Indian Army To Use Home-Made Weapon Locating Radars

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) of the ministry of defence has cleared the acquisition of 30 weapon locating radars – Swati – from Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) at a total cost of Rs 1,605 crores ($256 million).

These radars will be used by the artillery wing of the Indian army. Swati, the radar was developed as a coherent, electronically scanned C-Band pulse doppler radar. The radar automatically locates hostile artillery, mortars and rocket launchers and tracks friendly fire to locate the impact point of friendly artillery fire to issue necessary corrections.

The range for the radar while tracking gun shells is more than 20 kms and for rockets, about 30 kms.

For long, the army had been using the American gun locating radars bought during the Kargil War. The DRDO and Bharat Electronics took upon the task of developing an indigenous radar. Their first was Rajendra. Swati is their latest.

There is an interesting story behind the discovery of how the idea of the first gun locating radar was developed. Apparently, the DRDO scientists were testing the trajectory of the missiles at Chandipur, when they found their tracking radars could pick up artillery guns booming at a nearby army firing range. That was how Rajendra was born.