India plans to deploy hundreds of T-90MS tanks along western and northern borders with Pakistan 12101171

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Defence & Security News - India
 
India plans to deploy hundreds of T-90MS tanks along western and northern borders with Pakistan.
According to the website Swarajya, India will deploy new T-90MS Main Battle Tank (MBT) along India's western and northern borders with Pakistan. Indian army plans to deploy a total of 464 T-90MS MBT along the border with Pakistan.
     
According to the website Swarajya, India will deploy new T-90MS Main Battle Tank (MBT) along India's western and northern borders with Pakistan. Indian armt plans to deploy a total of 464 T-90MS MBT along the border with Pakistan.
Russian-made T-90MS MBT at IDEX 2013 defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
     
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they gained independence from Britain seven decades ago, two of them over Kashmir. Both claim the region in its entirety.

The explosive situation in Kashmir is getting worse, and India and Pakistan, the two nuclear powers most likely to find themselves at war with each other, are closer to armed conflict now than in many years.

In November 2016, The High Command of the Indian Armed Forces has approved a purchase of 464 Russian T-90MS tanks, developed by the Research and Production Corporation Uralvagonzavod (UVZ). At present, Indian army operates 18 regiments of T-90S (named Bhishma in the Indian service) deployed in Rajasthan and Punjab.

According to the open sources, New Delhi has ordered a total of 1,657 T-90S tanks in 2001, 2006, and 2007. UVZ has delivered 248 tanks in ready-to-use condition, while 409 were assembled locally. The remaining MBTs (about 1,000) are to be manufactured under the license by 2020.

Recently, India has decided to acquire an additional batch of T-90 tanks in ready-to-use condition from Russia in the T-90MS variant. The T-90MS features a number of upgrades over the basic model, namely, modified multi-fuel diesel engine, new air-cooling unit, an advanced explosive reactive armour (ERA), and a remote-control weapon station (RCWS). The UVZ corporation said that the updated T-90S MBT will be in high demand on the arms market of the Near East region.

The T-90MS is armed with a 125mm stabilized 2A46M-5 smoothbore gun that can fire armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS), high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT), and high-explosive fragmentation (HE FRAG) rounds, as well as anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) with tandem warhead.