New Delhi, October 3
As the CBI probe into the Denel pay off case has hit the Army’s effort to upgrade artillery fire power, fresh international tenders would be called for the acquisition of upgraded wheeled and tracked 155 mm high calibre howitzers, said the new Vice-Chief of the Army Staff, Lieut-Gen S. Pattabhiraman.
Admitting that the Denel episode had hit the Army’s effort to “upgrade its artillery firepower”, General Pattabhiraman told reporters that along with floating of fresh tenders, retrials would also be held for the bidding armament majors.
Asked if the South African arms manufacturing company would be barred from taking part in fresh trials, he said it was for the government to take decision on that. The Defence Ministry has currently put on hold all deals with the company.
Though officially the Army has 400 of the 39 calibre 155mm Bofors guns in its inventory, according to experts during Kargil crises the Army could muster only 200 of these long-range guns.
While declaring that the current modernisation drive in the Army was progressing satisfactorily, General Pattabhiraman said only upgrading of artillery and special forces had been lagging behind.
He said while manual reorganisation of the special forces was in full swing with more battalions being raised, the emphasis would now be on equipping these forces with special high voltage assault rifles, giving them special night vision devices and sniper rifles.
“A new TAC C3I system has already been tested during war games conducted by the Western Command,” he said. The new system would be further tested during the forthcoming series of war games in the Thar
desert.
On the escalating number of “stress and fatigue” related cases leading to violence among armed forces personnel,
General Pattabhiraman said screening would henceforth be enforced at the unit level to trace out suspicious cases.
“We will now make it mandatory to build up profile at unit level to trace out people who may be more affected by stress syndrome,” he said, adding “we might even go back to traditional regimental basic of briefing and de-briefing of personnel, when they go for leave and return back to duty.”
