chackojoseph wrote:Your concept of "Tank matured" needs to be defined. Tank was mature each time. But, each time, it was asked to be taken back for newer features. If you know the history of T-72 purchase, the decision was to keep Arjun in r&d for newer features, meanwhile inducting T-72.
Rahul M wrote:
Philip saar, let me p..there was very little logic in the panic 310 T-90 buy and absolutely none for consequent deals. the question we need to ask is who approved the massive T-90 buy while stalling the arjun and why ?
Usually, as exemplified by the above para, Arjun trials are marked by DRDO team claiming, Arjun did well and at the same time Army official report claiming Arjun done poorly in those trials. This led to a scientist of DRDO Team openly criticizing Army's step motherly treatment to Arjun and how the same Army accepted products from Foreign Vendors without any strict evaluations as applied to Arjun in a Magazine. Don't we heard so many cases of CAG pulling Armed forces of accepting products not meeting its own GSQR or twisted GSQR?There are conflicting accounts of Arjun's trial results in 2006. In 2007, Major General H.M. Singh, a director in charge of trial and evaluation, said that the last year's user field trial report had certified that the accuracy and consistency of the weapon system was proved beyond doubt."[51][52] However, the 2006 army trial results showed that "the decade-old problems of overheating persist" and that "tank’s main subsystems, the fire control system (FCS) and integrated gunner’s main sight, which includes a thermal imager and laser range-finder, are rendered erratic and useless by the Arjun’s abnormally high peak internal temperature, which moves well beyond 55 degrees Celsius. This is in testimony to the Parliamentary committee."[53]
In 2007 the Arjun tank was fielded during the Ashwamedha exercise in the deserts of Rajasthan.[54] The army was extremely unhappy with the tank, citing 14 defects that included "deficient fire control system", "inaccuracy of its guns", "low speeds in tactical areas" and "inability to operate over 50 degrees Celsius".[55] "The Army is now faced with a troubling prospect: inducting a lumbering, misfiring, vintage design tank like the Arjun, and that, too, in large numbers".[53] This, after DRDO over-shot Arjun’s project deadline by 16 years — from 1984 to 1995, finally closing the project only in 2000 — and the cost over-run is almost 20 times the original estimate. This is the highest percentage over-run for any DRDO project.[53]
With the September 2007 winter trials, the Indian army deemed Arjun's performance unsatisfactory, including at least four engine failures.[56] DRDO, on the other hand, insisted the tank was a viable choice for adoption and suggested the unsatisfactory performance of the engine during the winter trials was due to sabotage.[10]
Normally, when such discrepancy appeared between two versions, usually it is assumed being the user of the product Army has more say in telling exactly what is wants, until Army indulged in Sabotaging Renk sub system in Arjun. Renk officials who examined the tank mentioned their systems were tampered and that's why it failed in the trials. This leads to the installation of tamper proof systems. Since it was Renk product, no way Army can term it as failure of DRDO and since Renk products are 'proven', Army caught itself in a cookie-jar. Then MoS (Defence) called it as sabotage and later everything was pushed under carpet and nothing ever came about the incident after that. It cast a shadow on past such 'failures', becoz many times things that failed in those trials actually worked at other times.
For outsiders it may be a surprise, to hear if Army could do such thing. For those who are tempered with scandals after scandals and frauds that happened in Army, one question that comes to mind is Why?
Only possible reason is to postpone Arjun acceptance so that they can go for further orders for T-90 from the initial ~300. Acceptance of Arjun leads to inducting Arjun in numbers which negates any further T-90 purchase as it was initially stated to be only stop-gap purchase. Army finally relented to DRDO pressure for comparative trials only after all its orders for T-90 were placed, just like the way with T-72 as mentioned by Chacko.
Army's game plan is to perpetually postpone Arjun induction stating one reason or other or at worst induct Arjun in min. quantity only for training. Here, years back, i cited as many open quotes and documents to present that Army has no plans for Arjun at all. T-90 purchase is one of the biggest scam & scandal in recent days.
On the price of T-90 tank, SAAG paper and Broadsword exposes how it was manipulated to show the audience/public that the price quoted for tank was low and acceptable.
Everyone have a good weekend!
well what can we say - we also had a DGMF who said ..... . I am sure he is also a wonderful reference point.
