The Enhanced Pinaka has demonstrated a range of 75 km and an ability to strike within 10 metres of where it is aimed.
This allows a Pinaka battery to destroy a terrorist camp, or an enemy post, logistics dump or headquarters, without sending soldiers across the border.
One of the Indian Army's most devastating fire support systems, the indigenous Guided Pinaka Weapon System, has successfully completed its flight tests, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has announced.
The army first experienced the havoc caused by the Pinaka multiple barrel rocket launcher (MBRL) during the Kargil War in 1999, when the system, still under development, caused widespread depredation when fired at Pakistani infiltrators' positions.
The army decided to replace its old, Soviet-era MBRLs -- the venerable GRAD BM-21 -- with an indigenous MBRL. The result is the Pinaka.
A Pinaka MBRL unit consists of 18 launchers, each of which fires on the enemy from 12 launcher tubes.
Firing in rapid succession, these 216 launcher tubes can bring down seven tonnes of high explosive in just 44 seconds on a target 60 kilometres away, catching enemy troops in the open, without giving them time to take cover.
The Pinaka MBRL, named after the legendary bow of Lord Shiva, takes just three minutes to come into, and out of, action.
The Pinaka project has been successfully led by two DRDO laboratories in Pune -- the Armament Research & Development Establishment (ARDE) and the High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) -- in partnership with two private sector firms, Larsen & Toubro and Tata Power Company Ltd.
Built on a rugged 8x8 Tatra vehicle, the early Pinaka Mark I had a range of only 37.5 kilometres and accuracy of about 500 metres.
In 2016, after the army demanded better performance, ARDE put a guidance kit onto each individual rocket under the Enhanced Pinaka project.
The Enhanced Pinaka has demonstrated a range of 75 km and an ability to strike within 10 metres of where it is aimed.
This allows a Pinaka battery to destroy a terrorist camp, or an enemy post, logistics dump or headquarters, without sending soldiers across the border.
From 2006 to 2010, L&T and Tata Power built and delivered the army's first two Pinaka regiments.
In 2016, the MoD contracted for the army's third and fourth regiments.
In August 2020, a third order was placed for six regiments, which will raise the army's Pinaka inventory to ten units. These will be equipped with the Pinaka-ER rockets that are now being tested.
Following these 10 regiments, there will be 12 units of the longer-range Pinaka Mark II MLRS, for which the defence ministry signed a Rs 2,580 crore (Rs 25.80 billion) contract in August 2020. The total cost of 22 Pinaka regiments will amount to Rs 21,000 crore (Rs 210 billion).
Briefing Business Standard in March 2020, DRDO had said that each Pinaka Mark II rocket would be guided individually to its target by its own inertial navigation system.
An on-board computer would monitor the rocket's flight path, and send a path correction message through a radio link every 20 microseconds.
Based on that, the rocket would correct its flight path with thrust vectors -- gases coming out from the propulsion system through nozzles."
While the Pinaka project has been led by nine DRDO laboratories, a large number of small and medium scale industries have contributed their expertise. Besides L&T and Tata Power, these include Bharat Earth Movers, Bharat Electronics, Tractors India, Armatic Engineering, Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Dynamics, Midhani and ECIL.
A limited degree of foreign expertise and experience has come from SAGEM (France) and Fuchs Electronics (South Africa).
After validating the Pinaka MBRLs performance, the DRDO transferred the technology to manufacture its rocket ammunition to Economic Explosives, a Nagpur-based industry partner.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
