Kargil, Bofors & Beyond: India's Atmanirbhar Artillery Revolution | In Our Defence S3 | Ep 15

In this episode of In Our Defence, host Dev Goswami marks the anniversary of India's victory in the 1999 Kargil conflict by turning sights on the unsung hero of that war: artillery.

The episode dissects how the much-maligned but battle-proven Bofors guns turned the tables on the intruding Pakistani soldiers and rained fire to help India win the conflict.

The episode also takes a deep dive into India's march to self-reliance in the field of artillery with systems like the next-gen ATAGS.

What makes artillery such a game-changer in modern warfare? What role did artillery play in turning the tide during Kargil? And how does India's current artillery landscape look like?

Dev breaks this down and more with defence expert Sandeep Unnithan.

We also explore:

The Bofors "sniper mode" legend during Kargil war

India's current artillery inventory

The rise of ATAGS & Make-in-India success

Whether artillery is outdated or innovating

Ukraine war lessons for gunners

Produced by Garvit Srivastava

Sound mix by Rohan Bharti

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Deve Goswami and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for

(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This is in Our Defense.
Welcome to a Our Defense. This episode comes in the
week India prepares to celebrate, which they was on July
twenty sixth. This is the twenty sixth adversary of India's
victory in the conflict against Pakistan in Kargil. A limited

(00:48):
war rather a conventional limited war that saw around month
and a half of fighting, around two weeks of which
was very very intense fighting, and India, in India and
its military, has taken various lessons from it. In fact,
I think it's one of those seminal moments for India's
military that's led to a lot of topics that we

(01:08):
end up discussing on this podcast, especially when it comes
to the reforms of the India's military setup and the
equipment that we currently use, organization of it, indianization of it,
et cetera. And we're going to do that as well
on this episode by focusing on that one key factor
that was responsible for turning the tables in Pakistan and
ensuring that India won. It's hard for victory, the artillery,

(01:31):
and for that I have with me, Sandy Goody good
to be.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Back suddenly, Cardgo War.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I think for many people, especially for people like you,
is I think one of the most studied aspects of
India's military, especially because like I was talking about many
things that are happening right now, whether it is theaterization,
whether it is a setting up of the Chief of
Defense Staff post, whether it is an extra focus on
Indian made, Indian developed equipment and stuff like that, all

(02:01):
of that can be traced back to the Cargo War
and the reform sort of it pushed because before that,
India had seen a lot of you can say, decades
of peace during which you could say the military and
then set up was sort of lulled into this pacifist
mode where they thought that wars would no longer be fought,
and then Cargile War came along and I'm guessing you
must have seen it up close.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Absolutely the Unfortunately I didn't cover the war in the theater,
of course, I was in the Indian Express. Then I
was in Mumbai. Gor Savant who was my colleague here
in Delhi at the Indian Express, he covered the war.
But I got a ringside view of Cargole of course
much later when I moved to Delhi, and you know,
one heard stories of the war and you know the

(02:43):
reforms that you mentioned that had been kicked in, So
I actually covered the second, you know, part of the
reforms and the fact that the Chief of Defense Staff
was the biggest reform to have come out of the
Cargile War. They did something called the Cargil Review Committee,
and the committees, by the way, well with that, various
other committees. But but you know, primarily you have to

(03:04):
read that documentaive. It's it's a good one, the Cargill
Review Committee. I think it's one of the finest works
of its kind. And anyone who's interested in knowing about
India's defense and the loopholes and how we've kind of
fixed it, you've got to going out and read that
KRC report. It's very exhaustive in the way they approached this.
They admitted that, you know, there had been certain deficiencies, uh,

(03:25):
and they set out to fix it right from coastal
security to theaterization, indigenization, modernization, all of the things. You know,
the Indian system is very interesting that we don't move
unless there's a crisis. Yes, you know, it's the classic
Indian thing. It's like we only reform after a crisis.
Like you have to kick economic liberalization when you have

(03:50):
no for X reserves to pay for your imports, right,
and so you have to pledge your goal. That's when
you start liberalization, opening up the economy. You start defense
reforms only after you've been surprised in Kargil. And of
course Kargil was a surprise. It was a rude shock
because the system was planning to fight one kind of

(04:11):
war and it got pushed into another kind of way.
We never thought they would be, you know, an all
out India Pakistan war, even a limited one of the
kind of that we saw in Kargil. After the nuclearization
of the subcontinent in nineteen ninety eight. And this is
again what General Musher gambled on. And he was a gambler.

(04:32):
He figured that because India and Pakistan now had nuclear weapons,
there would be no conflict. So he tried to probe
under the nuclear overhang and send these long range penetration
missions to capture the heights of Cargil, thinking that because
there was a nuclear overhanging the subcontinent, India would not
retaliate conventionally. Right. So, of course that notion of his

(04:55):
was shattered when India struck back viciously and vigorously with
the artillery and fighter jets and of course infantry assaults
of the kind that perhaps hasn't been seen in the
history of conflict. And it is important, you know, to
never underestimate your enemy, and that's what Cargil teaches you,

(05:19):
just as Operation Sindura has taught you that never underestimated
your adversary. He might be down and out, his forex
reserves might have been exhausted. He's possibly just one tenth
or one twentieth of your size, but he is still
burning with some kind of resentment. He wants to settle
scores with you, and therefore he will always surprise you

(05:40):
and you have to be extremely wary of that.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Right, So these episodes we're going to talk about artillery
and we'll talk about the role it played during the
Carter conflict and what's happened since, especially the development of
the attas the advance toward artillery gun system. That system
it's almost like beIN another dad are you know to speak.
It's something under development for the last twelve years or so,

(06:04):
and recently the government has places in order for I
think seven thousand core worth of these guns with two
private sector companies STARTA and Bara Forge. It's been developed
by the d r D or the d r D
O s r D Laboratory. But before we get to Cargill,
and then before we talk about what's India, what India
has been doing in terms of developing its own artillery gun,

(06:25):
I want to talk about the concept of artillery in
general and what it does to our war. Why is
it important and why has it come to be called
as the God of war. I think that code goes
back to Joseph Stalin if I'm.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Not wrong, Yeah, God of War and the King of
Battle because you know, artillery. Ever since artillery appeared on
the battlefield, it kind of completely changed the equation because
you know, gone were the ability of forces to you know,
mass in the way that you could. You couldn't have
masses of tanks. If your adversary had big artillery and

(06:58):
you know, sizeable art you could not mass your forces.
You couldn't launch armored assaults, You couldn't launch any kind
of assault, because an artillery barrage is the most destructive
kind of warfare, you know. And I just hope many
people aren't at the receiving end of an artillery barrage.
I haven't been at one, but I have seen these

(07:19):
guns fire, and I know the kind of destructive potential
that they can do, where they can literally obliterate targets
thirty or forty kilometers away the size of ten football fields.
You know, a battery of guns that's about eight guns
can knock out an area the size of ten football
fields thirty kilometers away in all weather conditions, day or night,

(07:43):
and you can't do anything about it. The shell will
land irrespective despite the fact that could be rain, shine, day, night.
A shell is a shell, and it's the cheapest and
the most inexpensive way of landing what they call ordnance
on target. You can intercept. It just comes in at
supersonic speed and just drops on to target. And you

(08:06):
know all of this stuff that's being made about drone warfare,
and you know, that's the big thing, and it's going
to replace everything. I actually disagree because I'm waiting for
the date when drones can actually take ten CAGs of
ordnance in all weather conditions, in all jamming environments, in
all day, night and all that and drop it on target. Right,

(08:28):
they've not got that sophisticated yet. We still have a
couple of years before that happens. But until then, it
is Utllery, which is the god of war, the king
of battle. And you know, one of the most precious
things in the world today is the one hundred and
fifty five am Martllery shell. It's everybody is now restarting

(08:49):
their production lines because everybody got lulled into this false
sets of complacency. Oh you know, we are not going
to fight wars of attrition. And here you have, lo
and behold, the Russian Federation enters the war. And for
all those people who looked at the Russians the way
they fought the war in Ukraine, they said, oh, they
have such a shot up air force. They don't have
an air force worth the thing they're going to you know,

(09:11):
they're going to collapse and not able to fight little
realizing that. You know, at the end of the day,
it is all about ordnance on target, how you drop
the explosives on your target, whether it's from aircraft or
it's from two artillery. And that's where the Russians are
really good at. They've never had a great air force,
but they have had world class artillery. They've literally pioneered

(09:33):
so many concepts of artillery, whether it is mass artillery,
gun firing rockets. You know, they've pioneered so many artillery
advancements in the Second World War, for instance, and they
are master strategist when it comes to artillery, and that's
what they used in the Ukraine War as well, at
least in the initial phases. So a lot of the advances,

(09:56):
a lot of the you know, victories that the Russians
fought were through their tube artillery, rockets and artillery shells.
And now the world is now waking up that, look,
if you're going to fight a war of attrition, you
need to have artillery. You need to have shells, you
need to have you need to have Howitzer's guns of
all kinds, shapes and sizes, and that's where the world

(10:16):
is really going to it. So drones can at best
be a stop gap for countries which don't have artllery.
It gives you an inexpensive way of launching ordnance, which
of course can be intercepted, but artllerly can't be. So
if a country has huge ammunition reserves, it has a
large number of guns, thousands of guns, it's an artillery power.

(10:40):
Then the other side will actually think twice before you know,
attacking them and all that. So it's not curtains for artillery.
Yet there's a lot of fight in this beast.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, which is I'm guessing exactly why India chose to
develop the attags and is so sort of upbeat on
a successful development and now sort of very close induction
going back to the Cargle War now and talking about
the arty used and the much maligned gun. I say
much maligned because you know, for the longest time while
I was growing up, for me and for lots of

(11:12):
people from my generation, meant one single thing corruption, correct,
that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
That's the thing is a good gun. I mean it
still is a good guns, an excellent gun, which.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Is what I realized Actually, when I started reading up
more about defense, and when I started reading up about
especially the Cargile War and how the Beace was that
turning point that that that X factor basically so much
so that in fact, a fun nugget that it's widely
reported that India had to go for an emergency procurement
famination and for that they had to sit step a

(11:42):
band that had been imposed once because of that corruption scandal.
So the government of India had banned any dealings with
that company. But the army was like, bro, this is
the gun that's gonna win as the battle. We need
the bullet, the ammunition.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
For the ammiation, we need the parts. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
So yeah, So tell us about Cargil, the use of
Beffor's artillery. You know, there's this nice quote from a reporter,
Wikram Jitsing from the Times of India, a piece about
about the Cargo War, in which in the intro he
says Beauforce was like an Enray's bull, going and stomping
upon the entrenched Pakistani army. Very vivid, sure, is what

(12:22):
it paints. So Sandy, tell us about Beoffors. Tell us
about artillery and why do we regard it as that
X factor that turned Cargile War.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Now, well, the X factor is spot on. They've a
little secret about the Cargo War. I mean, it's not
a secret anymore. We give it to the Pakistanis who
actually came out with their statistics in the Cargo War
about in twenty ten or so, where we discovered after
studying the statistics that literally sixty to seventy percent of
the Pakistani casualties had been caused by Indian artillery. Wow. Right,

(12:55):
So that clearly tells you who did the bulk of
the wounding the enemy and you know, maiming his forces.
It was Indian utillary and all kinds, whether it was
direct hits on target, it was air busts, it was
hitting the ammunition dumps in the rear. A lot of
soldiers died because of Indianatali. This is of course, not

(13:16):
taking away from the absolutely spectacular bravery that our infantry
soldiers did climbing literally no army in the world would
have done the kind of you know, heroic deeds that
the Indian army did, and which, let's face it, you know,
literally climbing near vertical clips to capture the enemy posts,
recapture those posts you know, hand to hand combat with

(13:39):
the enemy at such altitudes fifteen eighteen thousand feet it's
like fighting on the surface of the moon or something. No,
I mean, the world is fort this kind of a war, incidentally,
and that's what Cargill was. But the secret of that,
which was realized much later, was the fact that the
shelling that India, you know aunt in Kargo something that

(14:01):
two hundred thousand rounds were fired right, artillery, two bartllery rockets, everything.
That's a lot of ordnance that fell on the Pakistanis
and you know, an artllery barge. Like I was saying,
it's the most terrifying thing ever. You know. You hear
the screech of the you know, thunder of the artillery,

(14:22):
the screech of the shells, and then finally the earth shakes,
and it is a terrible thing to be at the
receiving end of that. So while Pakistan may have had
this brilliant tactical move of capturing the winter vacated posts
of the Indian Army, you can just imagine what it
must have been for those guys at the receiving end.
The Northern Light Infantry literally being battered day and night,

(14:46):
by Indian artillery and air to ground munitions. Before the
Indian soldiers, you know, appeared with the assault rifles and
Bennett's in their hands, it would have been a terrifying thing.
That just tells you how callous. This artillery office across
the border was Genel mush artillery officer turned commando, and he, incidentally,

(15:06):
this is something I picked up from his autobiography in
the Line of Fire, What else Where, Mushaff says that
he actually planned Kargil because he figured that India did
not have enough artillery to you know, strike back at Pakistan.
They would have to denude their artillery. They had to
move artillery up from the planes towards the mountains if

(15:27):
they were to strike back at Pakistan. And in a
manner of speaking, he was correct, because we had to
move all our guns, all our available artillery up, focus it,
concentrate fire, and you had, you know, towards the end
of Vja, we had something like one hundred guns firing
on a single target. And that's how good we had
got it. They were literally army officers who were using

(15:52):
the Beaufort's guns, the much Malayan Beaufort's guns like rifles,
literally pointing it at a target and they were saying bang,
you know, thanks, yeah, like using it like a gigantic
sniper rifle, firing these ten cag you know, shells straight
into bunkers and you know, mountaintops literally cliffs were disintegrating.
You know, they were just altering the features of the

(16:13):
cliffs and the the mountaintops in cargo using artillery. Yeah.
In fact, you're right. So there's this piece by.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
By Leefton Jennel pr Chunker, who is the former DJ
of Artillery for the Indian.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Army Artillery evangelist, that's what I call.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
It, uh and in that in that in that piece
he talks about how a lot, a lot of piece
this is from twent twenty four is about this direct
firing that was done by the army. And in the
previous season uh Shiv who was there as as as
the guest, he spoke about this. I don't want the
word guard because you don't like it, so I'll say

(16:51):
modification that carried out to the Befors gun that even
the Swedish had not thought of to be able to
use this gun, like you said, in sort of direct firing,
like like almost like a sniper I feel, can you
tell us a bit more about that? So what was
this thing that we Indians did that in the Swedish
had not thought of with their own guns?

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Right, Well, it was just that I guess the Swedes
hadn't employed this gun. See the F S seventy seven
B was is a Swedish gun, but it was the
the use of it in combat was basically an Indian uh,
you know, innovation we had. The Swedes had never used
it in the kind of conditions and in combat the
way the Indian Army had done. Right, So Inkargil. When

(17:35):
you're there with when you deployed with the gun for
several weeks and months, you develop a certain sense of
you know, comfort with your hardware. That's when you can innovate,
you can improvise, and then you can you know, use
it exactly in the way that you want to. And
you know, it's not only the F seventy seven B,

(17:58):
it's also the Kina in Baja, very interesting, which has
been deployed there. This is public knowledge, not secret stuff.
But it's been there in Ladakh from two thousand and twenty,
ever since the Chinese moved in and the Indian Army
discovered that this gun had been acquired from South Korea
for use in the planes and the deserts as on

(18:20):
a tracked vehicle, but it performed fabulously well in high
altitudes because it had actually been designed for use in
the high altitudes of South Korea with North Korea against
North Korea. So that was a pure South Korean gun.
This was a pure Swedish gun. But when it came
into Indian hands, you have the user who's very experienced

(18:41):
in a whole variety of guns, then starts to use
it for exactly the kind of you know, use that
he sees for it. I don't think the Swedish designers
ever thought that it would be used in the kind
of role that it was used in Kargil, Right, what
was the FF seventy seven B design for. It was
meant to be a toed artillery gun which would be

(19:03):
towed into combat by a tractor, which is a large
four x four or six by six vehicle. It would
accompany artllery, it would accompany the infantry and the you know,
the the the military thrust on the planes. It could
also be used in the mountains, but this particular aspect
of being positional mountain warfare literally being used against mountain

(19:28):
tops and sungers and you know, shooting out individual bunkers
and altering features and all. This is something that I
don't think even the original designers would have enviside. So
this is this is the modification that came about when
the gunners started using it and they discovered that they
could fire it in direct fire mode. It could be
a very devastating weapon in direct fire. So that's how

(19:49):
this particular innovation came out. And that's why the Beaufort's gun,
the gunners all our Utler regiment guys, they love that
gun so much and it continues in service in various
other forms, the Danush for ins indigenous gun. It is
a riverse engineered FT seventy seven B. Right.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Another point on the use of Bofors and artillery in
the Cargo war, and again it's quite unconventional, is what.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Again.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
The general rights in his piece is that one it
was deployed very close actual fighting, which is not normally
what you expect with art ler because it's devastating, like
you said, so to ensure rangers ranges. But it was
deployed quite close, and that multiple guns were used to
target one single target. In fact, he calls it almost

(20:32):
like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, targeting a very
small area with multiple barges off basically artillery artillery fire.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
And also the fact that you had artillery officers embedded
with infantry platoons that actually climbing those those mountains. In fact,
you had I think a couple of officers and one
gunner who got who was awarded the Chakra because of
the sacrifices that they made during the battles. Uh. So
I want to talk about this to you, to tell
us about this as well. So what was his deployment,

(21:02):
this very close quota deployment.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
And in fact, I've heard stories where infantry officers called
fire upon themselves because they were sort of stuck and
you're like, just fired in the general area of where
we are, We'll take cover and just we just hope
that this barre sort of takes out the Pakistan right.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Absolutely, It's one of the most dangerous things. Again, Like
you know, see again this this gun was designed for
use on the planes, possibly in the deserts and all,
not in this kind of environment. I mean, cargile again,
the kind of war that's never been fought possibly in
the history of conflict. Where you have the adversary perched
on multiple forts fort like structures. These sungers heavily defended.

(21:43):
These are stone fortresses. Many of them are interlinked on
ridgelines features you have trenches. They have fire support as well,
so they're not sitting there, you know, by themselves. They
have fire support, which is mortars, rockets, their own media
martlet in the rear, so they can call on fire
support as well. And they're you know, faced with Indian

(22:05):
artillery in front of them, and of course the infantry
which has to actually physically climb and recapture posts. It's
a very very complex kind of thing. So if you're
looking at the conventional kind of battlefield that's on the planes,
where you know, the artillery stops firing after the infantry
is in contact with the enemy because you don't want

(22:25):
to end up killing on your own troops. Right, they
stopped firing, it's after the initial barrage. The gun stopped firing,
and then the infantry moves in, the armor moves in
and all that, right, So it starts with an artillery barrage.
But here you had the problem that a the terrain
is completely different, right, it is literally vertical, and if
you have soldiers that are climbing over there, they are

(22:48):
literally in contact with the enemy. There have been such instances.
I remember this was Brigaded Career pass unit. I think
he was the five para officer just recently retired. He
called fire upon himself because they were in so such
close contact with the enemy that this was a risk
that they were you know, prepared to take, extremely risky,
you know, calling fire upon yourself when you're literally in

(23:10):
contact with the enemy. You could be killed by that.
But I think they decided that it was you know,
it was well worth the risk to capture those features
that they had to. So this is again, you know,
we've not studied this war enough in a way that
maybe other countries would have. You know, again, it comes
back down to this thing of Indians not studying their
own wars, you know, a way that other countries would,

(23:34):
because we fought the kind of wars again that many
people haven't ever fought, you know, whether it's nineteen seventy one,
the diverse Terian that it was fought on or in Cargill.
This very unique you know, battle space mountains with sungers,
troops embedded over there, your infantry climbing utterery, duels across

(23:57):
the lac, you know, those those kinds of things, very
very unusual conditions. So if you have your own artillery,
you have your own supply chain, you have your own ammunition,
then you're in a much better position. And I think
that was one of the biggest lessons that the Indian
Army learned after Cargil, And I think it's digs like
General Shanka and his colleagues who actually did a lot

(24:20):
of things in the last twenty five years to actually
make us at maneuver in artillery. And today we are
where we are twenty six years later. This is one
of the most astounding successes of Athmanerbata. If you can
call it indigenization, and it has been Indian Artillery's It
is outstanding the way we've been able to indigenize not

(24:42):
just the guns, gun making, every aspect of gun making,
you know, from forging, casting, making barrels to you know,
building ammunition of all kinds, weapon locating radars, command and
control systems suck. The command and control system that's used
to direct artillery fire to the gun tractors the trucks, everything, fuses, everything.

(25:07):
Something like eighty to ninety percent of our artlery requirements
are indigenous. I spoke to a friend of mine who
was in one of the commands recently and he said,
you know, they had an exercise a couple of months back,
and he said, you know, for me, the biggest learning
was that, after so many years, it was the ammunition.
He says, that's something like ninety percent of the ammunition

(25:29):
that we used for this exercise was all made in India.
And this was a huge change over the last two decades.
Right earlier, you would always depend that, oh, you know,
I've run out of ammunition, avenue to buy it from
here or there. I have to import amition, I have
to import fuses. But today, he says, the biggest changes
been the fact that close to ninety percent of our
artillery he's made in India. And it's except for very

(25:51):
specialized you know, platforms like you know, helicopter gunships and
all that which needs certain specialized ammunition. The rest of
it is all made in the bulk of the the
you know, one hundred and fifty five mm guns for instance,
The fuses and the charges and all made so yeah,
two lack fifty.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Thousand shells is what the Channel says were fired during
the war in a period of around around ten to
fifteen days.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Well, yeah, it's a quarter of a million.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
It's a lot, a lot of shells and I think
around nine thousand of them just on the famous Tiger
hillth I think, which a lot of people connect with. Right,
we will move to now about what India has done
since what you kind of briefly refer to. But we'll
go into a bit of detail there and also talk
about the attacks separately. But before that, one quick point

(26:38):
on the buffors. So, like I said, much malign when
you talk to people in the army, when you talk
to people in the Artilly, whether they are retired, whether
they serve during Cargale, or whether they are in service
right now, how do they see that episode they see
that that part of you know the because the thing is,
you know, military offices by the very nature will not
comment on something that's political, that's controversial. But they are

(27:01):
the ones using it. They are the ones who know
what that gun is all about. Yeah, is it disheartening
for them that? You know, most people when you say
beauforts in stilly think corruption and corruption, corruption, ca but
I don't really know about the value.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Of the gun. Yeah, well, you know, it's really important.
They we are to first talk about what the Beaufort
scandal was really Yeah, it's and why it would frighten
one political party the way it did. Narajiv Gandi comes
to power in nineteen eighty four in the biggest mandate
ever seen in independent India's history. Right, four hundred plus

(27:35):
seats four one four I think is four zero four,
which became four one four, more than four hundred seats.
No political party has ever got four hundred seats. Now
that was nineteen eighty four. Nineteen eighty seven, you have
the Beauforre scandal which breaks out, which is India has
bought in nineteen eighty six four hundred and ten uh
Beaufort's guns from Sweden ab Beffors of Sweden, and in

(27:59):
nineteen eighty seven in Swedish radio reports that kickbacks were paid.
Bribes were paid in this deal, despite the fact that
there was an explicit understanding the two countries that no
bribes would paid, no kickbacks would be paid. Now we
had a very brave journalist there Chitrasubramanium who exposed this.
She was writing for The Hindu and later the Indian Express,

(28:20):
where she exposed the fact that bribes were indeed paid,
and she did the kind of investigations that no journalist
in India has ever done in independent India's history, where
they actually established money trails, money going from beauforts to
certain agents who were close to the Government of India,
which established that money had been paid. The opposition picked

(28:42):
it up. There was a big scandal. There were all
kinds of slogans that were made around this corruption scandal
of the beauforcing. And five years later, that's nineteen eighty nine,
you had the Congress party voted out of power from
four hundred seats. It came to less than three hundred seats.
It was two hundred plus seats, but it had to
sit in the opposition. So the Congress has never got

(29:05):
an electoral majority since nineteen eighty four. Right, So that
cite them the fact that one corruption scandal, which was true,
by the way, there was money paid. We still don't
know who received the money. There is a lot of speculation.
If you ask you the as Bromini, she will tell
you not in as many words, who got the money,

(29:26):
money was paid, But the fact is it do was
a very good gun. And this is what worries the
Indian Army, the Indian armed forces that you take political calls,
the Indian Army selects a weapon or the Navy selects
a particular platform, the government imports it, bribes are paid,

(29:46):
and then the government gets paralysis when it comes to
ordering more or you know, doing a transfer of technology
or some agreement with that. And we sort of no, no,
we are not going to deal with these guys, little
realizing that the market for these specialized system is very limited.
It's just a few companies, two or three. If you
start blacklisting companies like we did post the Beffors deal

(30:08):
and the HDW Submary dealers, the other guys are going
to charge your premium, right. And there's only one antidote
to this, which is what we've now injected ourselves. That
antidote is in digitization, which was never thought of in
the eighties because you know, even when we went into
Kargil in nineteen ninety nine, we went in with imported guns.

(30:30):
The one hundred and thirty mm it's an imported Soviet
howitzer the one hundred and fifty five mm. It's an
imported Beaufort's gun. You are at the mercy of foreign suppliers.
You're at the mercy of Beauforts. You're the mercy of
the Russians, You're the mercy of the Israelies, or the
mercy of the South Africans. I mean, what a terrible
situation to be. You can't fight your own wars, you
don't have your own equipment. And I think that was

(30:51):
a big wake up call that a lot of the
officers got, especially the artillery corps like General Shanka, that look,
we need to have our own guns, we need to
build our own how it'ss and how they maneuvered around
the political reluctance to do business with Beaufors. There was

(31:12):
a lot of, you know, competitions where Beaufors would again
emerge the l one and the only bidder, and the
covernment said, oh, no, no, no, anyone but Beauforts. We
can't do business with them. And you know, so then
the artillery said, okay, fine, there are those blueprints that
we bought from Beaufors. We paid top dollar for those blueprints.
They're still lying in the Ordinance Factory work, why didn't

(31:34):
we take it out and start building guns of our own.
So the deal in eighty six was that it was
for a total of fourteen hundred guns. Right, fifteen hundred
guns if I remember correct, yea four hundred and ten
would be bought off the shelf from Beauforce. The remainder
one one hundred guns would be built in India through

(31:55):
trans sort of technology. We bought the four hundred and
ten guns, and we forgot about the Tooti part, that
the technology had already been transferred. The blueprints were already
with us. We didn't know anything about it. So the
Army said, let's find those blueprints, let's start making the gun.
So in twenty ten, which is fifteen years ago, you
saw projects like the Dunush, you know, taking shape where

(32:16):
Ordnance Factory went reached in they started building the old
before is gun rebuilding, you know, guns based on the before.
So that's how you have the Dunush coming out. And
you know this is again it reinforces the point that
if you don't have your own systems, if you don't
have your own indigenous products, if you can't service them
in the country, if you can't build your own supply chains.

(32:38):
If you can't provide ammunition for them, you can't fight
a war. It's as simple as that. Then what the
only kind of war you will be able to fight
is going to be decided by how much of stocking
you've done of either the parts, the components, or the
ammunition imported weapons. That is, then you will have foreign

(32:59):
gun trees saying oh, we have supply chain issues. We
can't supply you jet engines, We can't supply you helicopter gunships.
Where have you heard that before? Finally three have come though, Yeah, yeah,
well thank you, thank you for those three fifteen months later.
It's almost like we got got them for free, you know,

(33:20):
and it's like we can't give you.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
The parties I think are a topic for another episode. Yes,
I have lots of questions there, especially questions like why
does both the r and the Air Force have them?
But again you gave them for a different episode. All right,
we'll talk more about what you were just talking about
describing right now.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
But after a quickly.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
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diabetes management while stopping yourself from eating that chocolate pudding
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(34:06):
with me what nutrients diabetics should be having and how
to supplement your diet for your long term well being.
You can catch the episode on our website, YouTube, Apple, Spotify,
and other audio streaming platforms.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Welcome back. Something before the break you kind of to
spoke about. What I wanted to ask you actually is
what have we done since the cardial war in terms
of portulity? So let's kipt that question and instead ask
you describe how we've done it. Because on this podcast
on previous seasons as well as on the season with you,

(34:49):
Pop focus has been how at many times we've tried
to develop things on our own but have not been
able to for various reasons. There are some projects that
stand up. One of them was Brummers. They're not technically
fully Indian, but still it's one of those, you know, sorry,
one of the projects you can be proud of when
it comes to how you've gone about developing and building it,

(35:11):
et cetera. Nuclear subs is something else that comes to
my mind. This actually is also one of the success stories.
And it's very surprising because I honestly did not know
much about it. It's only when I started researching deeply
for this episode when I was a bit taken of
as like, whoa, you know, we've done some good stuff,
So tell us how did we end up on this journey?

(35:32):
What went right when it comes to you know, making
your own art, lady guns? And why have we not
really seen a lot of conversation on this right, Well,
you know.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
I think it's been one of those slow burners, right,
It's happened over a period of time. Your capabilities, capacities
can be created overnight, and the story of Indian artillery
is actually something that's unfolded over a quarter of a century,
twenty five years. Right, So when you're talking of the
realization in Cargill that look, artillery is really important because

(36:05):
it saved the day for us. If we didn't have
the kind of artillery we did, we wouldn't have been
able to inflict the kind of damage that we did
back then, just the way Opsindur would have been very
different if we didn't have the BrahMos missiles. Right. We've
discussed that in the past. But what happened is that
in the nineties the Indian Army realized that they needed

(36:25):
to upgrade their artillery. We had all kinds of artller
one hundred and five and one point thirty. This new
one one hundred and fifty five was coming in, so
they decided to go in for the mediumization of artillery.
I'm not surprised by the which is that, you know,
to go for a larger number of regiments with one
hundred and fifty five mm. Yeah, standardized on the one

(36:46):
five five mm. So they projected a requirement of something
at twenty eight hundred guns, which they wanted to acquire
over progressively by the twenty twenties. Right. That's also running late.
By the way, we're in twenty twenty five, we're still
not there yet. The new deadline is two zero three five,
which is another decade. But the idea was to go

(37:06):
in for a huge mediumization of the Indian artillery, and
they projected the requirement for five different types of guns.
So the first one, of course, was going to be
the towed guns like the F seventy seven Beforce, which
means that the gun has to be literally towed by
another vehicle. The other one was a tracked howitzer, which
is a tank with a howitzer on it, which is

(37:29):
the Canine Maaja, the ultra light howitzer, which is a
very light howitzer that can be literally picked up by
a helicopter and carried into battles. It weighs just about
less than ten tons, so it can be carried underslung
by a chinook. Then the mounted gun system which is
basically a six by six vehicle and with one hundred

(37:50):
and fifty five mm gun on it. And then of
course the wheeled this would have a mounted gun would
be on a truck and you'd have a wheel APC
with a gun. So the last one has now been deleted.
I don't think they want realed APCs with one hundred
and fifty five mm guns. They've gone in for all
of these other, you know, acquisitions. Now. I remember writing

(38:13):
this story for India Today magazine about fifteen years back,
where I was looking at all the categories, these five
categories that we had drawn up, and believe it or not,
every single one of those categories was an import right
and I could see the foreign arms firms literally salivating
at the prospect of this twenty billion dollars or so

(38:36):
worth of guns that we were planning to buy over
twenty years. Right, it was all imports, it was all
foreign companies, it was South African companies, it was of
course Swedish companies, British companies, all of those. So now
you know, fifteen years after that story from twenty ten,
I'm looking at twenty twenty five. We have imported a

(38:57):
few ultra light howitzers from the Americans as Uls one, five, five,
thirty nine ultra light howitzers, the Cana and Wajarab. But
that's a different story. That's actually Lent has converted that
into a from South Korea. Yeah, from South Korea, but
they've made it into a very you know, it's like
sixty percent indigenous, fifty to sixty percent indigenous. A lot

(39:17):
of it is made in countries, so that's a different
kind of thing. But the rest of the categories, the
toad guns, for instance, all Indian companies are that you
have so many Indian companies that you have barath Forge,
which is several categories of howitzers. You have the Erstwhile
Ordnance Factory Board that's making them like the Dhanush for instance.

(39:38):
You have the Atax which is made by Tatas and
by Barath Forge or another toad gun system. And then
the most interesting contest now is for the mounted gun system,
where again you have a lot of Indian companies in
the free so, you know, twenty six years after Cargill
today it's a bonanza for indigenous howitzer manufacturers, like you

(39:59):
have literally end to end capacities to build howitzer's not
just towed or tracked but mounted gun systems, ultra a
light howitzers. Even so, you have Indian companies that have
really stepped up, They've made investments. The most outstanding example
of that was mister Barbara Khaliani of Mahrat Forge. He

(40:20):
went out there twenty years back to a Swiss company
called RWAK that was going bust and he bought their
entire gun line and he you know, shipped it to
Pune log stock and barrel because he believed that, you know,
you needed to make your own guns. And this is
something that if you look at it in history also
the battles in India have been decided by artillery. It's

(40:44):
not just Cargill right right from the Battle of Pani,
but that Barber fought in the sixteenth century, Ibrahim Lothi's
army was scattered because Barber used the first cannons in conflict,
right he could. You know, of course Barber's army was
better organized. They were you know, much more maneuverable their cavalry.

(41:05):
But they are also artillery, which was a game changer
in that sense. So every time artillery has been used
in Indian contexts, you know, the armies have literally collapsed
and fled. And I think this was a lesson that
later Indian rulers also learned to seek empire. They had
very good artillery Manata Empire. Of course they had very
good artlery as well, but of course they were bested

(41:27):
by the British. Were also invested in good artillery, cavalry,
use native infantry and all that. That's a long story.
Short story is that unless you have your own artillery,
indigenous artillery, you don't master your own artillery, right from
your metallurgy to ammunition production, fused manufacturing and command and
control system, you're going to be bested by our adversary.

(41:49):
And I think that lesson has been learned. And you
have so many companies today in the Fray, and you know,
one of the most amazing things that I saw is
when I visited the BARATFDGE planned a couple of months
back last year, I saw this row of four x
four heavy armored vehicles with one hundred and fifty five

(42:10):
mm guns, all for Armenia. Yeah, ready off the production
line in Armenian colors and they were being shipped over there.
So that's where we are today. We are not just
making artillery for our Indian arm forces, but we're exporting
them as well. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
So you know, Santhi, if we say thats was the
X factor in the Cargio War, helping India in the conflict,
what would you say was the X factor in ensuring
that the story that you just told us turned out
the way it did. Because what you've described is something
you've discussed previously in terms of, like theoretically speaking, this
is the textbook example of how you go about developing

(42:47):
a defense piece of defense equipment when you want to
do it on your own. This is a good example.
You know, all the private sector, have your government labs
to sort of design it, get the customer, the army
in this case, on board with the design, ending with
the testing. In terms of the requirements, et cetera. Asked
the customer to be, you know, be practical about the
requirement requirements that they have. So okay, good to know

(43:09):
that everything turned out turned out so well. But what
was that X factor? Was it officers like General Chanker
or was it something else?

Speaker 3 (43:16):
What was the exactor? No, you're absolutely right, they good question,
and actually the X factor there was they were the officers,
the artillery regiment officers, incuring General Schunker, General and John,
all of these officers who were DG's and who were
all in artillery, in the artillery director's procurements. They actually

(43:39):
put their heads together and said that we must push
for these cases irrespective of who comes who becomes DG.
We should ensure that a case, you know, you know,
our acquisition cycle seven years, ten years, fifteen years, I
mean they go on forever longer than the tenure of
a DG a director General of artillery. So thing what

(44:00):
the degas did was that they ensured that cases that
were handed to them by their predecessors were pushed through irrespective.
They never got these big inspirations for should I say it,
multi caliber art level or stuff like that. They said,
let's just go with what the case that has been initiated.

(44:21):
We just follow that line and five six years down
the line, we're going to see that case through. And
that's exactly what's happened. And this has been the case
from the twenty tents until twenty twenty five. Now you
see we're very good on artillery. If you do a
quick assessment of all the arms of the Army, weather

(44:44):
it's the infantry, the armored cores, or the army Air
defense or the art you will see the artillery is
possibly the best resource of all because they have followed
that one line that was set and they've gone, you know,
after the procurements, and they've ensured that they've got it.
Uh and when they absorbed that technology, they've ordered more

(45:06):
of them. So the PINAC, for instance, outstanding success. Indigenous.
The entire system is indigenous, right. It's one of the
very few platforms systems that you can, you know, sell
to a second country without taking permissions from a third country,
entirely Indian. So this kind of understanding was very important

(45:28):
in the directorateor of Artillery.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
That's a very good point actually, and because I think
it's very a lot of people don't realize and it's
very difficult also wrap your heads around the fact that
when it comes to things like these, they take decades,
you know, when it's whether it's submarines, whether it's fighter jets,
whether it's you know, guns, helicopters, guns chips, they take decades.
So ten years of chiefs, whether they are of the

(45:52):
services or whether they are of departments within those services,
they are three four five years max.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
You know. And there's my dear friend and Ragabas who
keeps telling me this. He's an ex armored core officer,
and he keeps saying that, you know, the key to
all of this is good staff work, you know, and
that is where it really uh matters because officers whore
sitting and making those cases have to put all these
factors into mind to you know, research ensure that you

(46:22):
know exactly like you said, because these cases have huge
ramifications down the line. You go for something as bizarre
as a multi caliber rifle, you know, no, I mean,
the world has it. It's just going to get thrown
out either you won't find developers or you know you
it will be unviable for you to you know, buy
that system. So do tried go with the tried and

(46:46):
tested with of course some technology, you know elements. So
staff work is really important in such cases, and that's
where I think the Regiment of Artillery has been very
well served in these respects.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, I mean it's a dominant effect, dombly effect, right,
because I mean we can sit here and make fun
of the Air Force for having you know, all these
different fighters from different countries, but you have to realize
that you can't. The current Air Force tam for example,
is really in a bad spot because that's happened over
years of you know, lack of co ordination, let's say,
so you know, stuff like this. I think it's also

(47:19):
very important to scads down. Yeah, it's very important for
the team to sort of get together because it's not
about what I'm doing in my tenure. It's also about
what my juniors are thinking about that. Now, are they
on board? Because tomorrow they are the ones who are
going to be taking that forward, right all right? So
I want to talk about the ATTAX very briefly now

(47:40):
because they are in use. The sort of the system
is in use, advanced toward artillery guns system, like we said,
seven thousand core order has been placed Tata Advanced Systems
Limited and Barat Poge will be manufacturing this this gun.
It has been made developed by the DRDO. It's a
twelve year project. Tell us a bit about this gun specifically,

(48:00):
this this particular gun.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
What is it? What is it? What like?

Speaker 2 (48:04):
What do you think of? Think of it in terms
of the kind of artillery that we have? Is it
the best that they're going to get? And one nugget
and a slight tangent is one of the things that's
been attributed to it is shoot and scoot. Now, an
artillery gun does not look like something that can scoot
to me, So when you use it in the context
of an artleertic and what does that mean exactly?

Speaker 3 (48:24):
Well, shoot and scoot is something that is popularized by
the FS seventy seven before when it came it was
one of its USBs where they said that look, Pakistan
had started requiring counter battery radars ANTIPQ thirty sevens if
I remember correctly from the U from the US. Its
counter batteries is basically a radar that analyzes the tragictory

(48:44):
of a shell, okay, and which tells you with very
great accuracy what where that originated? From the exact position
that that particularly round was fired from, and which means
that you could fire, you know, counter battery fire destroying
the gun that fired that thing. So now the idea
of shoot and scoot was that the gun, after having
fired a salvo of artllery rounds, would then immediately change

(49:09):
its position. It had an APU on board, an auxiliary
power unit which could move it to you know, a
certain distance away from this incoming counter battery fire. So
that was the main objective of making these toad guns.
While the gun itself is towed, there would be because
of this APU, it would have a certain movement. It
could move around, and I've seen that the attackses. It's

(49:32):
beautiful in that sense that it's it's like a little van,
you know, you can actually drive the thing and it
can move around. It can you know, lay a position
as opposed to the conventional toad artillery like the Soviet
suppli at one thirty mm very good field artillery thing.
But it's it's a dumb thing. It's it's just you
have to lay it manually, and you know, you have

(49:54):
to then align it, you know, and fire it. But
this is a gun which is a bit it's like
an armored vehicle of sorts. You know, it kind of
spins on a dime. It moves around, it can move
away sideways like a crab. You know, it's got this
very interesting movement. So that's the F seventy seven B
technology which they kind of brought into the ATTAGS as well.

(50:16):
The advance towed at a gun system which the Dadio
design incidentia. I think they began designing it in two
thousand and seven and they had their first firing prototypes
in the twenty fourteen fifteen or sixteen or something like that.
So it went from the drawing board to the to
the firing line in a matter of years. I think

(50:38):
it was just about five six years. So the joke
about the ATAGS is that it's actually spent more time
in the bureaucracy for getting that order which you just mentioned,
than in the actual research and development and trials pace.
Because the Army had some reservations with the gun about
the weight of the gun. It was something like twenty tons.

(51:01):
They said, look, it's too heavy to be towed with
the gun tractor. It would be more than you know,
twenty five tons. Bridges can't take that kind of weight
and all that in the forward areas, it's unwieldy. So
a lot of those reasons came up in this Atas acquisition.
And now the Army has decided to buy a couple

(51:22):
of one hundred of those attacks guns, but that is
not going to be the future Toad artillery that they're
looking at a gun which is around fifteen tons or so,
which is a lighter toad artillery, which they will buy
in the thousands at tags will be bought in the hundreds,
but the future Toad arre Toad gun system will be
bought in the thousands. So that is the last, the

(51:45):
final piece of the jigsaw that remains to be fulfilled.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah, right, final point then, and a quick one. So
then is that it Have you reached the end of
artillery development? Because I know to someone like me, this
technology seems to have saturated. I mean, yeah, that's it right.
It's basically a gun that fires around either in a
parabolic route or in like we did with our modifications

(52:09):
and direct fire.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
What more can do with it?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
So is that it or are there anations happening in
this field?

Speaker 3 (52:15):
No? So, okay, that's that's a good question there. Now,
I think The consensus among developers is that, you know,
utlery has reached physical limits when it comes to the
barrel and the chamber and all of that, and now
what you need to do is to have ammunition stepping

(52:35):
up and taking over where the ammunition itself becomes something
like a guided projectile. Now you're already seeing some of that,
like the Excalibur round that was used in obs indor
some of those terrorist launch pads were neutralized using Excalibur
rounds fired from the M Triple seven. The Excalibur is
a smart ammunition round. It's one hundred and fifty five

(52:58):
mm shell, but it's got PS initial navigation which brings
it bang onto the target. So it's like a smart missile,
but it's fired from artillery tube. So you're going to
be looking at changes in the shell itself. You're going
to be looking at hypersonic projectiles being fired out of
conventional artillery, uh, you know guns. And this is where

(53:22):
ramjet propelled rounds are going to be interesting. So I've
seen some of those conceptual, you know pieces the the
audio is working on it. General Rubbishunka incidentally is working
on it with the I T. Madras and they promise
some breakthroughs on it. It's under you know, testing in
it's in the testing phase. It's very hush hush right now.
It's going to come out in a year or two.

(53:43):
But what it looks like the shell, I've seen it.
It looks like a mini Bramose missile, right. The Bromos
also is a ramject missile. Right. So here they've made
the shell itself into a missile of sorts, which which
is an air breathing round and which is able to
go at very high speeds to very long ranges. So

(54:05):
if you're looking at an a tags which can fire
a shell to about forty kilometers plus forty forty five kilometers,
Ramjet rounds could go to over one hundred kilometers. Right.
So while your guns and you know, the barrels and
the breaches have reached the limit of their development, it's
the shells that are now going to take the charge.

(54:26):
And the same one five five mm arttererly around, you
know gun is going to be able to fire shells
of very very long ranges or one hundred and fifty
and two hundred kilometers. Even so, now all the advancements,
all the research, all the technology is going into those shells.
So you have those, the one hundred and fifty five,
the humble one hundred and fifty five. A minute shell

(54:49):
ten fifteen years from now is going to look very
different from all it is today.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Right right, very interesting? Great then, thanks and deep fantastic
chatter has always great. Insights are loved this comas. Thank
you and thanks to our listeners and ers. That's it
for this week's Defense Toes. For more, tune in next week.
Till then, stay safe and do not cross any boundaries
for their passport by