NEW DELHI - India has reached an agreement with Israel to jointly develop a new, 70km-range medium-range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM) system that will allow the Indian Army to replace its aging, Russian-made systems. The agreement to develop a mobile land MRSAM version has been in the pipeline for a while, but was put on hold in 2013 as a result of delays in the Indian Air Force' similar project. The Army's version will be an extension of the Air Force' MRSAM project, which is expected to come online in 2017.
The Indian Army's mobile MRSAMs will be jointly developed by state-owned defense research hub, the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), in tandem with Israeli firms Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Both sides will be tasked with developing subsystems for the MRSAM. Production will be conducted by India's state-owned Bharat Dynamics Ltd., with participation from local private companies Tata Power SED and Larsen & Toubro.
Once in service the Indian Army intends to use its MRSAMs for defending its mechanized formations deployed in plains and desert regions of the country. The new systems will replace the Army's 1970s-vintage Soviet-legacy 2K12E Kvadrat (Kub) and its 1980s-vintage OSA-AKM (SA-8 Gecko) systems.
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