Army Chief Gen Manoj Naravane on Thursday flagged off the 100th K9 Vajra tracked self-propelled howitzer built by Larsen & Toubro (L&T) at its armoured system complex at Hazira in Gujarat.
With this, L&T had completed the delivery of all the howitzers under the contract awarded in May 2017 ahead of schedule, the company said in a statement.
“The K9 Vajra programme involved the delivery of 100 howitzers with associated engineering support package covering spares, system documentation and training. It also involves maintenance transfer of technology to an army base workshop to support the howitzers throughout their operational life cycle,” the statement said.
The 155mm, 52 calibre K9 Vajra is built by L&T with technology transfer from South Korean defence major Hanwha Defense, and is based on its K9 Thunder. L&T had started indigenising the howitzer right at the field trial stage by replacing 14 critical systems with indigenous systems.
L&T said the howitzers were delivered with more than 80% indigenous work packages and above 50% indigenisation (by value). This involved local production of over 13,000 components through a supply chain spread across four States.
