Russia, Israel Compete To Upgrade India’s T-72 Tanks

Israeli firm Nimda has offered to help upgrade the Indian Army’s Ajeya tanks, a domestic version of the Russian T-72M1.

At DefExpo 2016, the company stated that it is in the advanced stages of signing an agreement with an unnamed Indian company in order to move production to India.

Isaac Pery, Nimda’s Vice President of defence marketing, told Shephard Media, “We will join the Indian company as a business partner in the promotion of tank upgrade projects for the Indian Defence Ministry, and will also cooperate with other local companies that will act as vendors of Powertracks parts.”

Nimda highlighted that it has recently completed a similar MBT upgrade programme for a NATO army. Pery promised, ‘We look forward to offering the Indian Army our proven capabilities in this field.’

The Current engines fitted in the T-72M1 Ajeya offer 780hp of power, but Nimda has claimed it can boost output to 1,000hp. This is allied with a fully automatic transmission, integral air filtration system and a cooling system suited to extreme environments. The company claims that acceleration times from 0-32km/h can be halved with its powerpack.

However, Russian sources told Defenseworld.net that the T-72 is manufactured in India with technology transfer and certain critical parts imported from Russia. Mating untested foreign parts with a platform manufactured in the 80s and 90s is fraught with uncertainty.

Instead Rosoboronexport had offered to upgrade the T-72 as well as T-90 tanks with a powerplant, running gear, weapons and sensors which will make the tanks much more lethal than many current generation tanks, besides offering better protection.