With China’s grand design to become a regional hegemon en route to becoming a global power, there is no choice but to modernise India’s defence forces rapidly. But there has been only empty rhetoric without much progress.

The security environment in India’s neighbourhood has been deteriorating for quite sometime and with China’s grand design to become a regional hegemon en route to becoming a global power, there is no choice but to modernise India’s defence forces rapidly. Regrettably there has been only empty rhetoric without much progress. A large number of request for information (RFI) and request for proposal (RFP) have been issued, but without any concrete result. A candid review of Army Air Defence (AAD) equipment will prove this point.

Current AAD Scenario

AAD is holding systems with varying timeframes, ranging from the oldest 40mm L70 gun which is more than four decades old to the youngest Tangushka which is about 15 years old. The majority of the remaining guns and missiles are about 20-30 years old. Actually the vintage of these systems is much more in their country of origin. Thus in all respect, they are either obsolete or have reached obsolescence. Meanwhile, the air threat has been becoming more critical with the fifth generation fighters looming in the horizon and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) becoming a reality. With this backdrop, the current AAD picture is rather dismal.

L/70 gun system: L/70 is the mainstay and has been the war horse of AAD since 1964. It was to be completely replaced by 2000. But there is no progress. Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) effort also kept its replacement at a limb for about two decades. Not many gun systems are currently available, but a possible choice is Skyshield of Rheinmetall Defence which has an effective range of four km and rate of fire of 1,000 rounds per minute. It can be matched with any fire control radar and the most redeeming feature is its advance hit efficiency and destruction technology (AHEAD) ammunition which contains 152 heavy tungsten metal, spin stabilised sub-projectiles and ejected by a time fuze. It is claimed to be very effective against small targets. The same system can replace ZU-23mm twin-barrel guns if found suitable and reduce the inventory. The gun was to be upgraded but details are not known. However, upgrading or adding new fire control radar will have no effect as the rate of fire is very low to match the current and the future air threat.

Schilka system: It is a highly mobile system for supporting armour formations and is in service since the early 1970s. Its successor was Tangushka, one regiment of which was procured, but there have been many twists and turns for buying additional mounts. The result is that the AAD is stuck with limited equipment, which does not meet the current operational requirement. One possibility is to take dispensation for ‘single vendor’, and procure more numbers of Tangushka mounts. The Indian Army has issued another RFI in June, but there are not many such systems available. Thus the response would not be very encouraging, thereby delaying the modernisation process.