All you need to know about Milan anti-tank guided missiles that India is set to procure from France

New Delhi, Jan 25: The Indian Army is planning to buy more than 3,000 Milan 2T anti-tank guided missiles from France. This will significantly bolster the Army's capability to thwart off advancing armoured divisions of the enemy.

An anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-armour guided missile or anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) is a missile that is created to destroy vehicles that are heavily armoured.

Indian Army requires around 70,000 anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) of various types and around 850 launchers of different types. The Indian Army is planning to procure third-generation ATGMs with a longer range than that of its existing Milan-2T and Konkurs ATGMs.

After years of struggles with the development of the Nag third generation "fire-and-forget" anti-tank guided missile by India, it is literally raining Anti-Tank Missile Systems as India builds on the technological capabilities which were developed over the years and expertise developed that India has started many parallel projects which are fast maturing and soon India will not require them to be acquired from abroad anymore. But, this particilar deal seems like a stopgap arrangement till the indegenous systems are fully ready.

Indigenous anti-tank missiles:

NAG, HELINA, SANT (Stand-off Anti Tank) Missile, Cannon-launched Laser Guided Missile (CLGM), SAMHO, AMOGHA-1, AMOGHA-2, AMOGHA-3 are some of the indigenous anti-tank weapons that have either been sucessfully tested or under development.

The issue with DRDO is that it takes so long to develop weapons that the forces have to reply on imports.

MILAN Anti-Tank Missile System:

MILAN is a portable medium-range, anti-tank weapon manufactured by Euromissile, based in Fontenay-aux-Roses in France. Euromissile is a consortium originally set up by Aerospatiale-Matra of France and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace of Germany, now a subsidiary of the EADS company.

The munition consists of the missile in a waterproof launch tube. MILAN 2 has a single shaped charge warhead for use against very thick and composite armour. MILAN 2T and MILAN 3 missiles are armed with a tandem charge for use against reactive armour.

The first stage burns for 1.5s to eject the missile from the launcher to a distance of about 3m, and then the second stage burns for 11s giving a speed of over 200m/s and maximum range of 2km for a 12.5s time-of-flight, as per army-technology.com.

The MILAN 2 variant, which entered service with the French, German and British armies in 1984, utilizes an improved 115 mm HEAT warhead. The MILAN 3 entered service with the French army in 1995 and features a new-generation localizer that makes the system more difficult to jam electronically.