German defense giant Rheinmetall AG has expressed its interest in setting up a manufacturing facility for its Lynx armored vehicles in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, under the “UP Defense Corridor” initiative.
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The news comes right after Hungary’s deal with Rheinmetall to produce the same Lynx Armoured Fighting Vehicles in the country, under its military modernization program.
On Monday evening, the CEO of the Rheinmetall Electronics Division, Susanne Wiegand, and the CEO of Rheinmetall Air Defense, Fabian Ochsner, held a video conference with the UP’s investment and promotion of MSME minister Siddharth Nath Singh over the proposed investment in the state.
Under the new push by the government for setting up manufacturing plants in India, the Uttar Pradesh government’s UP Defense Corridor initiative has seen the signing of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with more than 20 companies worth Rs. 50,000 crore.
The government shall provide the potential investment location plans to the company via Google Maps, with details of the land banks, surrounding infrastructure, facilities, and incentives to be provided to them by the state.
The UP Defense Corridor spans over more than 5,000 hectares of land with well-connected transportation systems along the country’s national highways and state expressways.
Assuring the company of the facilities provided by the state government, Singh offered other defense opportunities including setting up a centre for excellence and support of esteemed institutions like IITs, and incubation centres.
“UP’s policies across different sectors offer major incentives to investors, making the state a highly sought after investment hub”, he stated.
Speaking of the corridor, the Additional Chief Secretary, MSME, Navneet Sehgal said, “There are six nodes along this corridor with a proposed area of 5071.9 hectares. Major progress has already been made in land acquisition across all nodes. The industry will be supported through a strong defense ecosystem with five ordnance factories and three units of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL)”.
The defense corridor is one of the main projects initiated by the current state government under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The Lynx Armoured Fighting Vehicle is an advanced armored fighting vehicle that might compete for the Indian Army’s FICV (Future Infantry Combat Vehicle) project, which is expected to replace the aging BMP vehicles for the mechanized and armored forces.
The Lynx’s IFV configuration allows it to mount a LANCE turret with a 30- or 35-mm cannon, and a secondary armament of a coaxial 7.62mm general-purpose machine gun along with provisions of carrying ATGMs and smoke grenade launchers.
The vehicle is highly modular and can be modified for usage as a mobile command and control center, armored surveillance, field ambulance, APC, or as a recovery vehicle.
