Type Towed howitzer In service India Designed 2010-2013 | Place of origin India Used by Indian Army | |
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Designer Ordnance Factories Board | ||
The Dhanush is a 155 mm towed howitzer used by the Indian Army. The design is based on Bofors, now Haubits FH77 which India acquired in the 1980s. The gun as of June 2016 has entered into active production with confirmed order of 24 guns.
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Development
The Dhanush project was started by OFB to replace the older 105 mm Indian Field Gun, 105 mm Light Field Gun and the Russian 122 mm guns with a modern 155mm artillery gun.
The initial indigenous development of artillery guns in India started way back in the 1970s by the Artillery Gun Development Team under Brig Gurdyal Singh at Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur and resulted in the induction of 105mm artillery guns in the Indian Army. Later with the purchase of Bofors and the corruption issue resulted in no artillery guns procured for the Indian Army. The purchase of Bofors gun in the 1980's included the technology transfer to OFB. After years being unable to acquire or import foreign artillery guns due to corruption charges OFB came out with the Dhanush gun which is an improved version from the Bofors design. In trials it came out better by 20 to 25 percent than the bofors in parameters like range, accuracy, consistency, low and high angle of fire and shoot-and-scoot ability.
DRDO 155 mm artillery gun or Version 2 of the Dhanush is under development. It will upgrade the current 155 mm/45 caliber to 155 mm/52 caliber. Dhanush v2 larger calibre ordnance will increase the strike range by 4 km to 42 km.
Three Dhanush guns have been handed over to the Indian Army for user trials on July 2016.
The indigenous Artillery gun was also displayed on the 68th Republic Day parade held on Rajpath ,26 January 2017