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in past during very first 155mm howitzer tender in '80s, British-German-Italian FH-70 was not seen with much faith by the armed forces because the version we were offered didn't have APU on it (later versions have it though), and in compensation, they were willing to provide german MAN towing trucks with each howitzer purchased for no moneyBut the capability addition you have with atags is unmatchable. Hitting 48km with base bleed which will go even further in mountains is worth it to buy towing vehicles capable of towing 18.tons.
Imagine it would hit at 60km (as per former tasl ceo) in high altitudes so it wouldn't be require to deploy that away.
this is just an excuse and how much will a. Truck cost ? Not as much as artillery. And atags doesn't cost as much as m777 you know it's fairly competitive this is just an excuse not a genuine reason. Even the bridge limitation thing comes out true we should still induct atags in good number as we don't have to fight only in mountains.
it's also a thing that FH-70 didn't prove much mettle in trials too, so never got a chance here (also, being a tri-national project)
so mobility is indeed valued by armed forces here, but if they really wanted ~15 tons howitzers, then Bharat-52 is already there, no? oh right, it's made by Baba Kalyani so...
To sums up well who is at fault.
Army gave comic verse requirements with weight limit of 15 tons which isn't possible. That being said if they continued to work along with weight going up means they assured orders as those comic verse features were given priority over weight increase,otherwise program would have been shut down and new system would have been made to meet 15ton requirements that didn't happen.
And now we got 307 orders.
were ok with electric drive & weight increase for this long then why all of sudden realised under 15ton requirement is must if this was must a parallel program to the atags should have been started way back, addressing both comic verse requirements and the weight thing too but that didn't happen either.
So yeah here we are in a limbo our system is dumb asf. Sheer incompetence and nothing and now they want athos like there isn't bharat 52.
forget dhanush if they can't deliver on time.
bhai i personally believe it's metallurgical requirements at design side to tolerate the kind of ammo we use here for our howitzers
do note, that FH-77B offered to us had shown damage to the gun as well as poor range on its standard configuration that we trialled for first time - then Swedish goys repeatedly offered better ammo for it with which it was able to receive ~30 km range on their fork of ERFB ammo - and since it was first time ever we were getting a 155mm NATO howitzer perhaps those kind of ammo got standardised here that required strengthened parts and all? that in turn required more metal on it, making it a heavier thing ?
FH-77B in 155mm / 39 Cal itself was ~13.1 tons heavy, now if we're going to expand on same design with 52 Cal design it's obvious that it'd further go up in mass...
we need some deep inputs about its metallurgical aspects in view with mass/weight to better evaluate it here