Indian Army and DRDO test fire Laser-guided anti-tank missile from Arjun tank

Defense News June 2022 Global Security army industry
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According to The Indian Express, the indigenously-developed Laser-Guided Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) was successfully test-fired from an Arjun Main Battle Tank by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Army at the latter’s field ranges in Ahmednagar district on June 28.
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The missile has the capability to defeat an armoured vehicle in ranges from 1.5 to 5 kilometres (Picture source: DRDO )

The test was conducted at the KK Ranges with the support of the Armoured Corps Centre and School (ACC&S) of the Army which is based in Ahmednagar. “In the test, the ATGM hit the bull’s eye with textbook precision and successfully defeated the target at minimum ranges. Telemetry systems recorded the satisfactory flight performance of the missile,” said the Ministry of Defence echoed by The Indian Express.

The all-indigenous ATGM uses a ‘tandem’ High Explosive Anti Tank (HEAT) warhead. The term tandem refers to the missiles using more than one detonation in order to effectively penetrate the protective armours of the adversary tanks. The missile has the capacity of defeating armoured vehicles which use Explosive Reactive Armours (ERA).

The ATGM has been developed with multi-platform launch capability and is currently undergoing technical evaluation trials from the 120 mm rifled gun of the Arjun MBT. The Laser-Guided ATGM has the capability to defeat the protected armoured vehicles in ranges from 1.5 to 5 kilometres, officials said. Engaging the targets at lower ranges is a challenge due to the dimensional constraints of tank-launched ATGMs, which has been successfully accomplished by the ATGM for the MBT Arjun.

This Laser-Guided ATGM has been developed by two Pune-based facilities of the DRDO’s Armament and Combat Engineering (ACE) Cluster — the Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE) and High Energy Materials Research Laboratory (HEMRL) — in association with Instruments Research and Development Establishment (IRDE), Dehradun, The Indian Express reports.