India’s OFB wins tender to upgrade 300 M-46 field guns

Описание: India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has awarded a INR 2 billion (USD27.2 million) contract to the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) to upgrade 300 of the Indian Army’s (IA’s) Soviet-era 130 mm/52 calibre M-46 field guns to 155 mm/45 calibre in a bid to augment its firepower.
The OFB signed the deal on 25 October after edging out local private-sector rivals Punj Lloyd and Bharat Forge in the second round of ‘confirmatory field evaluation trials’ conducted in January.
During the trials the OFB-upgraded M-46 – now known as the Sharang – achieved a range of 36–39 km, compared with the 27 km of the standard gun, in addition to demonstrating “a 300% increase in lethality and levels of accuracy and consistency of fire” greater than those of the other two competing retrofitted guns.
They said the planned upgrade will include replacing the M-46’s barrel and breechblock, strengthening the gun’s undercarriage, as well as equipping it with a new sighting and a pneumatic hydraulic ramming system to ease the loading of 155 mm shells.
Delivery of all 300 upgraded guns to the IA is scheduled for completion by 2022, official sources said, adding that the upgrade is priced at just under INR7 million per gun.
Plagued by an artillery shortfall, the IA had issued a request for proposal (RFP) in 2013 to upgrade 300 of around 1,000 M-46s that India had acquired from 1968 and provided one gun each to the three contenders for the retrofit.
A few years earlier the OFB and Israel’s Soltam Systems had carried out a USD 45.52 million retrofit of 180 similar guns, which was completed by 2008.