well despite its problems the indian army seems to be keen on acquiring more t-90's .they have recently placed an order for 330 additional t-90's.
i believe the indian army force structure will comprise the t-90's as a replacement for the t-72's ,the tank-x as a replacement for the t-55 nad the arjun as a replacement for the vaijayanta's .
here check out this link:
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/india-to-buy-330-tanks-from-russia/24747-3-1.html
Delivery of T-90S kits from Russia, Jane's adds, would "speed up" the fielding of new MBTs as assembly using Indian-made components is more time consuming.
But army officers complained that the existing T-90S tanks faced "recurring" technical problems which were adversely impinging on the force's operational preparedness.
Senior armoured corps officers said the Catherine thermal imaging (TI) camera supplied by Thales of France that is the "heart" of the T-90S' fire control system (FCS) had "repeatedly malfunctioned" in the excessive summer heat of the western Rajasthan desert where the MBTs frequently exercise and will eventually be deployed.
Officers operating the tanks said temperatures in excess of 60 degrees Celsius inside the tank had rendered between 80-90 FCS "unserviceable" over the past four years. Attempts to rectify them had so far largely proven unsuccessful.
In one armoured regiment in Punjab, an alarming 30 of 40 tanks were "off-road", lamented an officer, declining to be named.
In keeping with the army's qualitative staff requirement for the T-90S MBT that stipulated a "longer range, shimmerless" sight, Peling of Belarus with its IG 46 sight entered into partnership with Thales to integrate its Catherine TI camera thereby giving the FCS a range of around three kilometres. The FCS components were "mated" by the manufacturers at the T-90S Nizhny Tagil factory in the Urals in Russia.
When problems first began to emerge in 2003 with the TI camera - priced at around Rs.20 million ($444,444) per unit, a fifth of each tanks cost of Rs.117.5 million - they were replaced as the T-90S were under warranty till March 2004.
Thereafter, with the warranty having ended, the army has grudgingly conceded that it is looking to "rectify" the FCS problem, but has not yet come up with a viable solution.
Army chief Gen J.J. Singh recently declared that the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was considering proposals to "partially" air-condition the T-90S to overcome the overheating problem. But he did not elaborate as to how a cooling plant could be successfully engineered into the tank without undertaking major structural changes.
The T-90S licensed production that was to commence at HVF in 2006 has also been "considerably" deferred, armament industry officials said.
This was due partly to engineering problems encountered in locally assembling the MBTs, but principally because of integrating the Catherine TI camera with the 1G 46 sight.
The first locally assembled T-90S tanks began rolling out of the HVF in January 2004, but within a short period they too faced FCS problems in hot temperatures.
Ammunition for the T-90S is also posing a major problem.
Initially, the T-90S fired Russian-made AMK-338 and AMK-339 rounds, but these were soon exhausted in training and presently the tanks are without any ammunition as their 125 mm smoothbore guns have not yet been configured to fire the locally manufactured AMK-340 rounds.
Production of the MBT's 9M119 Refleks (NATO designation AT-11 Sniper) missiles by the state-owned Bharat Dynamics at Hyderabad in southern India that was scheduled to begin earlier this year is also behind schedule as several test firings have been unsuccessful. Russian technicians have been called in to assist.
Alongside, armoured corps officers said the T-90S had been "overexposed" in exercises "to suit the individual whims of senior commanders" anxious to show off the new tank and were already in need of major overhauls.
Each tank has a maximum life of 650 cycles on the onboard rev-counter with static running equalling one rev per hour while travelling 17.5 km equalled one rev. But, in less than four years, most of the T-90S tanks had completed 600 revs.
Army officers also bemoaned the shortage of T 90 simulators of which there were only five at present, in order to extend the MBT's operational longevity.
"Given the army's over emphasis on low intensity conflict the long term armour induction policy and related modernisation programmes have slipped badly," said Brig Arun Sahgal, a former armoured corps officer now with the United Services Institute. This bodes ill for its overall fighting capability, he added.
The army aims on eventually equipping its 58 armoured regiments with T-90S tanks and upgraded Ajeya T 72Mis fitted with full and partial solution FCS, explosive reactive armour, land navigation systems, frequency hopping radio sets and advanced nuclear, biological and chemical equipment to keep them in service till 2015 -20.
