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April-May 2024
Military 2021 – Yearbook
2022
Volume 21 No. 2
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IN THIS ISSUE PAGE 3 Future of Battlefield Lethality
PHOTOGRAPH: PIB
A look at the latest trends reshaping Land Warfare Munitions Rohit Goel PAGE 4 Indigenous Might on Display
Fortifying India’s Military Might with CuttingEdge Technology Manish Kumar Jha PAGE 5 Army Establishes STEAG Signals Technology Evaluation and Adaptation Group (STEAG) is mandated to nurture technologies spanning the complete spectrum of wired and wireless systems Lt General P.C. Katoch (Retd) PLUS News in Brief
India is on track to achieve significant self-reliance in munitions, with both the private and public sector manufacturers collaborating to ensure a robust supply of ammunition for the armed forces
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APPOINTMENTS Lt General Upendra Dwivedi, assumed the appointment of the Vice Chief of the Army Staff on February 19, 2024. Prior to taking over as the Vice Chief of the Army Staff, Lt General Upendra Dwivedi was tenanting the appointment of General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Northern Command from 2022-2024 in extremely challenging operational environment. Lt General J.S. Sidana, took over as the 33rd Director General of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (DGEME) and Senior Colonel Commandant of the Corps of EME on April 1, 2024. Before his present appointment, he was holding the post of Commandant of Military College of EME for a duration of two years.
Indigenous Ammunition Production Meeting the critical need for ammunition by the Armed Forces requires rapid ramping up of indigenous production MAJOR GENERAL ATANU K. PATTANAIK (RETD)
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HE MOST VITAL LESSON from the Ukraine war, which has entered its third year, is that ammunition stocking and production are critical to a nation’s war fighting resilience. Lack of adequate storage, production capacity and heavy dependence on foreign sources can severely constrain strategic freedom and pose serious challenges in the battlefield.
The Lesson Learned
Barely weeks into the war in February 2022, the European Union states pledged to deliver a million rounds of 155mm ammunition to Ukraine within a year. Two years later, at a critical moment in the war and with Ukraine running short of artillery shells to defend its 1,000 kms long front-
line having already lost nearly 20 per cent of its territory, experts, weapons manufacturers and even some government officials are expressing growing doubts. Europe’s shrunken military sector, they say, may simply be unable to ramp up production fast enough to achieve the million-shell goal. After 30 years of atrophy, experts say, Europe’s shrunken military industry will struggle to provide the Ukrainians with a million artillery shells. Some specifics are in order, to bolster how critical ammunition supply is for Ukraine to sustain its defences. To date, the US has supplied Ukraine with more than 1 million 155mm shells, the NATO-standard artillery shell. The US army is planning to boost the current production rate of about 14,000 155mm howitzer shells per month to 20,000 by this spring and up to 90,000 by 2025. For their part, EU countries have provided Ukraine with about 3,50,000
155mm shells in total. But these deliveries have come at the price of both the US and Europe’s own ammunition supplies. They’ve got to work out how much they’re willing to sacrifice their own stocks and defensive ability in order to help Ukraine. It is estimated that Russian forces fired about 50,000 rounds of artillery each day, compared to about 6,000-7,000 from Ukraine. Western officials estimate that Russia is on track to manufacture two million artillery shells a year, which is twice as many as Western intelligence originally estimated it could make before the war. That gap has to be narrowed down to give a reasonable fight to Russia. Since their production lines were struggling to keep up with the rate at which Ukraine was using ammunition, the US has sent roughly 1.1 million bullets seized from Iran last year from a ship bound for Yemen in December to Ukraine. The US
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