MBDA, Europe’s leading missile manufacturer, has signed an agreement with Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) of India for the final assembly, integration and test (FAIT) of Mistral and ASRAAM missiles in India.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on 12 September at DSEI in London, by George Kyriakides, Director of International Industrial Co-operation at MBDA, and Commodore Siddharth Mishra (Retd.), Chairman & Managing Director of BDL.
BDL is a major Indian weapon systems integrator and has supplied more than 130,000 weapon systems and to domestic and foreign customers. MBDA has a long and highly successful history of working with BDL for the past 50 years, which has already seen over 50,000 MBDA-designed missiles manufactured in India.
George Kyriakides said: “This MoU marks the latest step on our true commitment to Make in India and our partnership with BDL, as we build the foundations for further new and exciting joint opportunities.”
Cmde’ Mishra, said: “We have enjoyed a long a fruitful relationship between Bharat Dynamics Limited and MBDA for many decades, and we so are very pleased to have signed this new agreement to deepen our strategic relationship for the future”.
ASRAAM is India’s New Generation Close Combat Missile. With its large rocket motor, and clean aerodynamic design, ASRAAM has unrivalled speed, aerodynamic maneuverability and range. The IAF’s Jaguar aircraft are the first Indian platform to receive this cutting-edge air-combat missile.
Mistral, with its unmatched success rate of over 96 %, during all firings, has been selected by many forces around the world and has been offered to the Indian armed forces to meet their VSHORAD requirement. Working with HAL, integration of the Mistral ATAM system on the Dhruv helicopter and the Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) has been very successfully completed.
MBDA is the only European group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed forces (land, sea and air).
With a significant presence in five European countries and within the USA, in 2018 MBDA achieved revenue of 3.2 billion euros with an order book of 17.4 billion euros. In total, the group offers a range of 45 missile systems and countermeasures products already in operational service and more than 15 others currently in development.
MBDA is jointly owned by Airbus (37.5%), BAE Systems (37.5%), and Leonardo (25%).
Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), a Government of India Enterprise under the Ministry of Defense was established in Hyderabad in the year 1970 to be a manufacturing base for guided missiles and allied defense equipment.
BDL began its journey by producing the 1st Generation Anti -Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) - the French SS11B1. On successful completion of this project, BDL embarked on production of 2nd generation ATGMs – the French MILAN - 2 and Russian Konkurs.
These projects were taken up under license production with technical collaboration from M/s. Euromissile, France and M/s. KBP, Tula, Russia respectively. These products covered a broad spectrum of the requirements of the Indian Army’s infantry and mechanized infantry forces. The productionization process at BDL with a phase-wise transfer-of-technology, laying emphasis on indigenization, has enabled its engineers to gain deep insight into the design concepts and system engineering of ATGMs.
