The Ordnance Factory Kanpur, part of the Indian Ordnance Factories organisation, has developed and placed in production an upgrade armament package for the Russian designed T-54 and T-55 MBT which is armed with a 100 mm D-10 series rifled tank gun, covered in detail later in this section.

This up gun package is based on the UK Royal Ordnance 105 mm L7 series rifled tank gun which has been manufactured in India for many years for the locally built Vijayanta (the UK designed Vickers Mk 1) MBT.

In this application the loader is on the left but for the T-55 upgrade the loader, is on the right.

A significant number of Indian T-54/T-55 MBTs have now been backfitted with this 105 mm up gun package as well as a number of other improvements to extend the operational life of the MBT. This T-54/T-55 MBT upgrade package has been offered on the export market but as far as is known there have been no customers to date.

The main objectives of this upgrade can be summarised as:

(1) to improve the performance of the T-54/T-55 MBT

(2) to enable more effective types of ammunition to be fired with increased armour penetration characteristics

(3) to increase effective range of the gun out to 1,800 m

(4) to use as many parts of the existing 100 mm D-10 gun system as possible.

The main components of the original 100 mm D-10 gun are retained with some modifications to the breech ring, to breech block, guard and balancing weights and ammunition stowage bins.

New components include the 105 mm ordnance complete with fume extractor and thermal sleeve, anti-rotation key, cradle liners, graticule for telescope and emergency firing unit.

Production. In service with the Indian Army in upgraded T-55 MBTs. As far as is known there have been no export sales of this upgrade package.