India Moves to Boost Anti-Tank Capabilities
Oct 28, 2012 17:00 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
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India’s armed forces have been complaining of a severe shortage of tank ammunition, and the fleet’s new T-90 tanks have had their share of problems. Over the last couple of weeks, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has moved to patch these gaps, by approving budgets for a pair of purchases. One is a gun-launched missile that can make the T-90 fleet more effective, while supplementing existing tank ammunition. The other is a follow-on order for an anti-tank missile that can be used by the infantry or mounted on vehicles.
Taken together, India hopes to add some punch to its mechanized divisions in particular.
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Oct 26/12: Konkurs ATGM. India’s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approves an Rs 1,200 crore (about $250 million) budget proposal to buy 10,000 Konkurs-M/ AT-5 wire-guided anti-tank guided missiles, in order to equip infantry and mechanized units. Konkurs missiles can be mounted on a number of vehicles, or deployed separately as an infantry-portable anti-tank weapon. The US Army’s FM 3-19.4 lists its effective range as being up to 4 km/ 2.5 miles. It uses semi-active command line of sight (SACLOS) guidance, which means you have to keep the missile sight on target, but don’t have to use a joystick to control the missile’s flight. The tandem HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) warhead is lethal to lightly armored vehicles, and remains dangerous even to main battle tanks with explosive reactive armor.
Russia’s Tula KBP doesn’t list the “9M113″ as a product offering any more, but license production by firms like Bharat Dynamics continues to keep them relevant, and the missile is in service with a number of countries. One such country is Iran, who supplied its own license-built “Towsan-1″ missiles to its Hezbollah foreign legion for use during the 2006 war in Lebanon. Defence Now | India’s Economic Times | India Today || Bharat Dynamics.
Oct 18/12: Invar. India’s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) clears a Rs 8,000 crore budget that will buy 200 or so air-launched BrahMos long-range supersonic strike missiles, and 20,000 Invar 9M119M/M1 missiles that are fired from the 125mm barrels of India’s T-90S tanks. The Rs 2,000 crore ($400 million) Invar missile purchase is expected to be divided evenly between Russian production, and licensed production by Bharat Dynamics.
India’s armed forces have been complaining of a severe shortage of tank ammunition, and the Invar missile purchase is expected to help offset that somewhat, while providing long-range accuracy and helicopter-killing capabilities. The tandem-warhead Invar is closely derived from the laser beam riding 9M119 Refleks (T-90)/ Svir (T-72) family of missiles, and reportedly adds semi-active laser designation, which allows for more flexible tactical options. NATO’s designations consider it to be part of the same AT-11 Sniper series, and the US Army’s FM 3-19.4 lists the Konkurs-M’s effective range as being up to 5 km/ 3.1 miles.
India’s indigenously-produced Arjun tanks have the same inherent capability, using the Israeli LAHAT missile, but India doesn’t have very many Arjuns. NDTV | Defence Now || Bharat Dynamics.
Additional Readings
- DID – Indian Army Wants to Add Another 1,000 T-90S Tanks by 2020 (updated). Last update 2008.
- DID – India Reverses Gear, Puts Arjun Tank Back in Production
- Army Guide – Konkurs M.
