For the first time in the Indian defence ecosystem, Nagpur-based private company Economic Explosives Limited is scheduled to deliver the first consignment of high-quality grenades to the Indian Army.
The subsidiary of Solar Industries India Limited was awarded the Rs 400 crore contract of manufacturing 10 lakh grenades for the Indian Army. To date, the Indian Army has been using the British era vintage hand grenades, which will be replaced by the first consignment of 40,000 Multi-Mode Hand Grenades (MMHG).
The new advanced Multi-mode grenade has been designed jointly by the Economic Explosives Limited along with Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL), a laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The grenade offers multiple advantages to soldiers in terms of safety and penetration attack as compared to the vintage hand grenades.
The advanced grenade has dual-mode – defensive and offensive. In the offensive mode, the grenade doesn’t have a fragment sleeve and is used for low-intensity attack as it offers stunning effects. The mode is used when the soldier targets the attack within five meters from the point of burst.
In defensive mode, the grenade is assembled with its fragmenting sleeve. This mode of the grenade is used when the soldier is in the shelter and the enemy is in the open area. Its lethal radius has a capacity to target eight meters from the point of burst.
Salient features of the grenade
1) To ensure high reliability, the grenade comes with twin delay tubes.
2) The new advanced Multi-mode grenade has a minimum 0.5 second arming delay for the safety of soldiers.
3) For a deep penetration attack, the grenade has 3,800 unique fragmentation patterns.
Export of the grenades
Impressed by the safety and lethality of Multi-Mode Hand Grenades, Indonesia and other foreign countries are showing interest to buy the grenades from Solar Industries. Indonesia has already placed an order for the grenades as the Indian government has already given in-principle approval to Economic Explosives Limited to supply the grenades to Indonesia.
Indian government’s bold decision to open up the ammunition manufacturing sector for private agencies is paying rich dividends as until a decade ago, ammunition manufacturing was in the sole domain of government agencies and it was beyond the imagination that the private sector could foray into this field.
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