Nagpur: Solar Group, a private company involved in defence manufacturing in Nagpur, has bagged an order worth Rs 300 crore to export Pinaka rockets to a European country. An order of equal worth has simultaneously gone to Munition India Limited (MIL) — the defence PSU formed out of ordnance factories, a report in local Times of India daily said.
According to the report, this is the first ever export order for rockets which are based on Russian Smerch rockets. The order has to be executed in one and half years. The Indian Army has also floated a Request For Proposal (RFP) for buying more than 9,000 rockets of the Pinaka Area Denial Munition (ADM) version. The RFP is open only for MIL and Solar Group, the ToI report said and added that this is because only Solar Group has got the Transfer of Technology (TOT) for developing the rockets and had cleared the trials recently. The RFP was issued in September end and bids have to be submitted by December.
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23 April 2025
The Army’s order has to be executed over a period of eight years. The estimated cost of a single Pinaka rocket is around Rs 35 lakh. MIL and Solar Group will be bidding for the rockets under the RFP. The company submitting a lower bid will get 60% of the order, the balance going to the other.
Notably, Solar Group will become the first private company to be supplying the rockets to the Army. Even before that it would have exported the rockets to the European country from where it has secured the order.
Developed by the Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE) — an arm of the DRDO, Pinaka is an artillery weapon with a range of over 36 km. In 2009, the erstwhile Ordnance Factory bagged the contract for bulk production of the weapon for the first time. Now a PSU, the MIL is making Pinaka 1 which will be phased out in around two years.
The Pinakar-ADM, for which Solar Group has cleared trials, has bomblets leading to a higher damage in a given area. Following trials, the RFP has been issued for the Pinaka-ADM. Trials have also concluded for Pinaka enhanced range which can fire up to 45 kms. Solar has taken part in trials for this too. The RFP for the advanced range rockets is also expected soon. Trials are expected to be the guided version of Pinaka rockets too which have a range of over 70 km, said the ToI report.
