By IANS
New Delhi : The Indian Army has floated a second global tender for 155mm self-propelled wheeled artillery guns, even as it is readying a third tender for the towed variety of the gun, an official said Monday.
This follows a tender floated last month for ultra-light howitzers, with the total deal for 400 guns expected to be in the region of $2 billion. Of these, 140 guns will be of the ultra-light category, 185 of the wheeled version and the balance 175 of the towed version.
“Yes, I can confirm that the request for proposal (RFP) has gone out for the wheeled gun,” a defence ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
While the tender for the ultra-light guns is believed to have been issued to Britain’s BAE Systems and Singapore Technologies, that for the wheeled version is understand to have gone out to at least five companies, including BAE Systems and Germany’s Rheinmetall, and two Israeli companies.
The army desperately needs the additional howitzers to ramp up depleting stocks of a similar number of guns it had bought from Swedish manufacturer Bofors in the mid-1980s.
That deal had been mired in controversy over allegations that Bofors had paid Rs.640 million ($16 million) in bribes to secure the order. The army’s inventory has now dwindled to some 200 guns due to wear and tear.
The Supreme Court has absolved all those accused in the case but the Bofors taint continues, even though the gun has come out on top in a series of field trials held over the past few years. The last of these was in the icy heights of Leh in November 2006.
However, the fresh tender was necessitated as Defence Minister A.K. Antony is said to have asked for the selection process to be made more broad-based as only the Bofors gun remained in contention after the other two were eliminated.
The Israeli Soltam fell out of the race after its barrel repeatedly burst during field trials, while a third gun, the South African Denel, was dropped after the Indian government accused the manufacturer of corruption in another defence deal.
The Bofors gun with its ‘shoot and scoot’ capability had proved its mettle during the 1999 Kargil operation when the army went into action to evict Pakistani infiltrators from the Himalayan heights.
Even before the army had publicly acknowledged the utility of the gun in 1998, the government of then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had reopened negotiations for the purchase of additional Bofors guns.
The return to power of the Congress in 2004 changed the complexion of the issue because it was during former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s time that the original deal was negotiated. The Congress, in fact, was voted out of power in 1989 on the Bofors issue.