India plans to build futuristic tanks

To keep up with the trend amongst major powers, Indian army on Tuesday set in motion the process of building a futuristic main battle tank (MBT), which will be inducted post 2020.

The Army is visualising that the future tanks could be network operated sans the crew and has given the nod for framing the general qualitative staff requirements for such a machine.

The plans for going in for such smart tanks and infantry combat vehicles were unveiled on Tuesday at an international seminar on future MBTs, which was attended by the Defence Minister A K Antony and Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor.

"The next five years would see all aerial combat unmanned and the same process could take over the land systems in another 10 to 15 years," said Lt Gen Dilip Bhardawaj, Director General of the country's mechanised forces in his presentation.

Asked if a future tank would be an indigenous effort, the defence minister said the emphasis would be on building an in-house tank but, at the same time, did not rule out the possibility of a collaborative effort on a technology sharing basis.

Antony was not forthcoming on whether plans to develop a new tank would sound a death knell for the country's maiden effort in producing the Arjun main battle tank.

Though the government has given the green signal for commercial production and induction of 124 Arjun tanks, the indegenious weapons platform is yet to be inducted into the army. They  have to pass the final comparative trials with the Russian tanks.

Asked whether more Arjun tanks would be inducted into army armoured formations said, Antony said: "Let us await the full rolling out of the 124 sanctioned tanks."

At the seminar, Nikolai Malykh, Director General of Russia's biggest tank Producer Uralvagonzavod, said India and Russia were mulling the joint development of a futuristic 'smart' battle tank, featuring higher speed and better firepower.

Malykh said preliminary discussions have already taken place and UVZ experts will be coming to India to carry forward the issue on the margins of international seminar.

Malykh said the new tank featuring higher speed, better firepower, sophisticated armour protection and a smoother ride will mark a great step forward in armour technology.

For the survivability of the highly trained human assets, armour-protected crew compartment will be sealed from the unmanned turret equipped with an automatic loader.

The crew will be networked with a virtual-reality command information system linked to reconnaissance aircraft and satellites.

The new tank is likely to have a new main gun of up to 152 mm calibre and a new hunter-killer fire control system with target acquisition in optical, thermal, infrared and radar spectrum that will be accessible both to the gunner and tank commander.