INDIAN COMPANY L&T INKS DEAL WITH SOUTH KOREA'S HANWHA ALLOWING SPH PROJECT TO MOVE AHEAD
NEWTOWN, Conn. - India's engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T) reached a deal with South Korea's defense prime Hanwha Techwin on April 21 that paves the way for joint production of over 100 self-propelled howitzers (SPHs) intended for the Indian Army.
The initial batch of the K9 Vajra-T (Thunderbolt) should be delivered later this year with the entire 100-gun order handed over by October 2020, or 42 months from now. Of the 100 SPHs being delivered ten will be directly-purchased from South Korea with the remainder manufactured at the L&T Strategic Systems Complex near Pune. L&T has also begun setting up a greenfield K9 Vajra-T manufacturing line at Gujrat's Hazira. The K9 Vajra-T is an enhanced variant of Hanwha Techwin's K9 Thunder and involves a 155mm, 52-caliber howitzer, mounted on a tracked vehicle, providing it with the mobility necessary to maintain pace with the Indian Army's Mechanized Strike Corps' T-90S tanks.
The long-awaited 155mm/52-cal tracked SPH requirement for the Indian Army fits just one of many niches needed to be filled as the Army seeks to induct into service some 3,000-3,600 155mm howitzers in two calibers (39 and 52) in towed, mounted and self-propelled (both wheeled and tracked) forms by 2027 in order to fulfill its needs under the 2000 Field Artillery Rationalization Plan (FARP).
In late September 2015, the Indian Defense Ministry chose the L&T-Hanwha partnership as the favored bidder for its $750 million (INR48.71 billion) 100-SPH tender after the system cleared Indian Army trials conducted earlier in 2013 and 2014.
The K9 was downselected in a competition that saw two earlier attempts to move the project forward in 2006 and 2007 frustrated by corruption charges (against Denel in the initial bid) and the blacklisting from the Indian market of potential vendors. The third tender, issued in 2011, ultimately pitted the K9 against the Russian 2S19 MSTA-S mounted on a T-72 tank chassis offered by state arms export agency Rosoboronexport.
The Indian contract for the 155mm, 52-caliber self-propelled tracked howitzers falls under the Buy Global procurement category, meaning the Indian Defence Ministry would make a direct purchase from a foreign vendor of an off-the-shelf-hardware type.
The Indian Army requirement for the K9 Vajra-T is ultimately expected to grow beyond the initial 100 guns to a total of 250+ systems.
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