Artillery: News & Discussion

suryag · Post by **suryag** » 10 Jul 2015 16:47

Lo another set of trials for Dhanush

Pratyush · Post by **Pratyush** » 10 Jul 2015 16:57

If the same guns were made by a foreign entity, would they need to undergo this trial as well??

John · Post by **John** » 10 Jul 2015 17:05

Yes if that weren't the case there would have some meaningful procurement of artillery a long long time ago.

jamwal · Post by **jamwal** » 10 Jul 2015 17:39

Under the first phase, the army will place an order worth over Rs 1,200 crore for 114 such guns with the Ordnance Factories Board.

114 or DDMitis ?

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 10 Jul 2015 18:47

Media reports today said that the indigenous Bofors.Dhanush has completed its trials (almost over) successfully and an order for 110+ is expected in due course. This seems a done decision and kudos to those responsible for it. It will spur acquisition of all types of arty from desi OEMs,both DPSU and pvt. sector.This will be a huge leap forward for indigenous weapons systems.

fanne · Post by **fanne** » 10 Jul 2015 18:59

But isn't 114 or 144 guns too huge an order. Perhaps army should lower it to paune ek, sawa ek, dedh or paune do gun?

uddu · Post by **uddu** » 10 Jul 2015 19:24

There is a requirement for 1,580 towed artillery guns. The 114 is the initial order. Once production pickup more order will come

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 10 Jul 2015 19:40

but production wont pick up because of the tiny initial order. ergo, we need forren maal. I see another arjun in the making.

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 10 Jul 2015 20:01

Rahul M wrote:but production wont pick up because of the tiny initial order. ergo, we need forren maal. I see another arjun in the making.

Orders are based on ability to deliver. Forum members make the mistake of thinking that if something passes trials, its production lines will magically appear from heaven to churn out hundreds of guns. No, component suppliers need to be established. Production lines need to be established and scaled up. And the delivery schedule from OFB is -

The Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur, plans to supply 6 guns within 6 months, another 12 within the next one year before ramping up the production.

Even Pinaka started with two regiments. There is a CAG report on the pain & confusion among multiple OFs to set up a production line for 1000 rockets per year. Once the teething troubles were overcome, more batteries were ordered, the production increased to 5000 rockets per year.

Anyways, hopefully the 155 mm guns should replace the 105 mm gun in the production lines...20 years after it was actually supposed to.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 10 Jul 2015 20:16

>> Orders are based on ability to deliver.

and ability to deliver is scaled up depending on the size of order. nobody is going to create a 60/yr assembly line for an order that would then be done in 2 years.

John · Post by **John** » 10 Jul 2015 20:31

With exception of US, even US only placed an order of 1000 M777s. Do we have any instance of country ordering 1000+ artillery in one order? 1500 Artillery in order is worth over 6 billion dollars (factoring in training, logistic etc). It is easy to be critical of IA for every move and pretend as if they have infinite money to satisfy everyone dreams. In current scope expecting an order of more than 300 guns is unrealistic.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 10 Jul 2015 23:16

the only other armies of comparable volume requirements are russian and chinese and it's a safe bet they have done so. when our requirements have been so far apart from our holdings, the contract should have been framed in a way such that larger orders would be automatic on meeting mutually-agreed standards of the initial 'pilot' order. such a thinking would have allowed the manufacturer to plan ahead and provided a much smoother flow of weapons to the user.
ordering 1000 arty pieces at one go does not mean IA pays all of it upfront, any more than IAF paid the whole $ 10 bn or whateveritcost to the russians in 2000 itself. the IA too did not display any such hesitancy when ordering the T-90 by hundreds.

just because IAF and IA have sometimes bought fighters, missile and rockets squadron by squadron and regiment by regiment, does not mean it's the ideal way to do it. we have in the past suffered major cost escalations because of this habit and haven't been able to leverage what amounted to a large volume purchase. this is also why the shipyards are ordered ships by the navy in batches of 3 or more at a time.

John · Post by **John** » 10 Jul 2015 23:26

You cannot compare Artillery procurement with Tank they are fall under completely different categories. Hard to compare with scale at which Chinese have done or have any reliable number but their overall artillery procurement is substantially less than purchase of SPH and MRLs these days. Russia barely has just 300 2A65 in service.

Most western countries like France/UK have ordered in similar quantities and vendors have delivered them in year or two, even gulf states which love to buy hundreds of unneeded weapons haven't purchased any more than in batches of 100.

If IA places an order it will tie up xx amount of money and affect future procurement regardless of how the payment is structured.

Karan M · Post by **Karan M** » 11 Jul 2015 00:19

lol, how are arty procurements different from tanks? are tanks cheaper than tube arty? we have purchased 1657 t-90s without due diligence and do penny packet ordering in gun tubes which has been languishing for ages. makes no sense.

srai · Post by **srai** » 11 Jul 2015 06:37

John, what's the overall requirement for the IA versus EU or Gulf nations? Then look at firm orders. Come back and tell us if ordering 100units at a time is sensible?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Jul 2015 06:42

100 increments make sense only when topping up every 2 yrs on a base of 2000 guns, to cover for retirement of oldest batches.

it makes no sense when we have a need for 2000 fresh guns yesterday.

again holding out for some unobtainium specced 52cal.

Vivek K · Post by **Vivek K** » 11 Jul 2015 09:26

Why are we so surprised? This is but an example of two things - a) The yoke of slavery to the West institutionalized in us by 200 yrs of Angrezi hukumat and b) an example of our corrupt nature. There is no point in chest beating over the army and the airforce's love of greased weapon systems. We are like this onlee - corrupt to the core.

A personal example - my father died trying to sell an import substitute product to Indian companies but he and I failed.

The LCA/Arjun/Dhanush are never going to make it. People like Philip are the Mir Qasims of our time. Leading to our ultimate slavery. I will ask my kids to learn Mandarin!

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 11 Jul 2015 10:23

Rahul M wrote:And ability to deliver is scaled up depending on the size of order. nobody is going to create a 60/yr assembly line for an order that would then be done in 2 years.

This is another incorrectness spread on this forum.

There are two things -

Ability to deliver - ie, setting up a production line - is not based on size of order. That is funded either by Government or factored in the initial order.

Ability to deliver significant quantities - ie, scaling up a production line - requires significant orders.

As the Pinaka example showed, even to deliver two regiments and 1000 rockets/year required significant birthing pains. Once the production line is in place, further orders can be given.

http://www.saiindia.gov.in/english/home ... Chap_8.pdf

Not posting in full, but please read Chapter 8.2. To set up a production line, 9 Ordnance Factories were involved. We've licked the problems, but Dhanush should go through the same pain.

Table showing achievements in issue of targeted supply of rockets
Year Rockets RHE Rockets PF
Target Issue Target Issue
2007-08 240 306 762 Nil
2008-09 204 Nil 816 101
2009-10 162 160 864 84
2010-11 100 204 900 706
Total 706 670 3342 891
The table above shows that the planned annual production of 1000 rockets was yet to be achieved.

Which is why, OFB itself has set the delivery schedule of 6 in 6 months, 12 in 12 months and scaling up thereafter. Even if 10,000 orders were given and infinite money pumped in, the 9 months taken to conceive & deliver a baby or X months required set up a production line are required.

Karan M wrote:we have purchased 1657 t-90s

Total number of T-90 purchased are 347 + 310 + 330.

There were two direct orders in batches of 347 & 310 respectively.

India has taken a license to build 1000 tanks at HVF over time and payment under this contract is for ToT.

However, actual orders placed with HVF are 330. Not sure if this is delivered or further orders have been placed.

As John said, orders of 1000 are meaningless unless its backed by a funding plan. And since future income is not known, future orders are a financial impossibility.

Like the UPA stunt of "approving" OROP without funding or "launching" Project 71 Vikrant before it was ready and then shamelessly cutting off funding for it.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 11 Jul 2015 10:53

err, you basically repeated what I wrote with different wording.

viz.
>> ability to deliver is scaled up depending on the size of order

as against

>> scaling up a production line - requires significant orders.

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 11 Jul 2015 12:03

I was responding to this

Rahul M wrote:but production wont pick up because of the tiny initial order.

A not so tiny order will not help expedite setting up a production line. The tiny order is precisely to help set up the production line. Thereafter large orders could be placed to scale up production. Cant get to step 2 before step 1.

Pratyush · Post by **Pratyush** » 11 Jul 2015 12:24

I am always amazed by the argument for small order, as is given by some members on the forum. If this argument was valid. Then the world would never had seen any kind of mass production ever.

vaibhav.n · Post by **vaibhav.n** » 11 Jul 2015 12:43

The original Bofors gun used by the Indian Army is a 155mm/39 caliber gun with a range of 28 kilometers. The Dhanush developed by OFB is 155mm/45 caliber gun with a range of 38 kilometers. Caliber of a howitzer signifies the length of the barrel of the gun with respect to its bore. ‘155mm/39 caliber’ means a gun with a bore diameter of 155mm and a barrel length of 155×39 which is equal to 6045mm. A 155mm/45 caliber gun will have a barrel length of 6975mm.

It has about 80% indigenous content with the barrel being made by OFB. Equipped with computerised fire control system, the Dhanush can fire 8 rounds a minute.

Series production will start at the Gun Carriage Factory in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh at the rate of 3 guns per month. In March 2013, the defence ministry had placed an order worth over Rs 1,260-crore for acquisition of 114 Dhanush subject to its clearing the trials. The order will be completed within 3 years. The total requirement for this gun for the army is put at 414 and the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) will be in a position to ramp up production to 100 guns a year to complete the order by 2020.

Things are looking brighter with the Dhanush clearing trials. Work on version 2 of the Dhanush is already in progress. It is going to be an upgraded version from the current 155mm/45 caliber to 155mm/52 caliber. This is a parallel program that the OFB has undertaken on its own and will compete with the Advanced Towed Artillery System which is a 155mm/52 caliber howitzer which is being developed by India’s Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in association with Indian private sector companies.

The order for 8 Medium Regiments is till the production line stabilizes, for a total of 23 Medium Regiments in the 45 cal variant, followed by the 52 cal competition.

OFB and state production vs DRDO and private cos will be the first of its kind, but provides OFB with a clear advantage as it would have an established production line for what is essentially an upgraded variant.

The ATAGS on the other hand would be lighter more advanced and possibly expensive as well with more titanium construction........

Link:http://swarajyamag.com/politics/finally ... s-dhanush/

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 11 Jul 2015 15:44

Pratyush wrote:I am always amazed by the argument for small order, as is given by some members on the forum.

And I'm amazed by the selective focus on only the initial order. Initial orders for Pinaka (2 regiments), Akash (2 regiments), Brahmos (1 regiment) for IA was always small to start with. Even IN orders ships in small batches of 3. 3 Type 15 followed by 3 Type 15A followed by 4 Type 15B

Pratyush wrote: If this argument was valid. Then the world would never had seen any kind of mass production ever.

Mass production too follows the batch/block concept. Batches also have the benefit of incremental upgrades & evolutions making it into the next batch.

Picklu · Post by **Picklu** » 11 Jul 2015 15:49

John wrote:You cannot compare Artillery procurement with Tank they are fall under completely different categories. Hard to compare with scale at which Chinese have done or have any reliable number but their overall artillery procurement is substantially less than purchase of SPH and MRLs these days. Russia barely has just 300 2A65 in service.

Most western countries like France/UK have ordered in similar quantities and vendors have delivered them in year or two, even gulf states which love to buy hundreds of unneeded weapons haven't purchased any more than in batches of 100.

If IA places an order it will tie up xx amount of money and affect future procurement regardless of how the payment is structured.

Original Bofors order by IA was for 1600 pieces.

Picklu · Post by **Picklu** » 11 Jul 2015 15:59

A large LoI ensures that the initial set up itself happens for a largish batch and then scaling also happens rapidly. T-72 assembly line was established with a capacity of 200 pa.

On the other hand, a tiny order without the larger order in picture, makes for a tiny set up and the scaling also takes much longer time.

Like setting up with a capacity of 6 pa and then slowly increasing the same to eventual 60 pa will be a less risky but way more time consuming affair compared to setting up with a capacity of 30 pa and then increasing the same to 60 pa in one shot as soon as the line stabilizes.

Setting 6 pa or 30 pa does not change (much) the time required to stabilize the production capacity but the output will reach peak much early. The cost and risk will be more but for truely mass produced items like ammunition, small arms and even artillary for IA the 2nd option is much more required given the current status.

And for that a large initial order and even larger LoI is required.

That is why Khan, Rushkies and Chicoms order in large batch at the intial stage itself even for unproven items like JSF, PAKFA or J10. They know the tricks of mass production.

At the end, they will save much more by being indigenous at the mass scale than by saving on lesser rejection of initial batches of production.

srai · Post by **srai** » 11 Jul 2015 19:27

Small order folks ... tell that to the Arjun MBT production line. It's been sitting idle for more than 3 years now.

tsarkar · Post by **tsarkar** » 11 Jul 2015 22:24

Srai, suggest you look up my post on mindset in Indian Military Aviation thread.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 13 Jul 2015 14:19

Rahul M wrote:but production wont pick up because of the tiny initial order. ergo, we need forren maal. I see another arjun in the making.

Rahul - I don't see it going the Arjun way for a simple reason that Dhanush has reached present stage primarily due to internal push of the Army. The Director General Artillery during VK Singh's tenure is the man who got the ball rolling. And IA has actively worked with OFB and other stake holders to ensure the whole development, testing and final clearance cycle is completed in compressed timeline.

And there is no scope for a foreign import in the towed category, the current open competition not-withstanding. In fact, as things stand, Indian artillery scene in the towed segment is all set to go in favor of domestic product.

First, you've the Dhanush 155/45 cal being produced with 414 planned which will cater to 23 Medium Regiments. This is good enough to equip 5 Infantry Divisions @ 4 regiments/division. Or, partially equip 11 divisions @ 2 regiments/division with other regiments equipped with 130mm or 105mm caliber. The latter is more likely scenario.

Development of Dhanush could not have come at a better time because it offers the cushion till DRDO ATAGS becomes operational. Not to mention the reports talk about OFB on its own developing a 52 Cal version of Dhanush which should serve as risk mitigation option in case ATAGS gets delayed.

And it is exactly because you've ATAGS under works that there will be no order for 'thousands of Dhanush'. Simply because it is meant as stop-gap. Though, in our case the stop-gap purchase itself will be more than artillery holding of most nations!

srai · Post by **srai** » 13 Jul 2015 14:43

^^^

ATAGS is Dhanush upgraded to 155mm 52cal.

Dhanush 155mm Artillery Gun: A “Make in India”

...
Presently the DRDO is developing 155 mm / 52 Cal Advance Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS) that will upgrade the 155 mm / 45 Cal Dhanush in future. The Advance Towed Artillery Guns System (ATAGS), a light-weight long-range automated gun being developed by DRDO with private participation, will be ready for production by 2019 after undergoing six years of development and testing.
Going by the views of experts on gunnery; the physics part of it has proved that a 155mm / 52 Cal is an optim ..
...

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 13 Jul 2015 17:37

If the OFB is going to produce the Dhanush and ATAGS version,then what are the desi pvt. sector entities doing with their arty proposals? What piece of the arty cake has been earmarked for them?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 13 Jul 2015 19:53

Image from link posted by srai above.

Note the bull snort flames showing muzzle brake has twin exhausts. Also not the black speck above which is the shell. Looks like high angle fire for short range.

Rahul M · Post by **Rahul M** » 13 Jul 2015 20:09

thanks rohit, makes sense.

modern guns/howitzers fire at high angles.

ShauryaT · Post by **ShauryaT** » 13 Jul 2015 20:17

Does anyone know the envisioned weight of the ATAGS? It is being labeled "light weight".

Pratyush · Post by **Pratyush** » 13 Jul 2015 20:23

Guys a nube question, what is the tripod thingy in the foreground to the gun in the picture.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 13 Jul 2015 20:40

ramana wrote:Image from link posted by srai above.

Note the bull snort flames showing muzzle brake has twin exhausts. Also not the black speck above which is the shell. Looks like high angle fire for short range.

ramana this is a nitpick - but it is diifficult to tell if the angle is 45 degrees - which in theory would be the angle for maximum range

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 13 Jul 2015 21:04

My untrained eye say more like 70 degrees.

the tripod thing looks like a surveying instrument. Most likely a GPS receiver for location.

ShauryaT, The linked article says ~12 tonnes for ATAGS.
Two tonne less than similar systems. I guess titanium is not same system.

He further added that the ATAGS concept design is ready. “It will weigh 12
tonnes — two tonnes lighter than other guns of its category.

Read more at:
http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news ... ia-marvel/

vaibhav.n · Post by **vaibhav.n** » 13 Jul 2015 22:03

Pratyush wrote:Guys a nube question, what is the tripod thingy in the foreground to the gun in the picture.

That's a north-seeking gyroscope that determines both true and grid azimuth with an accuracy of ±0.2 mils. Its used by the GPO (Gun Position Officer) in conjunction with GPS/INS units nowadays.

ShauryaT · Post by **ShauryaT** » 13 Jul 2015 22:13

Thanks ramana. If they can manage to keep it under 12 tons, then Chinook can be used for Heli transport. Great for mountains and SF.

member_28932 · Post by **member_28932** » 23 Jul 2015 15:40

I listen to an interview of BABA kalyani. He said that his gun is ready for testing . He claimed that to be much better than Bofors. He said that they have the capability to deliver 1 gun every alternate day.

This is a great news indeed. Army should be given all 3 guns for testing (Other 2 are TATA and DRDO ) gun. They should complete the testing within 6 months for government. I believe that the contract should be trifurcated between all 3 companies in proportion to the merit found in the each gun.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 24 Jul 2015 07:04

No, its better to chase after a ATAGS with unobtainium specs which even germany cannot match and spend another $10b importing a foreign design when atags inevitably falls short.

the cost effective approach to be get 1000 each of dhanush and bharat forge gun, with the common std ammo and run with it. given the funding and right mgmt ofb production rates can scale up . ordering 144 is NOT the way to do things.

nobody at the receiving end is going to escape if he just got pounded by a shell from a sdre dhanush/ghn45 TODAY or nobody will sit around and wait to be hit by a uber-atags/m777 ten years later.