India's Defense Acquisition Council gave the go-ahead to buy 145 M777 howitzers nearly 25 years after a procurement scandal derailed the purchase. The final contract with BAE Systems, which now owns Bofors, will be signed as soon as the Ministry of Finance and then the Cabinet Committee on Security give their expected agreement, the Times said.

The council, led by Defense Minister A. K. Antony, cleared the purchase of 145 M777 .39-caliber ultra-light howitzers from the United States in a direct government-to-government deal worth $647 million under the Foreign Military Sales program.

The announcement of the U.S. Bofors purchase comes as the first user trials of an indigenously manufactured Bofors-type gun are to start, the Indian defense Web site DefenseNow said.

In early March, the Indian army announced an order for 100 .52-caliber howitzer artillery pieces to be made by the Ordnance Factory Board, in Kolkata, West Bengal state, a report by the online news site Indian Express said.

Trials of these OFB guns are to take place at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan state.

The state-run OFB is manufacturing the gun based on the Bofors design which was transferred in 1986 but which lay unused due to the Bofors scandal, DefenseNow said.

"While the OFB has not called its homegrown version of the artillery gun as a Bofors gun, it will be an upgraded version of the Bofors," DefenseNow said.

Defense procurement plans are expected to be speeded up after the defense budget, announced in March, took a 17 percent jump to around $40 billion for 2012-13, partly because of major acquisition plans.

Around 18 percent of the $40 billion will be for capital expenditure -- buying new equipment up to March 2013.