Under Pressure From BDL-MBDA, Indian Army Procured Inferior Milan ATGMs

It's audit report season, and the hits just keep on coming. Now in a report tabled in Parliament on Friday, new light on the December 2008 Army contract for 4100 Milan-2T tandem warhead ATGMs worth Rs 587.02-crore. Turns out the Bharat Dynamics (which license produces the missiles in Hyderabad) Union forced the MoD/Army to lower QRs so that an order could be placed.

The report observes, "Audit scrutiny revealed that even before issue of the first RFP to BDL in January 2007, Army was aware that an adversary was having ATGM of range longer than the Milan-2T and as such reducing the standards of GSQR of 2003 was not desirable. The Army in fact wanted ATGM of even longer range so as to avoid risk of exposure. It was also known to Army (June 2006) that third generation missiles were available in the global market. The Army had not even formulated GSQR for third generation missile for over two years when GSQR for Milan-2T was amended (August 2008)."

The report has more details. Also stuff on Smerch.

Photo ©MBDA

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