Indian-made main battle tank Arjun will be equipped Israeli Trophy active protection system 0504122.

Rafael is increasing its activity in the Indian market: the company has signed a memorandum of understanding that will lead to the establishment of a joint venture with the Indian company Mahindra, which also deals in defense production. The memorandum of understanding was signed during DEFEXPO 2012, a large defense exhibition in India that concluded at the start of the week. (Source IsraelDefense)

All the legal preparations for the establishment of the venture will be carried out in the coming weeks. The goal of the enterprise is to integrate as many of Rafael’s land and naval systems in the acquisition plans of the Indian military. This includes supplying protective systems and weapons posts for the FICV – the Indian military’s future armored vehicle – as well as supplying various forms of protection, including active protection systems such as Rafael’s ASPRO-A (Trophy) system for the Indian Arjun tank.

The Trophy is an active protection hard kill system that operates in three major stages: Threat detection, threat tracking followed by advanced Hard Kill (HK) countermeasure activation and threat neutralization. The neutralization process takes place only if the threat is about to hit the platform.

Already operational on Merkava-4 MBT, Trophy is ready for deployment on heavy, medium and light platforms, protecting against all types of HEAT threats, including all known types of Anti- Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM), Anti-Tank Rockets (ATR) and tank HEAT rounds. Numerous live tests have already been conducted to ensure that the Trophy will be able to defeat Kinetic Energy (KE) threats in the future.

The Indian company will also carry out naval cooperation with Rafael, which will focus on the Protector Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) developed by Rafael. According to Israeli sources, the joint venture may also increase the sale of Rafael’s SPIKE missiles in India, as well as the sale of the SPYDER air defense system.

India has tremendous defense procurement budgets, and it intends to utilize them extensively in the coming years. As was previously published in IsraelDefense, the Indian military is planning to procure military equipment at a scope of $50 billion in the next five years. The bulk of the amount is intended for replacing former Soviet-produced systems.