User:Brig.Gurbux Singh Retd.

WHY MBT ARJUN HAS TAKEN OVER 36 YEARS TO DEVELOP?

ARJUN was unduly delayed, because the first 12 years from 1974-1986 of development were wasted in 'recreating the wheel', i.e. the whole  design including  that of vital sub assemblies like the power pack, fire control system etc for which no technology was locally available at that time was simultaneously under taken from scratch. The Scientific Advisor was repeatedly informed from the commencement of the project in 1974 that there could be no worthwhile progress unless these systems were imported. Import of vital sub assemblies took place after the failure to develop them indigenously. Due to the lack of availability of a modern battle tank for the Indian Army, import of T 72 and T 90 from USSR had to be resorted to,incurring a huge loss of millions of dollars to the national exchequer. The designers who produced the design layout drawings of the tank left one after another in anguish. Whether the design layout drawings of the tank originally produced in 1974 based on GS QR were configured to the parameters of the imported sub assemblies or not? If this has not been done, optimised performance of the tank as a whole would not possible and there could be technical problems after the tank goes into service with the users.