Ashok Leyland Revs Up With Lockheed Martin Tie-up

Ashok Leyland, India's third largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, aims to expand its presence in defense transportation far beyond the ubiquitous Stallion and Super Stallion vehicles. The Hinduja group company recently won an order for supply an undisclosed number of Mine Protected Vehicles (MPV) competing against Tata Motors, and has bid to supply Light Specialist Vehicle (LSV) and Light Armoured Multi-purpose Vehicle (LAMV), the former developed in cooperation with Lockheed Martin. AMANDEEP SINGH, Head Defence, Ashok Leyland shares future plans with Geopolitics readers.

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How will your recent tie-up with Lockheed Martin help you to grow your share in the defence vehicles market? How do you intend to make use of the technology that Lockheed will share with you?

The tieup that we have with Lockheed is for Light Specialist vehicles. We didn’t have a presence earlier in this tonnage segment. This opens up for us a large market in India and for exports as requirement for such vehicles with independent suspension, both in armoured and non-armoured versions is increasing. We have achieved very high level of indigenisation on this platform now with weight optimisation in line with Indian Army requirements. Lockheed is already looking at sourcing cost and weight optimised aggregates from us and also looking at Middle East and African markets for vehicle offering.