Jabalpur, April 8: India's first indigenously designed and developed Dhanush artillery gun was inducted in the Indian Army during a ceremony held at Ordnance Factory Jabalpur on Monday. Six Dhanush guns have been handed over to the Indian Army in a ceremony today. The design is based on the Bofors Haubits FH77 which India acquired in the 1980s.
The Government of India hands over the first batch of six 155 mm X 45 Calibre “Dhanush”, new generation towed artillery gun with major upgraded features, to Army at Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur on 08 Apr 2019. Make in India in Defence achieved 81% of indigenization & likely to be 91% by end 2019.
The gun is equipped with an inertial navigation-based sighting system, auto-laying facility, onboard ballistic computation and an advanced day and night direct firing system.
The Army had placed an order for more than 110 of these guns with the Ordnance Factory. The howitzer will help the force to modernise its artillery which had been awaiting induction for over three decades till some time ago.
https://twitter.com/SpokespersonMoD/status/1115188266632765440
The initial indigenous development of artillery guns in India started in the 1970s with the Artillery Gun Development Team under Brigadier Gurdyal Singh at Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur. This resulted in the introduction of 105mm artillery guns into the Indian Army.
This gun is mounted on an 8x8 Tatra truck license manufactured by Bharat Earth Movers Limited, BEML and has a 30 km per hour cross country speed and 80 km per hour road speed.
The gun completed development trials in 2018 and was approved for series production in 2019. Indian Army has ordered 114 guns and the total order size could increase to 414 guns.