Sad story of India's first attempt to have indigenous anti tank missile for #IndianArmy - a brief thread

DRDO Anti Tank Missile

The very first anti tank developed by DRDO was a first generation MCLOS Wire Guided Missile . It had a 106 mm warhead and range was 1.6 km.

In 1959 a study on feasibility of a first gen ATM was proposed at a budget of Rs. 6 lakhs. Wind tunnel testing was started at IISC, Bengalore. Full set of force and momentum test was completed by 1961. It had a speed of 250-300 fps. Requirement was of a 2 km range missile.

But post 1962 war GSQR was changed and entire system was reworked to accomodate 106 mm warhead.

A total of 373 guided flights were carried out. In addition, 100 flight tests were conducted as part of user trials intended for evaluation by the army. In front of dy. COAS Gen.Bewoor a demonstration was given and "The missile was tested 16 times and hit its target 14 times."

Soldiers trained on European ATMs Cobra and Entac, were given the opportunity of carrying out the trials on indigenous ATM. It is reported they did not find any significant difference between indigenous and European one rather were able to handle with high degree of comfort

However the program still had some major drawbacks which could be solved in a time but QR was revised, range was sought 3 km and license production of SS11B1 was set up. Thus the glorious chapter came to a sad end.

Three Anti Tank Missile entered services with #IndianArmy

1) Cobra (2 km)
2) Entac and (2 km)
3) SS11B1 (3 km, liscence production in place of ATM)

That indigenous ATM was either faster or equally as fast as European missiles like Mosquito , Cobra or SS11B1. The only possible reason #IndianArmy was interested on getting this as SS11B1 had a range of 3km which had an advantage over others.

In pic : Entac