TSAMTO, February 3. Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) and the Indian Army Command have signed a major contract for the production and supply of an additional batch of ATGM "Competition-M".
According to the Times of India, the contract is worth $31.31 billion. Rupees ($418.6 million) was signed in New Delhi on February 2 and is designed for three years. Other details of the contract are still unknown.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of BDL, Commodore (retired) Siddhartha Mishra, ATGM "Konkurs-M" is produced by BDL under a license agreement with the Russian manufacturer of original equipment - Tula JSC "Instrument Design Bureau named after academician A.G.Shipunov".
ATGM production is maximally localized. Since 2008, BDL has already produced about 25 thousand. ATGM "Competition-M" for SV India. BDL also offers Konkurs-M missiles for export.
As previously reported by TSAMTO, the previous contract was worth 7.6 billion. Rupees ($108 million) for the production under license of an unspecified number of the Konkurs-M ATGM and missiles to them were signed by BDL and SV of India on January 8, 2019. As the company reported at the time, the missiles and launchers will be produced with constant technical cooperation with the Russian side by the BDL Bhanur division in Telangana state.
This contract was considered as a temporary solution to the problem of meeting the requirements of the Indian Army for the purchase of 68,000 ATGM and more than 2,000 launchers to equip 360 infantry and 44 motorized infantry battalions.
The conclusion of the contract was also associated with the cancellation of a deal worth about $1 billion in early 2018. with the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for the supply of 275 Spike ATGMS and 5,500 missiles to them after almost 9 years of consultations, tests and negotiations on the cost of the project.
The currently produced BDL version of the "Competition-M" is a 9K111-1M complex (AT-5B "Spandrel-B" according to the NATO classification) with a 9M113 anti-tank missile and a 9P135M-1 launcher.
The missile has a firing range from 75 to 4000 m (3500 m in night (passive) mode), the flight time for the maximum range is 19 seconds. The original ATGM 9M113 with a single-shot warhead is capable of piercing 600 mm of rolled homogeneous armor, the armor penetration of the tandem version of the ATGM is 750-800 mm.
