National Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has signed the notice awarding Expal Systems a contract to supply and deliver 30 units 81mm mortar for the Philippine Navy (Marines).
The contract is under Mortars (60mm, 81mm and 120mm) Acquisition Project for the Philippine Navy (Marines) under the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Modernization Program.
The 81mm mortar acquisition is under Lot 2 of the said acquisition project. The entire mortars acquisition project has an approved budget of PHP694,452,000.00.
Contract price for the 30 units 81mm mortar is PHP175,705,638.49.
“Lessons learned from previous encounters prompted the Corps to pursue the need to employ a mortar system in order to have the capability to easily provide the necessary combat power for the Marine Rifle Company in support of its units waiting for, or in absence of the Battalion combat support,” says in the description under the Technical Specification of the project.
“Another reason is that apart from being vintage, the current 81mm mortar system in the PMC (Philippine Marine Corps) inventory have been used overtime which makes its quality no longer the same as it was before,” it says.
“Technological advancement is also a prime factor that was considered for this procurement. The advent of the Ballistic Computer will enable our mortar crews to react faster than the manual computation which gives the end user a quick and responsive indirect fire support,” it adds.
(Mintfo)