The Jabalpur-based Gun Carriage Factory, a unit of the OFB, is upgrading the army’s vintage Soviet-origin 130mm M-46 towed artillery pieces to 155 mm 45-calibre standard. (155 mm denotes the diameter of the shell and calibre relates to barrel length.)

The OFB is the country’s main producer of military arsenal and controls 41 ordnance factories engaged in the production of artillery guns, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, bombs, rockets, anti-aircraft guns, parachutes and small arms.

The Indian Army is preparing to induct upgraded artillery guns named Sharang by the end of the month to boost its firepower, with a symbolic handing over ceremony to be held at DefExpo-2020 on Friday, Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) chairman Hari Mohan said on Thursday.

The OFB is the country’s main producer of military arsenal and controls 41 ordnance factories engaged in the production of artillery guns, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, bombs, rockets, anti-aircraft guns, parachutes and small arms.

Mohan told Hindustan Times the upgraded guns have an enhanced range — up from 27 km to 37 km — and better terminal effectiveness. The OFB was awarded a contract to upgrade 300 of the 130 mm artillery guns in October 2018.

The board will supply the first batch of 12 upgraded guns to the army by February-end, while the remaining ones will be delivered in batches by 2022-end, said Lieutenant General A Mukherjee (Retd), a consultant to the OFB and a former director general of the army’s artillery directorate. The OFB has showcased an upgraded gun at DefExpo, which is being attended by more than 1,000 Indian and foreign defence firms.

“Apart from enhanced range, the upgraded guns stand out for ease of handling due to automation of loading of ammunition. The weapon has great export potential. The upgraded Sharang guns use the same ammunition as Dhanush and feature the same barrel,” Mukerjee said.

The army’s newest 155mm 45-calibre Dhanush towed artillery gun is also an OFB product and the force has placed an order for 114 guns. Mohan said the board has delivered six Dhanush guns to the army and will supply another 12 by early next year. The defence ministry said the weapon is the first long-range artillery gun to be produced in India and a ‘Make in India’ success story.

Artillery modernisation is a top priority for the army and the force plans to order 300 more Dhanush guns, a senior officer said. The army has also begun inducting 155mm/52-calibre tracked self-propelled K9 VAJRA-T guns, being manufactured in India by private sector defence major Larsen & Toubro and South Korea’s Hanwha Techwin. The army has inducted 50 of the 100 K9 VAJRA-T guns it ordered in 2017. The army is also raising seven new regiments that will be equipped with M-777 ultra-light howitzers for accurate artillery fire support in mountainous terrain. The 155 mm/39-calibre howitzers can be sling-loaded to helicopters and swiftly deployed to high-altitude areas.

India ordered 145 M-777 howitzers from the United States for $750 million in November 2016. The M777s were the first artillery guns to be ordered after the Bofors scandal unfolded in the late 1980s.

The army’s Rs 50,000-crore filed artillery modernisation programme, cleared two decades ago, lays down the road map for inducting new 155mm weaponry, including tracked self-propelled guns, truck-mounted gun systems, towed artillery pieces and wheeled self-propelled guns. The plan seeks to equip 169 artillery regiments with a mix of nearly 3,000 guns in the coming years.