BOMBS & EXPLOSIVES : Explained: How Indian Army’s new Multi-Mode Hand Grenades are different (R)

 SOURCE:

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/indian-army-multi-mode-hand-grenades-features-explained-6664662/?utm_source=newzmate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=explained&utm_content=6386461&tqid=jKOjNiAgGxYBTy03LRt1RjFD2QZG1X4a1OU3aIpuzg

Explained: How Indian Army’s new Multi-Mode Hand Grenades are different

                                        By

                          Sushant Kulkarni 

A look at the features of the Multi-Mode Hand Grenades (MMHG), and why they are considered an improvement over those currently in use by the Indian Army.

The Acquisition Wing of the MoD has signed a contract with Economic Explosive Ltd for the supply of 10 lakh MMHG to the Indian Army at an approximate cost of Rs 409 crore.

The Ministry of Defence on Thursday announced it had signed a contract with a Nagpur-based private entity for supply of 10 lakh of units indigenously designed and developed Multi-Mode Hand Grenades (MMHG) to the Indian Army at a cost of over Rs 400 crore. These grenades will be replacing the World War-II vintage ‘Mills Bomb’ type 36M hand grenades now used by the Army.

A look at the features of the MMGH, and why they are considered an improvement over those currently in use.

The No 36 Grenades Currently in use

In the early 20th century, militaries across the world started using fragmentation grenades, whose casings are structured for it to break into small fragments which can cause further harm following the explosion. The peculiar pineapple-like look was given because the outside segments and grooves aid the fragmentation of the casing. In the further improved designs, the grooves and segments were put from the inside and pineapple like outer structure was also retained for better grip.

or several years now, the Indian Army has been using the World War vintage 36M hand grenade. The number refers to a variant of the ‘Mills Bomb’ which are British origin grenades and these grenades also have the pineapple shape. These grenades can be fired from the rifle too. The 36M have been manufactured by the facilities of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) for the Armed forces.

The Multi-Mode Hand Grenade

“Grenades of natural fragmentation type have been in use by the infantry world over for a long time. Indian Army still uses the 36M, a grenade which also has severe reliability problems and uneven fragmenting pattern making it unsafe even to the thrower. The multi-mode grenade has been developed to overcome these defects. It uses preformed cylindrical mild steel pre-fragments to achieve uniform distribution,” says the official page of the DRDO’s facility Terminal Ballistic Research Laboratory (TBRL) which has developed the MMHG.

The MMHG can be used in two different structures resulting in two different modes — defensive and offensive. The grenades being used by the forces in India till now have been mainly the defensive mode grenades, which means that they are to be hurled when the thrower is in a shelter or has a cover and the target is in an open area and can be harmed by fragmentation.

On the other hand, the offensive grenades do not fragment, and the adversary is harmed by the blast or is stunned while the thrower is safe.

For the MMHG’s defensive mode, the grenade has a fragamenting sleeve and a lethal radius of 10 metres. In the offensive mode, the grenade is without a sleeve and mainly used for blast and stun effect. In the offensive, it has a lethal radius of 5 meters from point of burst.

The Supply of MMHG

The Acquisition Wing of the MoD on Thursday signed a contract with Economic Explosive Ltd — EEL is a subsidiary of Nagpur-headquartered Solar Group — for the supply of 10 lakh MMHG to the Indian Army at an approximate cost of Rs 409 crore. For conducting field tests of the grenade, the DRDO had transferred the technology to the company four years ago. The grenade has been tested in various types of conditions and is said to have achieved 99 per cent safety and reliability.

The MoD press statement in this regard said, “This is a flagship project showcasing public-private partnership under the aegis of Government of India (DRDO and MoD) enabling ‘AtmaNirbharta’ in cutting edge ammunition technologies and accomplishes 100 per cent indigenous content.”

Officials said the development of the grenade had begun around 15 years ago and along with the DRDO facility, establishments of Army and OFB have also played a role in the development.

According to the company website, the product has a shelf life of 15 years from the date of manufacturing if stored under normal circumstances. The website also states that the product has twin delay tubes for additional safety and 3800 uniform fragments for higher lethality.

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Russia's Unseen New Armata Battle Tank Captured on Camera

Source:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russias-unseen-new-armata-battle-tank-captured-on-camera/518019.html

Published on Dec 13, 2014

 

Experimental Russian tank "Black Eagle" is based on the Soviet T-80 tank, as a result of extensive modernization

 

      [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIUmHTtEJpU]

Published on Jul 31, 2014

 

The film is about the continuity of Russian arms merchants Demidovs to the present day

         Tanks. Ural Character - the Movie Dmitry Rogozin  

        
                     Tanks. Ural character.


              The history of tank development.



                      The film, Dmitry Rogozin.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFxOu1aGvE0]

     

Russia's Unseen New Armata Battle Tank                Captured on Camera

                      The Moscow Times

Mar. 25 2015

military-informant.comRussia's brand-new T-14 Armata main battle tanks, covered in tarps and resting on a train carriage, are seen in Alabino.

 

Russia's brand-new T-14 Armata main battle tank, which is set to be officially unveiled to the public at a Victory Day parade on Red Square on May 9, has reportedly been sighted readying for the ceremonies outside Moscow.


Photos of tanks resembling the Armata tank design hit the Russian internet on Monday.

According to Russian military blog                               military-informant.com, which published the photos, the tanks, covered in tarps and resting on a train carriage, were gathering with other military units in Alabino, outside Moscow. There they will rehearse their movements for this year's Victory Day celebration, which marks 70 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany.


The Armata is part of a massive rearmament program costing hundreds of billions of dollars that aims to restore some of the military might Russia lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A video taken from a cell phone and uploaded to YouTube on Monday shows what appears to be the Armata tank. The video shows a junction near the factory that produced the tank, Uralvagonzavod, and a tank testing range.

 

The tank's seven wheels give it away as an Armata. Russia's current tanks are all based on variations of old Soviet tank chassis designs and have six wheels.


Another recognizable feature is the long and boxy turret that resembles modern Western tank turret designs such as the U.S. M1 Abrahms and German Leopard 2. Older Russian tanks have more bulbous turrets.


The new tanks, officially designated the Armata T-14 main battle tank, is built on a chassis known as the Armata Universal Combat Platform. Armata will serve as a common base for a series of armored combat vehicles, according to manufacturer Uralvagonzavod.


The chassis will be used to develop new armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery, and even a fully automated drone tank, the company has said. The common chassis will make production and maintenance easier and cheaper, according to Uralvagonzavod.

 

See also:
Student in Russia Builds 20-Ton Soviet Tank Out of Snow

British Embassy Tweets Diagram to Help Russia Spot Its Tanks in Ukraine

Kiev Says Russian Tanks Have Crossed Into Ukraine

























 

Action at Defence Ministry at last Bigger challenges need to be faced

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20141127/edit.htm




    MR PARIKAR ON HINDSIGHT IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PERFORMANCE TILL DATE IS NO BETTER THAN SAINT ANTONY. ST ANTONY NEVER PROMISED ANY THING BECAUSE HIS MOUTH WAS ALWAYS SHUT. ALAS MR PARIKAR YOUR MOUTH IS NOT SHUT BUT EVERY TIME YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH IT IS ONLY TO ANNOUNANCE THAT YOU HAVE SHIFTED THE GOAL POST OR  YOU  HAVE EVEN CHANGED THE SCORE BOARD ( DATED   27 NOV  2015 )





Action at Defence Ministry at last Bigger challenges need to be faced
                          By                        Inder Malhotra





                     

The Indian armed forces should be liberated from the stranglehold of the generalist BABUs  of the MoD

                  FOR over a quarter of a century the Indian Army has desperately needed artillery guns. But no matter how hard it tried it couldn't get them. One reason for this, of course, was the aftermath of the Bofors scandal, which became the standard excuse of all concerned not to take any decision at all. There was an element of disingenuousness in this posturing. For, despite the commissions worth Rs 64 crore distributed to the still unnamed beneficiaries, the Swedish gun served this country superbly during the Kargil war. Ironically, it was at the peak of this fight that the Army discovered to its dismay that it was running out of ammunition because of the obsession of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to blacklist all suppliers it suspected or disliked.  Ultimately, we had to buy the ammunition from South Africa at thrice the normal price.  Even this made no difference to the civilian bureaucracy in the MoD and its political bosses.   Indecision remained the ruling doctrine of both.  Sadly, A. K. Antony, a very fine man with an enviable reputation for personal probity, who has been the longest-serving Defence Minister so far, became the biggest hurdle to decision-making.  By doing nothing he was sure of retaining his image as "St. Antony".   BUT how  "St. Antony".   WAS HE BETTER THAN  HAV NATHHA SINGH who like his Defence Minister had decided to do nothing and in his village people   today  address  him as "SANT NATHHA JI "   ( http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2014/11/my-name-is-sep-sipahi-bhoop-singh.html )  Against this bleak backdrop it is greatly to be welcomed that within a few days after his appointment as Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has ended the paralysis over the procurement of artillery guns by clearing the decks for acquiring 814 long-range mounted artillery guns to fill a serious gap in its equipment and, therefore, in its overall capability.   The cost will be Rs 15,570 crore. The deal was approved after a serious consideration at a Defence Acquisition Council meeting that Mr Parrikar presided over for the first time.   He also said that the DAC should meet oftener than it has done so far even if its agenda is rather short. My first thought on hearing this was that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have handed over the Defence Ministry to the former Goa Chief Minister while forming his Cabinet on May 26.    Mr Parrikar has laid down that that the acquisition of artillery guns — like all future procurements — will take place within the framework of the Prime Minister’s “Make-in-India” concept.     While the Army will buy 100 guns off the shelf of the foreign vendor, the remaining 714 will be manufactured here. Global tenders will be floated soon, and the Indian manufacturer will have to "tie up" with the selected foreign vendor for building the gun.   Several Indian companies such as the Tatas, Larsen & Toubro and Kalyani, as well as the public sector Ordnance Factory Board have already produced prototypes of 155mm, 52 calibre guns. They are all likely to take part in the bid.     So far, so good. But the real point is that the defenders of the country's freedom and frontiers will be greatly handicapped in discharging their duty until the makers of policy on national security attend to the fundamental task of reforming the higher management of the defence system.    Civilian control over the military is, of course, the basic principle in every democracy. Indeed, even in China the doctrine of the  “Party controlling the Gun”  has prevailed since the time of Mao Zedong. The present Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has reinforced it.   





Bu But in a democracy like India

         the civilian supremacy does not,



           and  must not,mean the






      supremacy of civil servants




 It is long overdue that the Indian armed forces — absolutely apolitical, unlike the armies of some of our neighbours
— should be liberated from the stranglehold of the generalist babus of the MoD.



In recent years when a service chief informally and politely told the then Prime Minister that he and his two opposite numbers regretted that they were not asked to be present at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the reply he got was:

: “Well, you were represented by the Defence secretary”!


This pattern has to end.


One thing that the Modi government does not need to do is to appoint a commission or committee to suggest what to do. There is a heap of sensible reports on the subject that are gathering dust.



The report of the Kargil Committee — headed by this country's strategic guru K. Subrhamanyam — had, among other things, made a strong case of having a Chief of Defence Staff.



The Atal Behari Vajpayee government took it seriously. A Group of Ministers, chaired by L. K. Advani, endorsed the suggestion. At the last minute, while accepting all the GoM's recommendations, Atalji held over the one on the CDS.


He made no secret of the fact that he had consulted former President R. Venkataraman and former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, both of whom had been defence ministers in Congress governments.



 Seven years later, the Manmohan Singh government appointed the Naresh Chandra Task Force on revamping the entire external and internal security setup. Realising that there still was much resistance to having a CDS, it suggested a step in the right direction: the appointment of a permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee with a fixed tenure of two years.



This was a vast improvement over the existing arrangement under which the most senior of the three chiefs acts as chairman of the CSC also until his retirement. He neither has enough time for inter-Services matters because he has to run his own service too, nor a long enough tenure. In one case it lasted precisely 30 days.



The permanent chief, according to the Task Force, would not interfere with the operational matters but handle all inter-Service issues, including determination of priority in the matter of acquisition of weapons and equipment. Most importantly, the permanent chairman would be able to supervise the Strategic Command more effectively than has been happening since 1998. Over to Mr. Parrikar.       



     MR PARIKAR ON HINDSIGHT IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR PERFORMANCE TILL DATE IS NO BETTER THAN SAINT ANTONY. ST ANTONY NEVER PROMISED ANY THING BECAUSE HIS MOUTH WAS ALWAYS SHUT. ALAS MR PARIKAR YOUR MOUTH IS NOT SHUT BUT EVERY TIME YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH IT IS ONLY TO ANNOUNANCE THAT YOU HAVE SHIFTED THE GOAL POST OR  YOU  HAVE EVEN CHANGED THE SCORE BOARD ( DATED   27 NOV  2015 )




















   

INVITATION IESM : The Third Veterans Remembrance Day Seminar On Sunday, December 15, 2013

                                                  



                              INVITATION

              ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED




IESM : The Third Veterans Remembrance Day Seminar On Sunday, December 15, 2013


    

As has been our practice for the last two years, the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement, Panchkula Branch plans to hold the Third Veterans Remembrance Day Seminar On Sunday, December 15, 2013 at The Jainendra Public School Auditorium, Sector-1, Panchkula, Haryana on Post-Independence Evolving Contours of the Indian Military Society.

 

 

Till independence, India didn’t have to worry about her military security. It was the prerogative of the British Crown. The Indian Army had no coherent nationalist ideology except for a consciousness of its history of loyal obedience, and valour under the foreign ruler. As India moved out of Britain’s orbit, her defence forces’ attempt at creating a robust structure was stymied because a severe shortage of trained Indian officers, and such as there were, though brought up in the British military mould had never experienced higher command.

 

 The officer corps is the active directing element of the military structure and is responsible for the military security of society.

 

 

The state is the active directing element of the society.

 

 

 In 1962, unfortunately both were not up to the task.

 

 

Post 1962 War, Indian defence forces was augmented, both numerically, and equipment-wise at a feverish pace, and this is what perhaps saved the country when faced with a war against Pakistan in 1965. The Indian defence forces also defeated Pakistan decisively in the 1971 War with a record bag of 93,000 prisoners of war. A long interregnum of peace followed till 1999.

 

 

With the 1999 Kargil War, many skeletons came tumbling out of the government and defence forces’ cupboard – lack of intelligence, equipment and ammunition shortages, and delayed employment of the Indian Air Force etc. It has been a long haul for the Indian defence forces from 1947 to the closing month of 2013. It has weathered many storms.

 From 1965 onwards, the country has seen a phenomenal increase in new raisings of the Central Police Forces. Despite this, there has been little decrease in the army’s employment on counter-insurgency tasks. From 1992 onwards about 1,300 women officers have been inducted into the armed forces. Higher educational levels have been mandated for recruitment to rank and file. Modernization and making up of the existing deficiencies of equipment has been a nightmare.

  On October 4, 2010, the then Indian Airforce Chief, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik said that 50 per cent of the IAF systems and equipment was obsolete and the force was facing a shortage of around 600 pilots.

For the last two-and-a-half decade, the Indian Army’s officer shortfall continues to fluctuate between 10,500 to 13,000. Lately, there have been some cases of worrisome tension in officers and men relations. In 2012, a news report appearing in the Indian Express alleged that the then Army Chief General V. K. Singh had stealthily tried moving troops and tanks to Delhi to pressurise the government on a personal matter.

 

 

The armed forces are a proper functional society within the larger civil society coterminous with the state, with boundaries separating the two. Both are incomplete without the other. Central to the issue is that the officer corps, as the active intelligent component of the Indian military society interrogates itself and the military society holistically.

 

 

Any society is a complex organism, and can hardly be deliberated upon in a one day seminar. Only following sub-themes are sought to be discussed during the current seminar:

 

 

·        Session 1 . The services have conspicuously failed to obtain adequate and timely resources for new raisings, vital defence equipment, and infrastructure. Sometimes, it appears like a total lack influence over governmental machinery by the senior service hierarchy. While deflecting of blame comes naturally, is it also because the services, in military straitjackets have not learnt how to work the democratic system of governance?

 

 

·        Session 2. Women officers made a late entry into the hallowed male bastion of the Indian military in 1992, and have kicked up a veritable storm. Do women actually want equality in serving in the military? From female advocacy point, the answer is obvious. From another perspective, the answer is far from clear. Is military service just another job? And yet, in the changing technological scenario, women may be more suitable than men in certain tasks.

 

 

·         Session 3. Democracy and free flow of media led information has enhanced human aspirations. Lately inter-personal relationship has increasingly come under strain. Decidedly, there is an elemental of coercion in enforcing the services disciplinary code. Shouldn’t the services man management models, disciplinary methodologies and laws be reviewed keeping in view the latest sociological changes?

 

 

 

Programme         Inauguration and First Session.        10 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.

                             Lunch                                      1.30 p.m. to 2.15 p.m.

                             Post- lunch Sessions                2.15 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.

                             Tea                                          4..30 p.m. to 5 p.m.

 

 

 

All veterans,  interested scholars, and citizens of the Tri-City are invited. Do keep your calendar free for this important veterans event, and do inform your friends and colleagues also. Ladies are cordially invited.

 

With regards,

 

Brig. Kiran Krishan, SM (Retd.)

Convener, IESM, Panchkula

Mobile: 9876116898