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| Akash missile being test fired (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons) |
The Indian Army is sprucing up its stores and acquiring air defence guns after a gap of three decades, announced yesterday the Indian newspaper The Sunday Standard. Majority of the systems on the inventory of the Army’s air defence are either obsolete or nearing obsolescence, as the last air defence guns, which are meant to provide an umbrella to the Army’s static assets from an aerial object, were procured in the early 80s.
In a letter dated March 12, 2012, the then Indian Army Chief General V K Singh had warned the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the country’s security was at risk as 97 per cent of air defence inventory was ‘obsolete’.
The current government has decided to strengthen Army’s air defence, with planned induction of wide array of sophisticated radars and missile systems of project cost of over Rs 20,000 crore ($3.2 bn).
The Indian Army is all set to induct two units of the indigenously developed ‘Akash’ surface-to air missile. The Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), which produced the missile system, and the Army are looking for a suitable date for the ceremony. Officials sources say that as the project is the first on lines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, the defence ministry wants to make the induction ceremony a mega event.
Read the full story at Army Recognition