Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Monday kicked off a three-day visit to South Korea to bolster military cooperation with the east Asian country, the army said in a statement.
This is Naravane’s fifth visit to a foreign country during the Covid-19 pandemic after Myanmar, Nepal, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The army chief will hold talks with South Korea’s senior military and civilian leadership during the visit (December 28-30).
Apart from laying a wreath at the National Cemetery and War Memorial at Seoul, Naravane’s itinerary will see him call on the Korean defence minister, army chief, chairman of joint chiefs of staff, and minister of defence acquisition planning administration (DAPA) where he will discuss avenues for enhancing India-South Korea defence ties, the statement said.
He will also visit the Korea Combat Training Centre in Inje County in Gangwon and the Agency for Defence Development (ADD) at Daejeon.
The K9 Vajra-T guns in the army’s inventory represent the collaboration between private sector defence major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and South Korea’s Hanwha Techwin (HTW). In April 2017, the two firms signed a $720-million contract for the Indian Army’s artillery gun programme. L&T has assembled the guns at a facility at Talegaon near Pune in Maharashtra. An improved version of HTW’s K9 Thunder, the K9 Vajra-T has been designed to meet Indian requirements, including those of its desert formations.
A Korean firm was also pursuing a programme to build minesweepers in the country under the Make in India initiative but the plan has failed to take off. Another Korean defence firm is looking at the possibility of supplying the Biho self-propelled anti-aircraft defence system to the Indian military.