*FLASH* Army to Take All 14 MBT Arjun Tanks for Trial By September End

An official announcement from the Defence Ministry: The Indian Army today agreed to take all the 14 Main Battle Tanks (MBT) Arjun for trial by September 30, 2007. The decision was taken after successful demonstration of all modifications including medium fording ( i.e. going underwater) to the Defence Minister Shri AK Antony and other senior officials from the Ministry of Defence including the Secretary Defence Production Shri KP Singh and senior Army officials. Shri Antony who was on a day’s visit to the Combat Vehicle Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) and the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) at Avadi, was apprised of the various capabilities of MBT Arjun Tank. He was shown the various production capabilities at HVF. The Defence Minister congratulated all the stake holders for jointly solving the problems relating to the tank to the satisfaction of the Armed Forces.

14 thoughts on “*FLASH* Army to Take All 14 MBT Arjun Tanks for Trial By September End”

  1. Great news… so the Arjun can finally do deep fording (which they are calling medium fording). Wonder if its the T-90 type snorkels or a Leo-2 style escape hatch cum air inlet.

    Also, will the army take the Arjuns by Sep 30 or will the trials be conducted by Sep 30th?

    Sometimes, its necessary to clarify, since ambiguous wording like this is used to explain delays.

  2. I believe they already have the 14 tanks sniper, they were used in aswamedha if I am not wrong.

    SO they are going to for trials after 3 months from now, when they already have the months 3 months before interesting, heard of delay from army??

    Ravi

  3. Dear anon
    Yes, you are right. May be aroor should do a piece like.
    In another case of delay by the army the trials of Arjun tank have been postponed to september. This adds to the delay of acceptance of the Arjun by the army. The armed forces are responsible for delaying acceptance of lot of DRDO products by delaying the tests, not making available platforms for testing of DRDO products, changing GSQRs and adding some nuanced remarks to almost completed DRDO products.
    The delay in trials of the Arjun are no surprise as the army and air force are already delaying the trials of the Nag and the Akash systems developed by the DRDO. The Nag is a third generation tandem warhead fire and forget anti-tank missile, while the Akash is a ramjet propelled short-range surface to air missile better than any current missile in the inventory of the forces.
    The IAF also changed the GSQR of the DRDO AE&WC asking DRDO to use a Boeing or Airbus platform instead of an Embraer platform. DRDO or even the state owned Indian Airlines (which is already needs more aircrafts) do not possess the kind of aircrafts prescribed by the IAF.
    oops should have given this to the

  4. should have given the above thing to the frontier-India guys. Chacko if you are seeing this you can use this.

  5. Mr Aroor, though the scheduling of Arjun’s trials in September is good news, it may be mentioned that the Army has been scheduling the trials of Arjun since past several months. I remember reading about a similar statement by Gen JJ Singh in FEbruary, that the trials would be scheduled in March. Now it has been postponed to September. Though the Summer-trials were held (in June and not March) the reason for delays of 3 months to conduct user-trials is unclear.

    Similarly, the IAF had also “promised” user-trials of the Akash missiles in February 2007. Till date they have not been conducted. The DRDO and the IAF were reportedly negotiating the specifications of the Trishul missile for its trials since October, last year. The state of those negotiations is unknown as of yet.

    Thank you.

  6. Why delay the trails till september, When it was promised it would have been conducted in June.

    They kept quite till the month of june passed away.

    Any one there who has emial addresses of MOD and Indian army?

  7. I have always accepted that DRDO has had delays and do require accountability since they are using tax payers money.

    However I have also believed that the same accountability should be shown by IA and IAF. I have always said that IN is the most professional of all the 3 forces. Now we know why.

    Shiv, come on now, get in there, find out from IA what other faults Arjun has that IA is rejecting it even though it give a better protection that anything else that IA has multiplied by 2 and better accuracy than anything out there with them and things that will work at the most cruelest of condition and probably just short of a being called a submarine (20 minutes of fording!!! what were they thinkig!!)

  8. I knew that the Russian influence even deep inside our top IA brass was strong, just did’t realise how strong.

    Nice to see Ajai on the Arjun camp. Shiv, when are you coming over from the dark side!!! May the force be with you

  9. Mr. Aroor, the TV report by Mr. Ajai Shukla has exposed the Army’s modus operandi to infinitely delay or suspend user-trials in order to avoid the induction of indigenous equipmenmt while continuing imports. The IAF also has done that with the Akash and Trishul missiles.

    It is high time that the media stops portraying, supporting and justifying the services’ point of view. This pattern of events in any other sphere like politics would immediately have “drawn guns” and scathing criticisms by the media. But in this case, the media still insists that if the Army says so, it must be right.

    This was clearly evident by Mr. Ajai Shukla’s closing sentence in which he said that and I quote, “The Army’s opposition to the Arjun tank is partly the fault of the Arjun team. It took three decades to develop the tank and the generals lost faith in the project.

    And today, with the Arjun ready to prove its worth the army seems unwilling to listen.”

    The final sentence still exonerates the Army from what is clearly a tactic to avoid indigenous induction. We must get out of this mindset of treating the army as an elite moral force (descended straight from the “prim” British legacy). Instead we must view it with full objectivity and recognize its clear evident frailties. This incident is clearly the result of corruption.

    Thank you.

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