India's defense industry has begun to produce its own modernization of the russian T-90 main battle tank: state-owned Armored Vehicles Nigam Limited (AVNL) has delivered the first batch of 10 tanks to the Indian Army, the upgraded units renamed as T-90 Mk-III. Indian government officials claim that these vehicles were manufactured under license from the russian federation, but unlike the original model, the T-90 Mk-III has a different set of vetronics.
Janes elaborates that the upgraded system architecture inside the Indian T-90 Mk-III consists of a new target tracking system, a digital ballistic computer, and an updated aiming system.
Read more: India Has Already Lost the Eleventh Su-30MKI – These russian Aircraft Regularly Crash Down
Separately, interesting details are stated about the commander's sight for the T-90 Mk-III, a joint development by DRDO and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). According to the creators, the sight can detect threats up to 8 kilometers away, day and night; however, the integrated laser rangefinder only works at distances up to 5 kilometers.
The rates of T-90 Mk-III production at Indian factories are worth particular attention. For context, India and russia signed a contract for the production of 464 vehicles of this type in November 2019, and it turns out that it took the Indian manufacturers 3 years and 9 months to deliver the first batch of upgraded tanks since the agreement was signed.
The remaining 454 Mk-III tanks should be delivered within the next 5 years, which gives us an estimate of the average rate of production expected by the Indian defense industry: it will be 91 tanks per year, or up to 10 vehicles monthly.
To summarize, there are two conceptually significant aspects to this news. First is the quite unhasty pace of deployment of T-90 production effectively from scratch, even for India. Second is that the Indian customer discarded all the russian standard electronic equipment that comes with their most advanced serial tank and replaced it with their own integrated systems instead.
Earlier Defense Express talked about another creation by Indian tank maker AVNL, a hybrid of T-72 and T-90 with reduced mobility called Atharva.
Read more: India Creates Strange Hybrid of T-72 and T-90 With Reduced Mobility
