“Steps To Give The Right Impetus To Private Industry Must Continue”

RAJINDER SINGH BHATIA, President and CEO (Defence & Aerospace) of Bharat Forge Ltd speaks to Geopolitics on its plans and programmes

- Rajinder Singh Bhatia

What is on the order book and pipeline for the defence and aerospace arms of Kalyani Group?

Despite the growing impetus on building a robust indigenous defence production landscape, the private sector has not been awarded many major platform-level orders from MoD.

Kalyani Group is participating in land platform segment programmes worth $3-4 bn for the Indian Armed forces. A majority of these programmes are at various stages of procurement by the customer: under trials, development, etc. Once in production, they will steer Kalyani Group to be the market leader in the segment. Even so, BFL is already executing medium-level MoD orders like Dual Technology Mine Detectors, export orders for Armoured Troop Carrier, Ammunition, etc. We are also engaged with OFB and HAL in meeting their component and sub-system level requirements. With growing impetus on ‘Make in India’ in defence, we expect significant rise in our exposure to DPSUs in near future.

What is the progress of the Kalyani Group artillery offerings for the Indian Army and the results of the test firings of the two artillery pieces at Pokhran and the following winter trials?

Kalyani Group is an end-to-end solution provider for artillery systems. Its fully indigenous product profile includes a series of 155/52/45/39 and 105/37 guns. Our guns have performed extremely well in all their evaluation trials. During the firing trials at Pokhran Ranges, the ATAGS variant developed by Kalyani Group, set a new record by registering the longest-ever distance of 48.074 kms, surpassing the maximum ranges of 35-40 kms fired by any artillery gun system in this category. The winter trials of the gun have also been a resounding success.

What is the role of Kalyani Group in the design and development of the 155mm ATAGS artillery gun and attendant design challenges?