India Decodes Soviet Tank Drawings for 80 Yearly Rebuilds by 2028

India’s plan to rebuild 80 T-72 Ajeya and T-90 Bhishma tanks annually at Jabalpur depends on more than constructing another workshop. Engineers must recover decades-old Soviet and Russian manufacturing knowledge, recreate missing overhaul fixtures and expand the project workforce from about 80 people to roughly 650 trained personnel. The ₹462 crore facility is targeting full annual output from April 2028.

Vehicle Factory Jabalpur is being developed as India’s second major tank-overhaul centre, supplementing the established Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi. Both operations belong to Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, the state-owned armored-vehicle manufacturer. Adding Jabalpur reduces the maintenance system’s reliance on one principal site, but the new operation remains under development rather than at its planned production rate.

Old drawings govern new production capacity

The central engineering constraint is tooling. Teams from Jabalpur and Avadi have deciphered nearly 70% of old Russian-language drawings covering specialized fixtures used to dismantle and rebuild the tanks. Where original drawings are unavailable, Indian engineers are producing replacement designs.

Such fixtures are not incidental workshop equipment. They locate, support and constrain large assemblies while technicians remove, inspect and reinstall them. Their geometry, load capacity and alignment affect whether a repeatable overhaul process can be established across multiple workstations. Recovering a drawing is therefore only one step: the equipment must still be manufactured, installed and incorporated into documented procedures.

The task differs from reproducing an ordinary component. A decades-old drawing may rely on obsolete machinery, materials or manufacturing conventions. Engineers must translate its intended function into equipment that can be produced and maintained locally without losing the dimensional control required for repeatable work. Indigenous fixture designs also need to fit the planned factory layout and the sequence in which each vehicle moves through overhaul.

This reconstruction reflects how industrial knowledge can outlast or disappear before the hardware it supports. India signed a contract in 2001 for licensed production of 1,000 T-90 tanks at Avadi after an earlier agreement to procure 310 tanks with technology transfer. Russian specialists helped establish production processes, while Indian engineers trained in Russia. Decades later, keeping the fleet in service requires recovering parts of that accumulated production and overhaul knowledge.

A four-month rebuild must become a continuous flow

A complete tank overhaul is substantially deeper than routine servicing. The vehicle is dismantled, its systems are examined, worn or damaged components are repaired or replaced, and the tank is then reassembled and tested. One overhaul can take approximately four months.

Reaching 80 tanks per year consequently requires many vehicles to move through different stages in parallel. Output will depend on coordinated work areas, parts availability, inspection capacity, lifting and positioning equipment, trained trades and controlled handoffs between dismantling, repair, assembly and testing. The annual target cannot be achieved as a sequence of isolated four-month projects.

Jabalpur’s initial work is concentrated on hulls and turrets. Internal systems are scheduled for a later phase, which makes the present capability narrower than the complete process envisioned for 2028. The remaining program includes completing equipment designs, installing machinery, establishing procedures, arranging the facility around each overhaul stage and qualifying a much larger workforce.

Two pilot tanks establish a starting point

Vehicle Factory Jabalpur received the assignment after completing a pilot overhaul of two T-72 tanks. The pilot, authorized in 2025, demonstrated that the factory could execute a defined overhaul to the Indian Army’s technical and quality requirements. It did not by itself establish the production system needed for 80 vehicles every year.

Workforce growth is now one of the clearest measures of the gap. Around 80 personnel are engaged on the project, while Jabalpur estimates that approximately 650 will be required at full capacity more than eight times the current number. Training has been underway for about two years, with multidisciplinary teams sent to Avadi and specialists from both factories supporting the new operation. AVNL also maintains an Institute of Learning at Avadi, giving the wider organization an existing training structure.

The two completed T-72s show that Jabalpur can perform pilot work. The more demanding milestone is April 2028: by then, decoded drawings, newly designed fixtures, installed equipment, internal-system capability and roughly 650 trained workers must operate as one repeatable production line capable of delivering 80 complete overhauls each year.

By Edward Collins — Senior editor for AMI’s performance systems and mechanical design coverage, focused on powertrains, drivetrain systems, manufacturing precision, materials, and high-performance engineering.