Kazakhstan improves artillery with Israeli support

Three new artillery systems have been unveiled by the Kazakhstan armed forces.

They were the subject of a presentation to Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev on 12 May at the training area of the Otar Guards Motor Rifle Division near Alma Aty, and subsequently participated in the Russian-Kazakh airmobile forces' exercise 'Co-operation 2008' in early July.

Developed by Israeli industry under contract to the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defence (MoD), the systems are to be manufactured by local Kazakh companies. Examples are expected to be exported to other countries in the region, including Azerbaijan and the Kyrgyz Republic.

Jane's has learned that the programme covers delivery of "several fully equipped artillery brigades" to customer(s) in Central Asia.

Israel's Soltam has been responsible for developing two of the new Kazakh artillery systems: the Semser 122 mm truck-mounted howitzer and the Aibat 120 mm self-propelled (SP) mortar. Israel Military Industries (IMI) led the team that developed Naiza, a variant of IMI's Lynx autonomous multipurpose rocket system.

All three systems have integrated automated command-and-control (C2) systems, provided by Soltam and Elbit.

In addition, Aeronautics Defense Systems Orbiter mini-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) systems provide aerial reconnaissance, target data and live battle-damage assessment, their output being fed into the overall command architecture of the fire-control system under development for the Kazakh systems.