IDD Bureau
The Indian Army has successfully fired two newly acquired Spike LR anti-tank missiles at the Infantry School at Mhow, Madhya Pradesh.
The missiles from Israel have recently been inducted into the Army to fill in a void. The firing was witnessed by the top hierarchy of the Indian Army.
Spike LR is a 4th Generation missile, which can engage a target with precision at ranges up to 4 kms. In addition to fire and forget capability, the missile also has the ability to fire, observe and update, providing substantial flexibility to the firer to pinpoint the impact point, as also the ability to switch to a different target mid-flight.
The missile has an inbuilt seeker, which gives the flexibility to use any of two modes: Day or Night. The dual seeker adds to the missile’s reliability, already established at more than 90% during the field evaluation by the Indian Army in 2011. As of date, more than 5000 Spike missiles have been fired so far worldwide, with the overall hit percentage being more than 95%.
Since the induction and training, this was the first time that Indian Army soldiers carried out practice firing of the missile.
Firing was done with targets looking into the sun with CCD, and firing with IIR without any heating of the target, using only the ambient temperature difference. All missiles successfully engaged the target.
The local partners of Israel: It is interesting to note that the manufacturer of the Spike missile, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems from Israel, has established a joint venture with the Kalyani Group in India. The Joint venture is capable of manufacturing Spike missiles in India, and will also look at export opportunities from India.
The history of the ATGM: For the last nearly three decades, the Indian Army has been using second generation missiles. The need to replace the inventory with 3rd generation missiles was recognized nearly ten years back. Consequently, in 2011, an Request for proposal (RFP) was floated for more than 8000 missiles with Transfer of Technology to Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL). The Spike missile was the only one to qualify after going through the Indian procurement process, and the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) even completed the negotiation in 2016.
The programme, however, did not see the light of the day as the Government decided in favour of indigenous development by the DRDO. The DRDO project will take a long time for it to reach the user in the field. To overcome this critical capability void, the Indian Army procured a limited quantity of Spike LR missiles, so as to meet the urgent operational requirement.
India has became the 33rd country to have the Spike missile as part of its inventory. With the confidence in the Spike missile established, the Indian Army may need to revisit its plans for 3rd Gen missiles. Both the DRDO ATGM programme, as well as the invitation to Indian industry to develop a 3rd Gen missile will need a rethink, as having a 4th Gen missile will put the plan for development of a 3rd General missile redundant.
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