NEW DELHI – The Indian Army lost confidence in most types of ammunitionbeing manufactured by the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).

According to the Indian newspaper ‘Times of India’ (TOI), the India’s Armyhas told the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that the spike in ammunition-relatedaccidents is causing fatalities, injuries and damage to equipment at analarming rate.

The TOI reported that the India’s sounded the alarm over the unacceptablyhigh number of accidents taking place in the field due to the poor anddefective quality of ammunition being supplied for tanks, artillery, airdefence and other guns OFB.

Loss of confidenceIt also said that this, in turn, is leading to the Army’s loss ofconfidence in most types of ammunition” being manufactured by OFB.

“The Army has raised with Secretary (Defence Production), Ajay Kumar, theserious concerns about the lack of requisite quality control and qualityassurance by OFB, which with 41 factories and an annual turnover of aboutRs 19,000 crore is the main source of supply of arms and ammunition to theover 12-lakh strong force.”

“Any drop in the quality of OFB products has major operationalramifications on the country’s war-waging potential,” it said.

The red alert has led to an urgent collaborative effort between the Armyand MoD’s department of defence production to improve the functioning ofOFB, with Kumar also asking the force to submit a paper about differentproblems with the ammunition.

15-page paperThe 15-page paper presents an extremely grim picture. It says regularaccidents are occurring with 105mm Indian field guns, 105mm light fieldguns, 130mm MA1 medium guns, 40mm L-70 air defence guns as well as the mainguns of the T-72, T-90 and Arjun main-battle tanks, with some isolatedcases also being reported from the 155mm Bofors guns, due to defectiveammunition.

“With the OFB’s piecemeal and poor approach in problem-solving, the Armyhas stopped firing some types of long-range ammunition, while alsorefraining from not testing some others to their maximum ranges. There havebeen, for instance, over 40 accidents of the 125mm high explosiveammunition fired by tanks in the last five years,” it further said.