OFB Medak successfully indigenizes Decontamination Set (TDP Set) used in BMP-II in association with HMI Gwalior. First lot of 60 indigenously manufactured sets received on 26.03.21. This will result in savings to the tune of ₹ 1.05 Crore annually reported a Twitter handle.

Upgradation Program Underway

The Indian Army (IA) in Aug 2021 had initiated the indigenous upgrade of 811 of its licence built Soviet-era BMP-2/2K ‘Sarath’ infantry combat vehicles (ICVs) by equipping them with more powerful engines, night fighting capability and varied advanced systems.

The force recently despatched a project sanction order (PSO) to 12 domestic private and public sector companies – referred to as Development Agencies (DAs) – to produce a retrofitted prototype within 52 weeks (or by July 31, 2022) for user trials, UK’s Jane’s Defence Weekly reported on August 17 2021. One ICV apiece would be supplied to each potential vendor by the IA for this purpose, the classified 12-page PSO stated.

Thereafter, at least two vendors would be selected from amongst those who met the IA’s preliminary staff qualitative requirement (PSQRs) for the upgraded ICVs, and the one that emerged L1, or the lowest bidder, would be shortlisted to series upgrade all 811 platforms, Jane’s stated.

The magazine said officials associated with the ICV upgrade stated that the BMP-2 upgrade would be processed under the Buy Indian-Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured (Indian-IDDM) category of the Defence Procurement Procedure-2020 (DPP-2020), which mandates a 50% domestically sourced content for the retrofit.

The potential vendors on the IA’s list include Alpha Design Technologies, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bharat Forge, Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Reliance Defence and Infrastructure and Tata. All these companies would be permitted to enter into collaborative agreements with overseas original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for the project, and according to industry sources many already had already finalised cooperative arrangements

Official sources told Jane’s that the projected ICV upgrade would include fitting them with more powerful engines to replace their present UTD20/2 300hp power packs, third-generation thermal imager-based gunner and panoramic sights, modern fire control systems and automatic target trackers. The retrofit would also encompass upgrading the platforms on-board weapon systems that include a 30mm 2A42 auto-canon with dual ammunition feeds, capable of firing 9M113 Konkurs wire-guided anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and a secondary coaxial 7.62x54mm machine gun.