New Delhi: The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on Saturday cleared a government-to-government deal to buy 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzer guns for the Indian artillery from the United States. The guns are manufactured in the US by BAE Systems. It also gave the go-ahead for the bulk production of 18 Dhanush artillery guns.
These M-777 guns, tried and tested by US forces in the rugged badlands of Afghanistan, have a strike range of 27 km and are expected to be vital equipment in the arsenal of the new Mountain Strike Corps being raised in India’s Northeast, which has a long international border with China.
The three-hour DAC meeting at South Block here — chaired by defence minister Manohar Parrikar and attended by the top defence brass — was held after more than two months. DAC meetings are usually monthly affairs.
“The 17 Strike Corps is being raised with no new equipment, nor do we have a great stock, so this is definitely good news. This development means that price and other issues have been resolved with the US. This gun will fulfil critical requirements for the strike corps,” said Brigadier Rumel Dahiya (Retd), a defence expert at the New Delhi-based Institute of Defence and Strategic Analyses.
For more than 30 years, India had not acquired a single howitzer — leaving a critical void in the country’s artillery requirements — a fallout of the Bofors kickbacks scandal that broke out in the mid-1980s.
