Indian Army has inducted 210 Israeli spike missiles often dubbed as ‘tank killer’ to its infantry. The Army said the move was to meet the ‘critical operational deficiencies’ of the infantry units, and the lag for inducing indigenously developed Anti-tank guided missiles should not cripple defense requirements.
“The order will be repeated if the man-portable ATGM being developed by DRDO is not ready by next year. We don’t want to be slowed down any longer in plugging our critical operational deficiencies by DRDO,” said an Army source. The first lot of 210 spike missiles together with their launchers were brought with Army Vice chief’s emergency procurement powers. The demand for Spike missiles surged after the bombing of Jaish-e Mohammed training facility in Balakot on February
The highly portable ‘Spike missile’ could be used by infantrymen against advancing Pak tanks and has a strike range of up to 4-km.
Meanwhile, DRDO said India will get its indigenously developed MP-ATGM missile by the year 2020. Test firing of MP-ATGMs is successful and they have state-of-the-art infrared imaging seekers along with advanced avionics. The strike range for MP-ATGM is 2.5km.
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