & Toubro (L&T) or all three to 155mm/45 cal levels similar to the retrofit executed by Soltam 2001 onwards.
But this controversial upgrade of 180 M46 guns by Soltam remains mired in controversy with the CBI tasked to inquire into ‘alleged irregularities’ in awarding the USD 45,524,137 contract by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in 2001. The outcome of the CBI inquiry, like many others before it, remains unclear but senior artillery officers say that the upgrade in which the OFB is involved is not only ‘over ambitious’ but ‘inefficacious’ as the retrofitted guns faced ‘obturation’ problems with their barrels and breech block and were unable to achieve the promised range of 40km as agreed upon in negotiations.
The attendant proposal to upgrade the FH-77B 155mm/39 Bofors howitzers to 155mm/45 cal standards too stands compromised due primarily to the overextended QR drawn up by the Artillery Directorate for the retrofit. The upgrade, which by raising its calibre, will enhance range, it also includes replacing the gun barrel, breech block, strengthening the under carriage and fitting it with a state-of-the-art sighting system allowing it to fire heavier ordnance to register greater damage.
“Some of the upgrade QRs are unrealistic these 25 year-old guns demanding more capability than even newer howitzers,” says an armament industry source associated with the project. The Army, he declares, is unwilling to revise or modify the Request for Proposal (RfP) even though many in the artillery directorate conceded that the QRs in the 2009 upgrade RfP were technically and financially impractical.
Earlier, a similar RfP in 2006 that required competing vendors like BAE Systems, which now owns Bofors AB — the FH-77B’s original equipment manufacturer (OEM) — and Tata’s — working with the OFB to develop an upgraded prototype howitzer within a year — lapsed unfulfilled. The RfP, re-issued in early 2009, led to BAE Systems, despite being the OEM, declining to respond to it due, reportedly, to ‘QR overreach’ leaving the upgrade in jeopardy.
More recently, the MoD and the DRDO have been working on projects to locally develop a 155mm gun despite indigenous technical incapability and know-how. Last September, the MoD raised the possibility of the OFB building the FH-77B 155mm/39 guns of which it acquired 410 in 1987 alongside the technology to make them but never did.
The OFB, to whom Bofors transferred the FH-77B blueprints and other technical details, never undertook their manufacture as the howitzer deal was mired in a corruption scandal involving senior Congress Party politicians, military and MoD officials that rumbled on for over two decades before being concluded last March.
The MoD wants the OFB to begin constructing at its Vehicle Factory unit in Jabalpur six prototypes: Two FH-77B 155mm/45 cal guns, two similar models but with advanced on-board computers and two upgraded 155mm/45 cal howitzers by end-2013.
A cross section of senior military and OFB officials are confident that the OFB’s Jabalpur unit is capable of making the FH-77Bs having earlier successfully built the 105mm IFG/LFG and more recently upgraded the 130mm guns after being provided the retrofit kits by Soltam. They claim that steel for the FH-77B’s barrel will be provided by the State-run Mishra Dhatu Nigam in Hyderabad and fashioned at the OFB’s unit at Kanpur.
Senior Army sources, however, caution that the FH-77B proposal could well be jeopardised by sensitivity over the Bofors issue in the prevailing turbulent political milieu and by the inconclusive arbitration over India’s outstanding dues to the Swedish company and complex patent rights.
A former three-star artillery officer has expressed skepticism over whether Bofors has comprehensively transferred the entire set of blueprints for the FH-77B gun and with the agreement between the MoD and former AB Bofors having lapsed, the inept OFB will be unable to exploit badly needed technical support from the OEM. “It seems the clueless MoD, along with the Army, is once more planning to walk down a blind alley by attempting to reverse engineer the FH-77B gun. This is a regressive move that will not only prove costly and time consuming but impractical and largely unachievable,” the artillery officer says, declining to be named.
The DRDO’s Armament Research & Development Establishment in Pune is considering a public-private-partnership involving Bharat Forge and L&T and Tatas, along with various other DRDO laboratories, to develop a 155mm/45 gun ambitiously called Metamorphosis. “The [acquisition] process for the 15mm howitzers is back to zero….. so it is better to develop our own system,” DRDO head V.K. Saraswat told the Business Standard in August 2010 but predictably this statement has failed to inspire confidence amongst the Army’s gunners.
DSI-Defence and Security of India
