THE THRUTH OF ARJUN MBT - EVEN CAG BLAMES INDIAN ARMY

ARJUN MKII

 In my previous post ARJUN MBT I told about arjun MK I & MKII.

 Much has been said about ARJUN and it was reported that few years ago that most of ARJUN MK1 (approx 75%) were grounded because of lack of spares and technical snags. Army and DRDO have always had differences when it comes to indigenous products.

On one side army has blamed DRDO for failing to meet expectations and deadlines and uses this as an excuse to import foreign weapons and on other hand DRDO claims that army has least interest in indigenous weapons and that the army has habit of changing requirements again and again which causes deadline issues and problems in quality.

The development of arjun is no different. The army is reluctant to buy more arjun tanks and claim that it has enough tanks and need no more than  124 MKI & 118 MKII of homegrown arjun  and DRDO says the order of  less than 500 will not even make the development feasible and will reduce the indigenisation of the tank which will mean that DRDO will have to depend on others for parts and this will cause problems for spares like with MK I.

  Army has also blamed arjun's overweight as a problem and claim that it won't work because its heavy and stated

"The bane of Arjun is its 62-tonne weight and the consequent poor operational mobility," said a top officer. Given its excessive weight and width, the Arjun can't be used in Punjab and northern deserts for armoured thrusts under the "Pro-Active" or "Cold Start" war strategy, which has long rattled Pakistan.


"Many bridges and culverts in Punjab will not be able to take its weight. Moreover, our rail tank transporters will find it tough to carry the Arjun from one sector to another"
BUT WHAT CAME OUT AFTER INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT FROM ISRAEL WAS THEY CLAIMED ARJUN WAS VERY AGILE AND WOULD OUTRUN MOST OF THE TANKS EVEN ON SAND also THE GROUND PRESSURE OF ARJUN is 0.86 kg per sq. cm and that of T90 is .90 kg. 

Railway in it's report also stated that " It will have no problem in transporting even fully loaded Arjun weighing around 62 tonnes (or even arjun mk2 68 tonnes).

ARJUN MK1

WHAT CAG SAID-

CAG carried out an assessment of this matter in 2014 and

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has blamed the Indian Army for delaying the induction of Arjun tanks developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and blamed the Ministry of Defence for playing along by allowing costly imports.

 A comparative trial between the Arjun and the imported Russian T-90 tanks was done in April 2010 by fixing different benchmarks – very stringent for the Arjun and relaxed for the T-90, said the CAG in its report.

 “We noticed, eight instances where the Army placed benchmark of parameters on Arjun which were more stringent in comparison to those placed on T-90 tanks… the imposition of more stringent parameters precluded a level playing field”.

 

Also during testing army claimed that ARJUN HAD FREQUENT ENGINE FAILURES but DRDO CLAIMED THAT THE ENGINES WERE SABOTAGED TO DERAIL THE PROJECT.

To find the truth DRDO installed black boxes in Arjuns which were to be tested & suddenly the breakdowns of engines stopped.

CONCLUSION - CAG REPORT PROVES THAT ARJUN MBT IS NOT A FAILURE OR INFERIOR PLATFORM AS ARMY CLAIMED IT TO BE. THERE IS A LOBBY OF PEOPLE (SELECTORS AND FOREIGN LOBBYIST) WHO DON'T WANT INDIGENOUS EQUIPMENT BECAUSE THIS WILL ELIMINATE THE KICKBACKS THEY RECEIVE FROM FOREIGN BASED FIRMS.  

 IA should consider it's love for foreign equipments and should not reject the indigenous products without testing or on just theoretical basis, also it should be ensured that testing is not partial and the reports should be transparent so that indigenous equipments get a boost.

We would expect Indian army to induct ARJUN MK2 as early as possible (arjun mk2 to miss 2016 induction-date? ) and increase the number of order so that arjun project can bear fruit. It is clear that ARJUN MK1 was on par with T 90 so it is assured that mkII will be better if not in another league so army should buy more arjuns for RAJASTHAN and other pakistan border related areas where it can be deployed instead of ordering more T 90's.