Tata, Mahindra and L&T in race to partner gunmaker BAE for howitzers

[Agent_47]

NEW DELHI: A 'Made in India' American gun may finally boom for India's army. And the potential list of Indian companies as partners of American defence major BAE includes India Inc blue chips Tata, L&T and Mahindra.

The government will soon take a call on a fresh army proposal on acquiring BAE's M777 Howitzer after the American company offered to shift the manufacturing and testing facility from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to India. The deal size is around $700 million.

BAE's howitzer was first considered in 2008 by the UPA regime but the idea was buried in 2013 thanks to differences over price and offset commitments.

The current 'Make in India' offer from BAE is set to come up for approval before the Defence Acquisition Committee (DAC), said senior defence ministry officials familiar with the matter. They spoke to ET on the condition they not be identified.

The Defence Acquisition Committee (DAC) is headed by the defence minister and its recommendations go straight to the Cabinet Committee on Security, the final arbiter on defence purchases.BAE has now offered to set up an assembly, integration and testing facility with the help of an Indian partner; and is looking at a potential investment of over $200 million. BAE's offer includes not only manufacturing for the army but also shifting its export orders that come from the Middle East,South America and Europe.
Defence ministry officials said the army has asked that the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) option be revived for BAE's gun and that a fresh Letter of Offer and Acceptance be floated to Washington.

FMS means a government-to-government deal with the US, where Washington guarantees delivery and the best price.

The army, which is in dire need of new artillery guns, has requested an initial quantity of 145 ultralight howitzers — a number that could increase. The M777 project was first mooted in 2008. The US approved it in 2009. The gun was tested and found entirely satisfactory by the army. But in 2013, differences between India and the US led to a stalemate.Officials said while BAE's new proposals on offset may be found acceptable, there may still be issues on the price. The price offered to the UPA g ..

Read more at:
Make in India: Tata, Mahindra and Larsen & Toubro in race to partner gunmaker BAE for howitzers - The Economic Times

 

[Abingdonboy]

This is BIG news, M777 made in India by a private player- heck yes!!


Fingers crossed this goes to L&T or TATA.


IF the MoD/GoI pull this off this will be a MAJOR win for them (and they have failed to deliver on many fronts thus far).

@sancho @Dillinger @Koovie @COLDHEARTED AVIATOR @gslv mk3 @levina @Bang Galore @Guynextdoor2 @Water Car Engineer @kurup @janon @Indo-guy @JanjaWeed @special @Unknowncommando @bloo @ito @MilSpec @Oscar @Horus @Agent_47 @IND151 @Stephen Cohen @third eye @RISING SUN @Chanakya's_Chant @The_Sidewinder
@Skull and Bones @OrionHunter @ayesha.a



And please don't anyone bring in the Kayani ULH or any other Indian product, the M777 is easily a decade ahead of anything being proposed by Indian firms and is available now not at some distant point in the future- maybe.

 

[Bang Galore]

I thought that BAE only offered to shift if the numbers increased & if they did shift the whole line here, what exactly would the Indian partner do?

 

[Abingdonboy]

I thought that BAE only offered to shift if the numbers increased & if they did shift the whole line here, what exactly would the Indian partner do?

The Indian partners would be the ones actually building the systems in their plants with BAE oversight and yes, this would imply a FAR larger order than 145 units to make this anywhere near viable.

 

[Ronin]

Sounds too good to be true

 

[sancho]

This is BIG news, M777 made in India by a private player- heck yes!!

Where is the news? We know about this since the last negotiations on the M777, where BAE stated to divert parts of the assembly and production to India, but we know that the gun, which is the most important part, will remain to be produced abroad.
So this is just the expected procedure, to divert the offsets of the deal to Indian players, which makes it not bigger as HAL producing P8I weapon bays. And even if we are going to call it Make in India, it's still based on the procurement procedures implemented under the UPA.

The only good thing is, that it's one small step closer to fix the deal, since the Americans might move a bit on the pending offset problem, but lets see if it passes MoD now. The cost issue still remains to be a problem though, wonder how long the MoD will keep delaying this now, since every months more delay increases the risk to scrap the whole thing again and come up with a new tender as we have seen plenty of times now.

The Indian partners would be the ones actually building the systems in their plants

We are talking about an assembly line here, not a licence production line for M777 howitzers. We build some basic parts here as part of the offests and take a screwdriver and implement it with the things that were send from US production lines

 

[sancho]

Recap:

BAE’s US arm to shift Howitzer assembly here | Page 4


As I said, nothing new, nothing big and nothing unexpected.

 

[The_Sidewinder]

This is BIG news, M777 made in India by a private player- heck yes!!


Fingers crossed this goes to L&T or TATA.


IF the MoD/GoI pull this off this will be a MAJOR win for them (and they have failed to deliver on many fronts thus far).

@sancho @Dillinger @Koovie @COLDHEARTED AVIATOR @gslv mk3 @levina @Bang Galore @Guynextdoor2 @Water Car Engineer @kurup @janon @Indo-guy @JanjaWeed @special @Unknowncommando @bloo @ito @MilSpec @Oscar @Horus @Agent_47 @IND151 @Stephen Cohen @third eye @RISING SUN @Chanakya's_Chant @The_Sidewinder
@Skull and Bones @OrionHunter @ayesha.a



And please don't anyone bring in the Kayani ULH or any other Indian product, the M777 is easily a decade ahead of anything being proposed by Indian firms and is available now not at some distant point in the future- maybe.

I am looking forward to it. I do agree with Sancho about only fullfillment of offset clause by BAE system in the name of Make In India. A larger order is certainly on the cards to reduce the cost of each unit procured. M777 will bring in unprecedented no of capabilities to IA. Specially in LAC, these light weighted howitzers will wrack havoc on incoming infentry formations.Its dacades ahead of what our neighbours can field. Also suits IA's cold start doctrain as it can be airlifted & paradrop at most mountanious regions. Over all our capabilities will multiply with the acquisation. I am as excited as you are.

 

[SwAggeR]

This is actually a very big news , it seems we are heading in right direction.

Modi Sarkar is just about to pull rabbit out of hat.

After a decade long tardiness, something new under this rule. I guess under Congress theses guns were to be procured on FMS route , which involved ZERO offset.


Sorry for polticizing this thread , but I am not the first one in this thread to do sne particular member just hates NDA government.

 

[Echo_419]

This is BIG news, M777 made in India by a private player- heck yes!!


Fingers crossed this goes to L&T or TATA.


IF the MoD/GoI pull this off this will be a MAJOR win for them (and they have failed to deliver on many fronts thus far).

@sancho @Dillinger @Koovie @COLDHEARTED AVIATOR @gslv mk3 @levina @Bang Galore @Guynextdoor2 @Water Car Engineer @kurup @janon @Indo-guy @JanjaWeed @special @Unknowncommando @bloo @ito @MilSpec @Oscar @Horus @Agent_47 @IND151 @Stephen Cohen @third eye @RISING SUN @Chanakya's_Chant @The_Sidewinder
@Skull and Bones @OrionHunter @ayesha.a



And please don't anyone bring in the Kayani ULH or any other Indian product, the M777 is easily a decade ahead of anything being proposed by Indian firms and is available now not at some distant point in the future- maybe.

Great news indeed

 

[sancho]

Sorry for polticizing this thread , but I am not the first one in this thread to do sne particular member just hates NDA government.

If you are refering to me, you are mistaken, since I don't politicize but simply stick to facts and realities. I don't care which party is in power, but what the benefit for the forces is and this deal is going on for too long and the fact is, that there is no difference in it between the different governments. The issues still are offsets and costs and the deal so far is not changed, but still under the terms of that were implemented under the former MoD. No matter if you like it or not, that are the facts, which shouldn't be faked for cheap party politics.

M777 will bring in unprecedented no of capabilities to IA.

No doubt about that, but we need to get it first, our opponents are no waiting for us and have the far faster modernisation pace anyway. The more we delays things like that, the bigger the gap can get and China is popping out light and self propelled howitzers like nothing.

 

[The_Sidewinder]

No doubt about that, but we need to get it first, our opponents are no waiting for us and have the far faster modernisation pace anyway. The more we delays things like that, the bigger the gap can get and China is popping out light and self propelled howitzers like nothing.

Maybe its about time to look long & hard at our defence procurement policy to elemenate bureaucratic loopholes & fast track our purchasing process. Due to lacklaster procurement procedure we always suffer from late induction, cancellations & not forget cost increases in many folds.

 

[sancho]

Maybe its about time to look long & hard at our defence procurement policy to elemenate bureaucratic loopholes & fast track our purchasing process. Due to lacklaster procurement procedure we always suffer from late induction, cancellations & not forget cost increases in many folds.

We do have to keep improve things, but we also have to understand where the problem is and what actually is changing. The issue here is not on our side, but on the US side, since they still have to move to comply to our offset requirements, which Russians, Israelis or European do already. Since the nuclear pact we kept putting pressure on the US to change things, not shortlisting their fighters were even a big wake up call (recent rejection of Javelin ATGMs was another one) for them to understand, that India is not their average export customer. But things are moving slowly at their end, so we have to be patient, while keeping the pressure high. That delays the procurement of course, but is important to get what we want from the US, just as we get it from other countries.

 

[saurav]

No need to be hysterical about this. This production line will be an assembly line. Sub-systems will be made by OEMs and imported by Indian partner who inturn will assemble the guns under supervision of BAE.