INDIA TO BUY NEW GENERATION PGMs FOR MIRAGE FLEET
By Bulbul Singh
21 Apr 08. The Indian defence ministry has floated an international bid for the procurement of 266, Next Generation Precision Guided Munition [NGPGM] in the 1000kg class, compatible with Indian Air Force’s Mirage-2000H/TH. The integration of the PGM will be done by the vendor.
The Request For Proposal[RFP] was issued last week to Rafael of Israel, MBDA and SAGEM of France and Raytheon of the United States. The delivery of the equipment will be completed within 42 months from the date of signature. The first batch of six NGPGMs will be delivered by the vendor to meet the requirements of flight clearance and certification. The second batch of 40 will be delivered by T+ 24 months and the third batch will be delivered by T+30 months and the remaining quantity will be delivered by T+ 42 months.
The contract value is estimated at over $300m and will be governed by the 30 per cent, mandatory offset clause.
The vendor is also required to train a team of 30 Indian Air Force technical personnel on the care and maintenance of the equipment.
The NGPGM is presently planned for integration on 51 Mirage 2000 aircraft. In addition the weapon should be compatible for integration on any aircraft having a MIL-STAN 1553 databus. The guidance and range extension kit should be detachable and compatible with a General Purpose 2000lb/1000kg bomb. The warhead should be a penetration warhead and be able to penetrate concrete and hardened horizontal targets. The bomb should be accurate within 3 meters. The PGM should also be able to be launched in excess of 60kms from target.
The life of the warhead should be not less than 30 years. Provision should be made to extend to up to 40 years.
The shelf life of the guidance kit should not be less than 15 years. The operational life of the complete weapon system should not be less than 100 flying hours and at least 500 flying hours for training.
In addition, the weapon system should be capable of withstanding 5 hours of continuous carriage.
The Indian defence ministry has also sought the signing of an Integrity pact in the deal. The Indian government has made it mandatory for deals above $25m to have an Integrity pact signed between the Indian government and the bidder which is a binding agreement between the agency and bidders for specific contracts in which the agency promises that it will not accept bribes during the procurement process and the bidders promise that they will not offer bribes.