Indian Amy to get first Dhanush artillery regiment by March 2020.

The Indian Army, which began inducting the indigenously upgraded 155mm Dhanush howitzers, will have the first regiment in place by March 2020 and will get all 114 guns by 2022, Army sources said. Dhanush is the indigenously upgraded variant of the Swedish Bofors gun imported in the 1980s. Dinakar Peri reports on The Hindu.

Dhanush 155mm  howitzer (Picture source: Army Recognition)

“The first regiment of 18 guns will be in place by March 2020. We will get another 36 guns by March 2021 and another 40 by March 2022. The entire order for 114 guns will be completed by 2022,” an Army source said, reported by Dinakar Peri.

In April, the Ordnance Factory Board had handed over the first batch of six Dhanush guns. The Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur, received the Bulk Production Clearance to manufacture 114 guns from the Army on February 18, 2019. The Defence Ministry had stated earlier that indigenisation to the extent of about 81%, has “already been achieved” and, by the end of 2019, the level of indigenisation in the manufacture of the gun “will go up to 91%.”

Dhanush is a 155 mm/45-calibre towed artillery gun with a range of 36km. It has demonstrated a range of 38 km with specialised ammunition. It is an upgrade of the existing 155m/39 caliber Bofors FH 77 gun. The Army recently procured 155mm Excalibur precision-guided ammunition from Raytheon and BAE Systems able to perform artillery strikes at extended ranges. The ammunition can be used with all 155-mm artillery guns in the inventory.

The first phase of trials of Dhanush were conducted between July to September 2016 at Pokhran and Babina ranges. The second phase was conducted between October to December 2016 at Siachen base camp with three guns. The last round of user exploitation trials was completed with six guns in June 2018.

The gun is fitted with an inertial navigation system having GPS-based gun recording and auto-laying, an enhanced tactical computer for on-board ballistic computations, an on-board muzzle velocity recording, an automated gun sighting system equipped with camera, thermal imaging, and laser range finder.

After close to three decades, the Army inducted its first modern artillery guns system in November last year. These include M-777A2 Ultra Light Howitzers (ULH) and K9 Vajra-T self-propelled howitzers.