The Tank Shell That Scared Its Users

[vijayshimla]

Internet is hot with news about that India has had to scrap $154 million worth of Indian made 125mm tank shells because of production defects. The AMK-340 was built with insufficient quality control.if the shells are exposed to a lot of heat, the propellant becomes unstable. The result is that the AMK-340 shells sometimes explode in the gun, instead of just moving the projectile out the barrel at high speed.As a result, many crews refused to use the AMK-340, or only if they could rig it so the gun was fired while the crew was outside the tank.In the end, the army destroyed 150,000 of the AMK-340s, which cost a little over a thousand dollars each to manufacture. Is there a grain of truth in this ?- or is this a piece of mis-information to bad mouth indigenous defence capability ? But if it is true then some heads must be made to roll ! after all the babus can not play with india's defence preparedness- just imagine all your T-72.s are out of action because some babu in some ordnance factory did not do his work by the book & enemy Armour just walks into Delhi because the guns of our most numerous tank will all self destruct !! Some inputs will be good.

 

[aprasadi]

This is what is been said all over this forum. But no one yet has provided any credible source/link to this. so no point in discussing over this issue till we get any credible source.

 

[fightermki]

these were not all the shells but few of them and army asked ordnance factories to beef up quality control. no munition is fool proof even tomhawks dont strike tagets every time u dont say them to be useless and onething more there are millions of shells manufactured in 70's and are still present in amunition dumps maybe some are fatigued. remember even mirages used 60's bombs during kargil. rather efficiently.