New Delhi, Feb 23

By IDI

Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), under the chairmanship of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh,on Tuesday,  approved proposal for purchase of 118 Arjun Mk1A Main Battle Tank for Rs 8400 crore. During the meeting, DAC also approved capital acquisition of proposals for anti-tank guided missile Nag along with its carrier Namica, medium power radar Arudra and 125mm tank practice ammunition.  

The Acceptance of Necessities (AoNs) for an overall cost of Rs 13,700 crore were accorded. All these AoNs are in the highest priority category of Defence Acquisition viz 'Buy [Indian-IDDM (Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured)], government said in a statement.

After the AoN, Armed forces release Request for Proposal (RFP) to the production agency for contract negotiation. 

"To meet the Atmanirbhar Bharat goals of the Government on time-bound defence procurement process and faster decision making and to systematically work towards reducing the time taken for capital acquisition, the DAC also approved that all capital acquisition contracts (delegated and non-delegated) other than D&D cases shall be concluded in two years," statement said.

On Feb 14, Prime Minister Modi handed over Arjun Mk1A to Army. The Prime Minister declared “I am proud to handover the indigenously designed and manufactured “Main Battle Tank Arjun Mark 1A”.  

Arjun Mk1A, 68 tons, is an improved version of MBT Arjun, designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) provides better protection, fire power and target acquisition capabilities to the army. 

The anti-tank guided missile can be launched from both land and air-based platforms. The strike range of the land variant and air variant of the missile is up to 4 km and up to 7 km, respectively. It is equipped with many advanced technologies including the indigenous IIR seeker with integrated avionics, a capability possessed by only few nations in the world. Nag has ‘Top attack’ and ‘Front Attack’ capabilities and can defeat the heaviest type of armour including ‘reactive’ and ‘composite’ armour of the futuristic main battle tanks. IIR Seeker of the Missile provides day and night operational capabilities against low silhouette tanks, both static and fast moving.

Arudra MPR indigenous rotating active phased array multi-function 4D radar capable of automatic detection and tracking of aerial targets ranging from fighter aircrafts to slow moving targets. The system has an instrumented range of 400 km and is able to detect 2 sqm radar cross section targets as far as 300 Km in range with the altitude coverage from 100 meters to 30 kms.