By IANS
New Delhi : After “prolonged and untiring efforts”, the indigenously developed Pinaka rocket was formally handed over to the Indian Army Friday.
Pinaka, which is fired from a multi-barrel rocket launcher (MBRL), has an ideal range of 38 km.
Sudipta Ghosh, chairman of the Ordnance Factories Board (OFB), handed over the system to the Indian Army vice chief, Lt. Gen. Milan Lalitkumar Naidu, at a function at Ordnance Factory Chanda in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district.
The ordnance factory will supply 300 Pinaka rockets to the army this year and 1,000 rockets next year, a defence ministry statement said.
Speaking on the occasion, Ghosh described the Pinaka deliveries as “another milestone in the OFB’s history of more than 200 years”.
Ghosh also said the ordnance factories have started offering warranty on their products, including small ammunition, bombs, rockets and weapon systems.
Refuting concerns about the quality of OFB products, Ghosh said the malfunctions, if any, were attended to by experts or the product was replaced to the customers’ satisfaction.
He said the ordnance factories were open to the idea of joint ventures as foreign vendors scout for partners to fulfil the offset clause in defence purchases which mandates that 30 percent of all deals valued at more than Rs.3 billion ($75 million) be reinvested in the country.
All the 40 ordnance factories spread across the country have recently earned the ISO-9002 certificate, the OFB chairman pointed out, and said this made them the ideal route for fulfilling the offset obligations.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had begun developing the Pinaka system in 1983 and it was tested in action during the 1999 Kargil conflict in Jammu and Kashmir where it proved its effectiveness.
Mounted on a heavy-duty truck for mobility, Pinaka’s multi-barrel rocket launcher can fire a salvo of 12 high explosive rockets in under 40 seconds, saturating an area of four square kilometres.
A Pinaka battery consists of six launchers, six loader-cum-replenishment vehicles, three replenishment vehicles, a command post vehicle with a fire control computer (FCC) and a meteorological radar.