Key facts
- Type
- Main battle tank
- Place of origin
- India
- Designer
- Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment
- Designed
- 1983–1996
- Manufacturer
- Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited (at Heavy Vehicles Factory )
- Developed into
- Future Main Battle Tank
- Produced
- 2004– present
- Number span no built
- 141 (as of 2021)
- Variants
- See Variants
- Mass
- MK1 : 58.5 tonnes (57.6 long tons; 64.5 short tons), MK1A : 68 tonnes (67 long tons; 75 short tons)
- Length
- MK1 : 10.19 metres (33 ft 5 in), MK1A : 10.64 metres (34 ft 11 in)
- Width
- MK1 : 3.85 metres (12 ft 8 in), MK1A : 3.95 metres (13 ft 0 in)
- Height
- MK1 : 2.32 metres (7 ft 7 in), MK1A : ~2.8 metres (9 ft 2 in)
- Crew
- 4 (commander, gunner, loader and driver)
- Armour
- ERA–NERA , Kanchan armour
- Main armament
- 1× 120 mm rifled tank gun able to fire LAHAT , SAMHO , HEAT , APFSDS , HESH , PCB, Thermobaric rounds , (Rate of fire: 6–8 rounds/minute, total: 42 containerized rounds)
- Secondary armament
- 1 × NSV 12.7mm AA MG on BEL RCWS , 1 × MAG 7.62 mm Tk715 coaxial MG, 12 × 81mm AT-AL smoke grenades. ( MK1 ) 16 × 81mm AT-AL smoke grenades. ( MK1A )
- Engine
- MK1 : MTU MB 838 Ka-501 V10 ; 1,400 hp (1,030 kW) liquid-cooled turbocharged diesel engine , MK1A : DATRAN ; 1,500 hp (1,118 kW) V12 engine
via Wikipedia infobox
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Arjun ( pronounced [ɐɽˈdʑʊn]) is a third generation main battle tank developed by the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), for the Indian Army. The tank is named after Arjuna, the archer prince who is the main protagonist of the Indian epic poem Mahabharata. Design work began in 1986 and was finished in 1996. The Arjun main battle tank entered service with the Indian Army in 2004. The 43rd Armoured Regiment was the first regiment to receive the Arjun.
The Arjun features a 120 mm rifled main gun with indigenously developed armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot ammunition, one PKT 7.62 mm coaxial machine gun and a NSVT 12.7 mm machine gun. Powered by a single MTU multi-fuel diesel engine rated at 1,400 hp, it can achieve a maximum speed of 70 km/h (43 mph) and a cross-country speed of 40 km/h (25 mph). It has a four-man crew: commander, gunner, loader and driver.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Arjun” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.