US offers Stryker armoured vehicles and M777 gun upgrade to India

The Stryker armoured vehicle is battlefield tested in Afghanistan and the 155 mm M777 howitzer can be moved to mountain tops using helicopters.

Updated on: Jun 22, 2023, 07:23:52 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Indo-US defence cooperation is set to take an orbital jump after Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US President Joe Biden on Thursday in Washington, with the Pentagon offering New Delhi the “Stryker” family of eight-wheeled armoured fighting vehicles and upgradation of M777 towed howitzers, apart from MQ-9 Reaper drones and the manufacturing of GE-F414 aircraft engines in India under 100% transfer of technology.

Stryker armoured infantry combat vehicle.

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According to officials based in New Delhi and Washington, while the final decision on both Stryker and upgradation of M777 light weight howitzer depends on the conditions offered by the US, the defence equipment deals will be a significant component of the outcomes of the visit which will also see the signing of a deal with Micron for a $ 2.7 billion chip plant in India and a pact on quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

Produced by General Dynamics Land Systems, the Stryker is an eight into eight wheel drive V-hull armoured infantry vehicle for rapid combat response to any insurgency or war-like situation. Armed with a 30 mm cannon and 105 mm mobile gun, the Stryker was used to good effect by the US army and the NATO forces to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan. The US is offering the infantry combat vehicle to India and the Modi government is interested in the local manufacture of the armoured vehicle under the “Atmanirbhar Bharat" route.

India already has 145 M777 howitzers, 120 of which were made by Mahindra Defence Systems in business arrangement with BAE systems.

Read: India to buy drones during Modi's US visit. 5 points about deadly MQ-9B Reapers

According to the officials cited above, the US is also offering to upgrade 155 mm M777 howitzers with precision-guided long range ammunition to counter the artillery challenge on India’s northern borders. India already has 145 M777 howitzers, 120 of which were made by Mahindra Defence Systems in business arrangement with BAE systems. Given the light weight of the gun, the M777 can be transported by helicopters to mountain tops in case of any emergency in Jammu and Kashmir or Arunachal Pradesh.

While India and the US have an MoU over cyber security cooperation, the ties will get further cemented and the mutual convergence will be reflected in the joint statement issued at the end of PM Modi’s visit to the US.

The biggest deal is expected to be for the F-414 aircraft engines that will power indigenously manufactured fighters for the coming decade as well as “hunter-killer” Reaper drones, which will counter the challenge faced by India from China, which has armed drones and has also sold them to Pakistan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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