Army Air Defence Procurement

Subject – Defence and Security

Context – Army Air Defence steps up procurement

Concept –

After several delays in its modernisation process, the Army Air Defence (AD) is looking at major progress in the next few months in terms of deals and trials.
These include additional indigenous Akash surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, the underdevelopment medium range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM) and Igla-S very short range air defence (VSHORAD) systems from Russia, according to defence officials.
The Army had contracted a small number of Igla-S systems from Russia under emergency procurement through the Vice-Chiefs emergency financial powers and deliveries were expected soon.
Akash is the indigenously designed and developed medium-range SAM system with a range of 25 km.
In addition, the Army variant of the MRSAM, being jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), is nearing induction with the final stage of trials scheduled to be held in the next few months.
Air defence functions at three levels – gun/missile system, medium range and high range.
- Within this, the AD guns are of two types: AD gun missile system and the AD self-propelled guns.
- In the medium segment, it has the indigenous Akash SAM, while MRSAM fits in the high range(engage targets up to a range of 70 km).