India Reissues APC Tender

The Indian MoD has reissued a tender to procure 100 armored personnel carriers (APCs) after 2009’s failed tender, according to reports.

According to officials, the previous qualitative requirements were too “tough,” and sought to mix the best systems available on the market. The vendor also was reequired to make a special prototype of the APC to compete. None of the vendors could meet the qualitative requirements for the APCs in the earlier tender, Defense News reported.

The requirements have been diluted slightly relating to the mobility of the vehicles, and the tender has again been issued to the same vendors involved in 2009: General Dynamics in the US, Rosoboronexport of Russia, Ukrainexport of Ukraine, Poland’s Bumar, Finmec­canica of Italy, BAE Systems of the UK and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann of Germany, the report added.

The budget allocation for military vehicles for 2013-14 is only 20.8 billion rupees (US $377 million), compared with 22.6 billion rupees in 2012-13 and an actual spend of 23.5 billion rupees in 2011-’12.

The latest global tender includes buying 60,668 armor piercing rounds, 91,004 high-explosive rounds for the 25-40mm cannon, 886,436 rounds of the 7.62 coaxial machine gun and 84,100 rounds for the 25mm-40mm anti-grenade launcher.

The requirements stipulate that the wheeled APCs be able to fire on the move, have good speed on the road and cross country, and have the ability to protect against mines, improvised explosive devices, small arms, grenades and artillery splinters.

The vehicle must be able to be armed with a machine gun, cannon and automatic grenade launcher.

In addition, the vehicle must have modern, secure communications, amphibious capability and the ability to cross obstacles.

The Army wants the cannon to be able to fire at targets, including helicopters, at a distance of 2,500 meters.