Indian Army wants a variant like this with NAMICA turret over WhAP, here TATA Kestrel
In an interesting development, the Indian Army has issued Acceptance of Necessity (AON) to a new variant of WhAP (Wheeled Armoured Platform) equipped with Anti Tank Guided Missile launcher. The Indian Army has issued this AoN exactly 1 month before from now around 6th June.
The Indian Army has invited bidding from Indian Defence Industry, in which Private companies have been invited to show their design and offerings as per the tender. The condition is that their design and development must be indigenous, not a direct copy of any foreign OEM design and the vehicle must have been manufactured in India with at least 50% indigenous source of components used in it. The companies have to submit their bid before 2nd August 2022.
Indian Army wants to acquire the platform on the basis of ‘No Cost, No Commitment’ Policy, under which the manufacturer company has to bear all the expenses of bidding, testing and evaluation during the selection process, and Indian Army will not commit anything except the winner in the bid, who will be awarded the final contract.
TATA Kestrel in this regard, a versatile platform and TATA can offer different types of variant of Kestrel WhAP with different variants of turret on it. Although the requirement of the Army here is a system which can fire Anti Tank Guided Missile, and if you are following the development of TATA Kestrel from the very first moment, then you must be aware of the fact that a turret from Konsberg was integrated with Kestrel WhAP at first which was demonstrated during Chennai Defence Expo 2021.
You can clearly see the ATGM launchers attached to Konsberg turret mounted on TATA Kestrel WhAP in the below image, and as the turret was already integrated with the Kestrel WhAP, and if the requirement is for such a turret which can fire ATGM then the requirement has already been met by this turret.
In the RFI or AON, we can not see much details of the system, but as per our assumption if the requirement was only for such a turret like Konsberg, then they might not have mentioned the ‘ATGM launching capability’ especially, in that case we assume that it must be a requirement of a system like NAMICA ATGM carrier.
NAMICA is the Nag Missile Carrier in which we can see 6 missile launchers in the new turret which is mounted on a BMP-II IFV along with 2 Electro Optical Targeting System which provides it the ‘Hunter Killer’ capability which means the turret is already developed and it can be transferred to TATA Kestrel WhAP. And the Indian Army has already mentioned in the AON that the companies will have 36 months time in their hand after the issuance of RFI that means DRDO and TATA both have enough time in their hands to match up NAMICA new variant turret with the TATA Kestrel WhAP.
The Indian Army hasn’t mentioned any particular number, although the information we are getting is that the Army will use these platform in ‘Hunter Killer’ role in mountainous regions especially near China border and for that around 200 such platforms will be procured initially. TATA Kestrel WhAP with its versatility will prove to be fantastic system for the Indian Army in North and North Eastern regions where the terrain is in very difficult shape to operate.