NEW DELHI: Big indigenous guns are finally booming. The PM-led cabinet committee on security Wednesday cleared the Rs 7,000 crore deal to acquire advanced towed artillery gun systems (ATAGS) for the Army, in a major boost for home-grown capability to manufacture such heavy-duty howitzers. The deal for 307 howitzers, which have a strike range up to 45km, and 327 gun-towing vehicles, to arm 15 artillery regiments of the Army, will now be inked early next week.
Bharat Forge and Tata Advanced Systems will produce the ATAGS, the first indigenously designed and developed 155mm/52-calibre artillery gun by DRDO. Bharat Forge will manufacture 60% of the guns as it emerged as the L-1 (lowest bidder), while 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 “ATAGS will replace outdated 105mm and 130mm guns.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 said. “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 first to report that the ATAGS deal would be inked within this fiscal after the CCS clearance. Orders for ATAGS are likely to go up in the future because the Army plans to induct “more advanced versions” for a total requirement of 1,580 such guns. India, incidentally, has also secured a couple of export orders for the ATAGs, which officers say have “excellent” accuracy, consistency, mobility, reliability and automation, and can fire fiveround bursts as compared to three-round bursts by other contemporary foreign guns.
With ATAGS having an “all-electric drive technology” to ensure maintenancefree reliable operations over longer periods of time, India will be able to export the guns in large numbers in the years ahead, an officer said. ATAGS, development of which began in 2013, has undergone a series of protracted field trials over the years. Finally, in 2021-22, winter trials were successfully completed at high-altitude areas in Sikkim, which were followed by summer user-firing tests at the Pokhran field firing ranges.
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has again driven home the operational utility of long-range, high-volume firepower. Consequently, the Army is progressively stepping up induction of howitzers, missiles, rocket systems and loiter munitions, as reported by TOI earlier. In Dec last year, for instance, defence ministry inked a Rs 7,629 crore contract with L&T in collaboration with South Korean Hanwha Defence for the procurement of another 100 K-9 Vajra-T selfpropelled tracked gun systems, which have a strike range of 28-38 km & can be deployed in high-altitude areas along frontier with China.
Then in Feb, MoD inked contracts worth Rs 10,147 crore for high-explosive prefragmented extended rockets (45-km range) and area denial munitions (37km) for the indigenous Pinaka multilaunch artillery rocket systems being inducted by the Army. Pinaka, too, is being exported to other countries.
