The 155mm satellite guided artillery rounds were ordered following the February 2019 military standoff and subsequent border skirmishes between the two nuclear-armed nations.
The Indian army has started to use long-range precision guided artillery ammunition, purchased under an emergency clause in India’s Defence Policy.
News about the deployment of the new M982 Excalibur artillery rounds - developed by Raytheon Missile Systems- was shared with army commanders at a high-level conference in New Delhi, local media reported.
Excalibur artillery rounds 155mm trajectory correctable munitions, also referred to as Course Correctable Fuze, that use GPS technology to accurately guide a shell to its target, facilitating co-ordination in using mid-course flight path correction.
TCM accuracy and first-round hit probability is significantly higher than that of conventional ammunition facilitating its use in close support situations within 150 metres of friendly troops.
The guided shells have been inducted in the army units guarding the Line of Control, a 435-mile line which marks where the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir begin.
The shells can be used in the new lightweight M-777 Howitzer along the Pakistan and Chinese border. The shells can reach up to 57 km will also be used in the K-9 tracked Howitzer gun that India bought from South Korea in 2017.
Traditionally tense Pakistani-Indian relations dipped to a new low in February after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for sponsoring terror attacks in Kashmir claimed by terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad. India carried out a retaliatory strike to destroy the group’s infrastructure.
The Kashmir issue dates back to 1947 when both countries became independent from Britain and both claimed the region as belonging to them.
