BAE, Indian Firm To Upgrade Anti-Aircraft Guns
Posted 09/11/07 12:20
By Vivek Raghuvanshi, NEW DELHI, DefenseNews.com
Bae Systems SWS of Sweden and India’s state-owned Ordnance Factories Board (OFB) will start a development project to upgrade L-70 anti-aircraft guns.
No formal order has been given either to Bae or the OFB to upgrade the guns, and last year, the Indian Army rejected a prototype of an upgraded gun developed by the OFB and Bharat Electronics.
A senior OFB official said they would develop another prototype of the L-70 upgraded anti-aircraft gun and hope to win a Defence Ministry order. The Army has about 2,000 L-70 guns bought in the 1960s. Initially, the Indian Army only wanted to upgrade 800 guns and buy new guns overseas to replace the rest.
The guns were made in Sweden in the late 1960s and upgraded in 1995 with a Bharat digital fire-control system. Their rate of fire has been increased from 240 to 300 rounds per minute by state-owned defense research laboratories under the Defence Research and Development Organisation.
The mechanical subsystem is being developed by the ordnance factories, and the final integration is to be carried out by the gun carriage factory at Jabalpur.
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