Within the second half of 2020, at a time of excessive tensions with neighbouring China and Pakistan, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode a domestically constructed Arjun battle tank throughout Diwali celebrations on the Longewala Put up close to the nation’s western border. This follows a rising emphasis within the nation on creating the home defence sector to substitute international produced weaponry, with the Indian tank initially anticipated to interchange Soviet T-72 tanks in frontline service. The Arjun has had a extremely troubled historical past, starting growth virtually 50 years in the past within the early Nineteen Seventies and seeing delays of round 30 years making it one of many longest tank growth applications in world historical past. The Indian Army has itself been extremely reluctant to buy the Arjun, inducting simply 124 tanks into service by mid-2018 which have continued to face extreme technical points leaving 75 % of the models completely non operational. India’s resolution to take a position closely within the Russian T-90 program from the early 2000s, for which it was by far the most important consumer, have been a direct results of the Army’s dissatisfaction with the Arjun which has modified little up to now 20 years. India most lately ordered a number of hundred T-90MS tanks from Russia in 2018, probably the most succesful absolutely operational Russian tank design, which advantages from many applied sciences from the following era T-14 tank and supply each decrease prices and upkeep wants and overwhelming efficiency benefits over the Arjun. These advantages are compounded by the T-90 being fight examined, having far increased availability charges and reliability, and even being license assembled in India.
Referred to by the Nationwide Curiosity as a ‘whole piece of junk,’ the Arjun started low stage manufacturing in 2009 over 35 years after starting growth and affected by declining operational mobility because of a weight improve of over 50 %. This got here as extra heavy subsystems have been piled onto the automobile with out adequate consideration for effectivity and weight discount. Such points have been exacerbated by the truth that most of the applied sciences developed within the early and center intervals of this system grew to become successfully out of date by the mid-2010s, which was a consequence of the inefficient approach this system was dealt with. Regardless of its many weaknesses, one sturdy level of the Arjun design contains its deployment of a 120mm cannon, which whereas smaller than the usual calibre for Russian and frontline Pakistani-operated tanks continues to be way more succesful than the 105mm cannon it was initially designed to deploy which was out of date by the twenty first century.
It remans unsure whether or not India’s defence sector will have the ability to salvage something operationally helpful from the design, one in all a number of ailing initiatives alongside the Tejas fighter, which was additionally a number of a long time late, and the INS Vikrant plane provider which went 600 % over finances. As Pakistan has moved to subject extra succesful new generations of armour, most notably buying the Chinese language VT-4 which is able to present superiority over even a number of the older T-90 variants, India’s capacity to afford funding in a failed program has diminished. Furthermore, tensions with China in India’s mountainous northern areas, the place China has deployed Kind 15 light-weight tanks, are maybe the least applicable terrain for the Arjun which is significantly heavier than the T-90 and can be virtually inconceivable to function. Whether or not India will try any alternative tank designs in future, or whether or not it’s going to proceed to look to Russian armour together with presumably the T-14 or a lighter mountain tank, stays to be seen.
