Bengaluru: Two home-grown defence products from Tata Motors, falling under the Make in India mandate, will be exhibited at the BIMSTEC Nations Summit 2018 in Pune.

The Tata 4X4 Mine Protected Vehicle (MPV) and the WhAP8x8 Infantry Combat Vehicle (ICV), co-developed with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be showcased at the summit.

Both vehicles will be at the Equipment Display Exhibition, which is an extension of BIMSTEC Summit scheduled on September 15 and 16 in Pune.

BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) consists of seven nations from South Asia and South East Asia, including Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan.

Ahead of the summit, from September 11, the militaries from BIMSTEC nations, minus Nepal, have kickstarted a week-long an anti-terror joint exercise at Aundh near Pune, for better cooperation while tackling terrorism.

Tata Motors have been a leading land mobility players in defence. The company says that the flagship vehicles have substantial export potential.

A host of Army Chiefs and over 400 army officers from BIMSTEC nations are at the summit.

The company has already inked military contracts with Myanmar for the supply of Tata Xenon GS 800, Tata 2.5T GS LPTA 715 4x4 to Myanmar and Thailand, Tata 5T GS LPTA 1628 4x4 to Nepal and mission-specific logistic vehicles for various UN peacekeeping missions of BIMSTEC nations.

Tata Motors is the first private sector OEM in India to have developed a WhAP in a record period of 18 months, in collaboration with DRDO. WhAP8x8 (Wheeled Armoured Amphibious Platform) is billed as India’s first ICV, designed for optimised survivability, all-terrain performance and increased lethality.

The ICV boasts of features such as blast, ballistic and NBC protection. This low-maintenance vehicle has a seating capacity of 12 and comes in eight variants.

The modulatory and scalability features, helps the vehicle to be easily modified to cater to various terrain condition and missions.

The MPV is developed to serve as a mine-proof troop transport vehicle, a law enforcement special response vehicle used to counter insurgency, or an escort protection vehicle.

It has best-in-class ground clearance for enhanced cross country mobility and the high power to weight ratio gives enhanced acceleration and maximum speed for quicker response during emergency situation.

Since 1958, Tata Motors have supplied over 1.5 lakh vehicles to the Indian military, paramilitary forces and police forces.

“Our international customers are aware that Tata military vehicles in use by the Indian armed forces are inducted by them, only after gruelling pre-purchase testing, spread over years in different terrain and climate conditions, to exacting military standards,” says Vernon Noronha, vice-president, Tata Motors.

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