Lieutenant General Adosh Kumar, Director General of Artillery in the Indian Army, said that work is being done to increase the range and firepower of the Pinaka MLRS.
Work is being done on firing the special Area Denial Munition (ADM) from the Pinaka ,which scatters landmines over a large area to prevent enemy forces from advancing.
Mining is currently done by army engineers and is risky and time-consuming.
"We will increase the range of Pinaka by four times and bring it in the category of the best rocket launchers in the world," Kumar said. "The progress of this work is satisfactory and it will become a tremendous weapon."
The Pinaka has served with the Indian Army for almost three decades. Each launcher has 12 tubes for rockets of 122mm calibre. The full load can be fired in just 44 seconds. The launcher is mounted on a high-mobility truck so that it can be moved into position rapidly.
The Pinaka's range was originally 37.5km, but that has since been increased to 75km. Final tests of the 90km-range Pinaka rocket are underway, and work on rockets with a range of 120km and 300km is ongoing.
At present, the Indian Army's artillery corps has four regiments of Pinaka MLRS, while the formation of six more regiments has been approved by the government. There are plans to increase the number of Pinaka regiments to 22 in the next six years.
Along with extending the system's range, its calibre has been increased from 122mm to 214mm. A battery of six launchers can completely destroy an area of 1000 meters by 1000 meters in just 44 seconds.