OFB bags deal to upgrade 300 guns

Kolkata: Beating two private Indian weapon manufacturers, Kolkata-headquartered state-run defence manufacturer Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) has bagged the defence ministry’s crucial contract to build 155 mm/45 caliber “Sharang” artillery guns to replace the existing Russian-made 130 mm M-46 artillery guns which have been in service in the Indian Army since 1968.

The contract was signed by OFB deputy director general (weapons) Alok Prasad and defence ministry official Nidhi Chhibber in South Block in New Delhi on Thursday. OFB would be required to up-gun 300 existing 130 mm M-46 guns to 155 mm/45 calibre which will be supplied to the Army in a span of four years, it said in a statement on Friday. Each gun would cost less than `1 crore, sources revealed.

The upgraded weapon system has been christened as “Sharang” after the bow of Lord Vishnu, which was crafted by Lord Vishwakarma.  It was unveiled in Defexpo in Chennai earlier this year. The OFB received a request for proposal (RFP) from the Indian Army in 2013.

It was awarded the contract after it won the competition where two guns of foreign origin from two separate Indian firms also participated, sources disclosed. The OFB said that it presented a fully indigenous solution against the other two equipment of foreign origin.

The OFB elaborated, “Sharang is a shining example of ‘Make in India’ and bears an indelible stamp of the OFB as a leading manufacturer of artillery guns.

Various performance parameters, viz. maximum range, direct fire, rate of fire, accuracy and consistency, among others, were evaluated during the Field Evaluation Trials (FET) through actual firing at the Pokhran range. OFB’s Sharang gun was the only compliant gun after the completion of the trials.”

The up-gunning is a highly cost effective solution to substantially enhance the strategic capabilities of the Indian Army in terms of range (an increase from the existing 27 km to 39 Km), lethality (130 mm ammunition to 155 mm ammunition) and artillery area coverage against the enemy.

Sharang weighs 8.4 tonnes, with an overall length and width of 11.84 m and 2.45 m respectively. The barrel is approximately 7 m long and is equipped with a single baffle muzzle brake and horizontal sliding wedge breech block.

A semi-automatic operating device enables auto opening of the gun breech and a pneumatic ramming system eases the effort of the gun crew while ramming the projectile during gun firing.