New Delhi: India on Wednesday inked the $737 million (almost Rs 5,000 crore) contract for the acquisition of 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers from the US in a government-to-government deal.
TOI was the first to report on November 17 that PM Narendra Modi-led Cabinet Committee on Security had cleared the deal for the acquisition of the first modern 155mm howitzers for the Army in over 30 years to break the Bofors jinx+ .
The contract, of course, will also further consolidate the position of the US as one of the largest arms suppliers to India, having bagged deals worth over $15 billion since 2007.
Of the 145 M-777 howitzers to be delivered from mid-2017 onwards, 120 will be "assembled, integrated and tested" in India with artillery-manufacturer BAE Systems selecting Mahindra as its business partner here
The 1.3-million strong Army has been demanding such 155mm/39-calibre ultra-light howitzers, with a strike range of over 25-km, for well over a decade now since they can be airlifted swiftly to "threatened high-altitude areas" in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control with China. The howitzer, which weighs just over 4-tonne due to the use of titanium, can be moved to altitudes up to 16,000-feet.
The M-777 howitzers+ are meant to equip the new 17 Mountain Strike Corps being raised for effective conventional deterrence and "quick reaction capabilities" against China. The Army is being forced to cannibalize from its existing reserves to raise the 17 Corps, which will be fully in place with 90,274 troops by 2021.
A series of scandals beginning with the Bofors one, and followed by the ones around South African firm Denel+ and finally Singapore Technology Kinetic's (STK), has meant that the Army has failed to induct even a single 155mm gun for three decades.
The overall artillery modernisation plan for 155mm/52-calibre guns, worth around Rs 1 lakh crore, incidentally, envisages the induction of
814 mounted, 1,580 towed, 180 wheeled and 100 tracked guns, among others.
