I have reasons to believe that people on this thread already know, whatever you have stated. Nobody supports this position out & out that Everyone knows & openly concurs that it is not vastly superior. Not yet.
What's being said is: Arjun MKII is a decent tank, fulfills IA's GSQR (more or less), has indigenous design & many constituents, & above all, has many things going for it when compared to T-90 (crew comfort, low ground-pressure, vastly superior protection, accurate firepower on the move, ammunition carrying capacity, sensors & decent mobility), so it should be inducted in bigger numbers.
Well, No. The advantage has not vanished at all. In fact, it still maintains the same acceleration levels (top-priority). Only, top-speed has lessened (low-impact).
The Arjun Mk 1 is only superior in some minor factors and as whole system is not better than the T-90. So what sense would it make to induct it into service as main tank instead of the T-90, which is better in many important aspects (armour layout, main gun, ammunition) and at the same time much cheaper?
The Arjun Mk 2 does not fix all of these troubles. It still has the old rifled gun, the same flawed armour layout and apparently it also has the 1,400 hp engine from MTU.
It doesn't have vastly superior protection, because as pointed out in this thread and several others the armour layout of the Arjun is bad: The mantlet is huge, the gunner's main sight is located inside the armour block (instead of behind it or in front of it) and the sides are only covered by storage boxes (no Kanchan there). On Mk 2 ERA is added, but not to the previously mentioned weakpoints.
The Arjun Mk 2 is also not going to have a lower ground pressure than the T-90, unless the reported weight is wrong. It also won't have a better power-to-weight ratio than.
The Arjun Mk 1 managed to fire more accurately than the T-90 in one test, after it was repeated for a second time. The first time the Arjun failed at beating the T-90 and that in the environment for which the Arjun was optimized!
The T-90 can carry 42 rounds of 125 mm ammunition, the Arjun 39 120 mm rounds.
The point of discussion was not which tank is superior to each other... In spite of some short comings here and there we must accept Arjun and go on with incrementally enhancing its capability...
Actually this thread was created for discussing which is the better tank of the two. I agree with you, upgrading the Arjun incrementally makes sense. But not the way it is currently envisioned by many people here, that for some reason 500 or more Arjun Mk 2s should be inducted instead of buying the T-90, which is based on the currently available information not worse than the Arjun Mk 1 and 2.
Many people here have the misbelief that buying indigenous products makes them good. No! Instead of always crying about corruption or stupid officials, when the Army decides to go with a good foreign made product, you rather should start crying about the fact that your indigenous products were not as capable as foreign made ones.
Currently you don't have any war and so you don't need to rush indigenous products into service, when there are better ones available. Only when because of a war no further products can be imported, you actually need indigenous products. The Arjun is "half ready". It does have a lot of flaws in it's current state - it doesn't help you in a war when you have many indigenous products, which all are flawed in some ways and do fail on the battlefield.
The Challengers & Abhram's were not born defect free"¦ their first version was also had short comings but their respective army persisted with it and the later versions had improved capabilities as desired by their army"¦
This comparision however fails. The Abrams (without any "h" in the name) was made as a "low level" tank (lacking dual-axis stabilization, a 120 mm smoothbore gun, an independent commander's sight, having thinner armour, etc.) in it's early years, because of the Congress. In India the Arjun tank programme exceeded the planned costs several times and nothing happened - OTOH the two American tank programmes prior the Abrams both got canceled by the Congress, because they exceeded costs too much. Contrary to the Arjun, all the major upgrades of the Abrams were planned already in the 1970s and the development of them started with the introduction of the Abrams into service.
The Challenger 1 was never upgraded, so there were no "later versions". The short comings of the Challenger 1 were all planned to be there - the British did tkae the IFCS and the L11 tank gun from the Chieftain tank, because they wanted commonality and an early date of introduction. They choose a 1,200 hp engine, because they were satisfied with it's performance.
Don't you know that DRDO states Arjun's weight as 62 tons at one point and 58.5 at the other? This is because they keep mixing up short tons and metric tonnes, if you read these news reports they say that the weight increases from 62 to 67 tons in most likely short tons.
If 67 short tons is converted to metric, it is 60.7 tons, the engine has been turbocharged now and 1500 hp engine is ready.
No, you are making that too easy. All the articles I have read say "tonnes" which is the term explicitly used for metric tons. So either someone used the wrong weight value or alternatively the wrong weight unit. 62 short tons is not the weight of the Arjun Mk 1, because that would be 2 tonnes to light.
