Vajra Gets the Fast Order. ATAGS Is Still Waiting for Its Moment

On 26 October, the Defence Acquisition Council cleared a proposal worth over Rs 20,000 crore to buy 335 more K-9 Vajra self-propelled howitzers, with more than 70 per cent indigenous content, to be built by Larsen & Toubro. It was part of a wider package of roughly Rs 2.12 lakh crore, nearly 82 per cent of it sourced from Indian industry. Defence sources described it as the biggest artillery procurement in decades.

The Army already fields 200 Vajras. The Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS), the gun India has billed as its first fully indigenous 155 mm design, has a signed contract but no guns in service. The gap between the two programmes says a good deal about how India buys artillery.

An approval, not a purchase

The DAC’s decision is an Acceptance of Necessity, the earliest stage of acquisition. It is followed by requests for proposals, trials and contract negotiations before final contracts are signed. The 335 guns have not been ordered, and delivery dates do not yet exist.

The decision still carries weight. Vajra has a record of moving from order to field quickly. The first 100 were contracted in 2017 and delivered ahead of schedule by February 2021. A follow-on Rs 7,629 crore contract for 100 more was signed in December 2024. The guns were first meant for desert deployment, but were taken to Ladakh for mechanised formations once tensions with China broke out.

Why Vajra is the safer bet

Vajra is the South Korean K9 Thunder built under licence. The first ten came from Hanwha and the remaining ninety from L&T. Because the design was already battle-proven, the programme avoided the open-ended development risk that burdens a clean-sheet weapon. Indigenisation has crept upward with each batch, and the new proposal pushes it past 70 per cent.

For planners facing a long and active border with China, that predictability is worth a great deal. The Army can reorder a known quantity and know roughly what it will get.

ATAGS: a long road to a signed contract

ATAGS followed a harder path. The project began in 2013 under DRDO with Bharat Forge and Tata Advanced Systems. A barrel burst during trials in September 2020 injured four soldiers, and in 2021 the Army said the gun had not met certain parameters in summer trials. The Army also reportedly voiced concerns about its weight and its ability to meet critical performance parameters. The weight is around 18 tons.

Orders stalled even after the trials were largely behind it. One critique argued that production lines sat idle for lack of orders, even as the gun was exported to Armenia.

The contract finally arrived in March 2025: about Rs 6,900 crore for ATAGS and high-mobility towing vehicles, covering 307 guns and 327 vehicles. Reports put the split at 184 guns for Bharat Forge and 123 for Tata Advanced Systems. The Ministry of Defence called it the first major procurement of towed guns from the private sector.

What “stuck” really means

Deliveries are the open question. The programme’s project director said the first regiment of 18 guns would be inducted within a year of the “first of product model test,” a target of February 2027. That date has not yet passed, so ATAGS cannot fairly be called late against its current schedule. It is, however, very late against the original ambition, and nothing will be in service until the first-of-product test is cleared.

Weight remains the structural issue. DRDO is developing a lighter variant, ALTGS, built to the Army’s requirement of a gun under 15 tons, with internal trials expected by late 2026 and induction possible by 2029–2030 if all goes well. That timeline suggests the Army sees the current ATAGS as a plains and desert workhorse and wants something lighter for the mountains.

The wider picture

The contrast reflects the logic of risk in procurement. A licensed platform can be scaled quickly. An indigenous design that has had accidents, trial setbacks and years of order uncertainty will be approached more cautiously, whatever its long-term promise.

The two guns are also not strict rivals. Tracked self-propelled howitzers like Vajra and towed guns like ATAGS fill different roles, and the Army’s artillery rationalisation plan envisions both, along with mounted and ultra-light systems. Delay in one does not cancel the other.

The fairest test of India’s indigenous artillery push is therefore not the size of the Vajra order. It is whether the first ATAGS regiment is actually raised, and whether the guns then perform in the field as designed. If February 2027 holds, the programme will have turned a corner. If it slips again, the case that indigenous design carries its own, avoidable penalty will be harder to dismiss.