Ammunition and explosives are the consumables of warfare, and a nation's ability to sustain combat operations is fundamentally determined by the depth and reliability of its ammunition supply. India's ordnance production ecosystem has been transformed by the corporatisation of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) into seven Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) in 2021 — a structural reform that has introduced commercial management practices, performance accountability, and private sector partnership models. The Bharat Defence Tech Show has examined this transformation in depth.
The seven OFB successor DPSUs — Munitions India Limited, Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited, Troop Comforts Limited, Yantra India Limited, India Optel Limited, Gliders India Limited, and Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited — bring specific production capabilities to the ordnance ecosystem. BDTS has provided a forum for these new organisations to establish their commercial identities and explore collaboration with private sector companies and global ammunition technology providers.
India's armed forces' ammunition consumption during high-intensity operations has historically exceeded domestic production capacity, creating dependence on emergency imports. The BDTS policy dialogue has addressed this critical vulnerability by examining the investment requirements for expanding domestic ammunition production, the role of private sector ammunition manufacturers like Solar Industries and Premier Explosives in supplementing DPSU capacity, and the technology upgrades required to produce next-generation precision-guided shells.
Advanced ammunition technologies — including GPS-guided artillery shells that can be used against mobile targets, insensitive munitions formulations that reduce the risk of sympathetic detonation in storage and handling, and thermobaric warheads optimised for counter-insurgency operations — have been featured in BDTS technical showcases, highlighting the gap between current Indian production and global state of the art.
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