Advanced Weapons & Equipment India Ltd.(AWEIL) had bagged its first export order from a European firm for major sub assemblies of Artillery Guns.

The extent and scope of the export order is not known.

Advance Weapons and Equipment India Limited (AWEIL), the new defence PSU formed out of Gun Carriage Factory (GCF) at Jabalpur, the GCF at Jabalpur had been making artillery guns and its sub-assemblies for the armed forces.

AWEIL, makes the Dhanush 155x45 mm guns on the lines of the Swedish Bofors. Four years after it was delivered to the army, Dhanush, the Indian howitzer made on the lines of Swedish Bofors, can finally be expected to be deployed by the artillery regiments now. In March 2022, the gun was put to another round reliability test firing, and the whole process went off without any incident unlike earlier trials. The trials took place in the Pokhran desert, where 90 rounds of shells each were fired from two guns.

The whole process of designing the guns to final induction in the Army’s artillery regiments has taken over a decade. The first batch of six guns was delivered to the Army in April 2019. Dhanush is made at the Gun Carriage Factory (GCF), Jabalpur.

UAE Export Order

In its largest ever export order, the then Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) in Aug 2019 bagged an order to supply 50,000 artillery shells used with the Bofors guns to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). An order worth Rs 315 crore ($45.75 million) contract was received in July 2019, adding to an earlier order for 40,000 shells that was finalized in 2017.

The contract has been described by the defence ministry as the `largest ever single export order’ to the state owned OFB that manufactures a bulk of the ammunition in used by the Indian armed forces. In particular, the OFB will supply 50,000 numbers each of the 155 mm HE ERFB BT Shell and Primer M19l-A2 to UAE.

Other Markets

After the significant success of selling the BrahMos Supersonic Cruise Missiles to the Philippines, the nations that India believes have the maximum potential of purchasing military equipment include Vietnam, Thailand, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, UAE and Malaysia. Even western nations with a developed defence industry like UK and USA are on the list due to the increasing ecosystem of sub system manufacturers in India that have access to technology thanks to defence offsets programs of the past.