Revisiting the Option of Common Army-navy Weapons

Now that the government has given its nod to start tri-service combat operations, VICE ADMIRAL PRADEEP CHAUHAN argues the need to pursue weaponcommonality between the Armed Forces in general and the Army and the Navy in particular.

- Pradeep Chauhan

With New Delhi finally giving its long awaited green signal for the commencement of tri-service combat operations, the Joint ‘Army-Navy’ amphibious raid finally gets underway.... The Navy’s Landing Ships commence their approach, crammed with the landing echelon of infantry troops of the Army, many of whom are examining and re-examining their recently inducted hybrid 5.56/7.62 calibre rifles — small arms that are common to both Services and hence eminently familiar to the sailors providing the troops with much needed reassurance and occasional weapon-replacement and ammunition-augmentation.... Some 65-km (35 nautical miles) from the enemy shore, warships specifically designed for littoral warfare and optimised for amphibioussupport operations commence ‘softening’ the designated four-kilometres of enemy beach by firing a succession of 45-second salvos of their recently retrofitted Extended-Range ‘guided’ Pinaka rockets — another deadly indigenous contribution from the common ArmyNavy weapon-repertoire, complementing the 20-odd Pinaka regiments of the Indian Army’s Corps of Artillery.... Farther to seawards, close-in protection to the Navy’s compact but deadly Fast Amphibious Task Force is provided by blue water combatants equipped with Barak ER [Extended Range] — a.k.a. Barak-8 — missiles, once again common to the inventories of all three Indian Defence Services... A stranger sight aboard some of the older of these large, blue water combatants is that of the ship’s main gun, which is a 155 mm (6-inch) howitzer, common to the Indian Army — an indigenous progression over the German Navy’s MONARC experiment of 2003, which featured a German Army PzH 2000 howitzer aboard the German Navy’s Sachsen Class frigate, the