SIG 716 G2 Patrol battlefield rifle
A country which aspires to be a superpower but lacks a robust indigenous defence industrial base is an oxymoron. To project power one needs to have a well-equipped and capable military which can fight and defeat threats not only inside and on its borders but also within its area of interest which stretches far beyond its borders.
Does India, a major nuclear power with ambitions to one day rub shoulders with US and China, has the military industrial strength to arm and equip its military to do that?
With a large standing army and one of the fastest growing economies in the world, ideally India should have a thriving indigenous defence industry but sadly that is not the case.
We import everything from a basic infantry rifle, the primary tool of an infantry soldier, to tanks, state-of-the-art fighter aircraft and ships.
Let’s start with the rifle, the primary arm of a soldier who goes into battle, be it a conventional war or counter-insurgency operations.
A few days back Chief of the Army Staff General General Bipin Rawat said that by the end of the year Indian Army will start getting the ‘best rifle’ in the world. He was referring to the SIG 716 G2 Patrol battlefield rifle, which the army selected after extensive trials late in 2018.
Around 72,400 of these rifles in 7.62x51mm calibre will be imported from the US-based manufacturer and equip frontline infantry units which are deployed on the country’s border with Pakistan and China.
The rest of the army will be equipped with the Russian Kalashnikov AK-203 assault rifle in the 7.62x39mm calibre. A factory has come up in Amethi in Uttar Pradesh to manufacture around 7.5 lakh rifles.
At the moment soldiers of the Indian Army are supplied with the indigenous Indian Small Arms System (INSAS) 5.56x45mm assault rifle, which will be replaced by SIG and AK-203 rifles. The INSAS has been in service since the mid-90s and equips all infantry battalions, the main fighting arm of the army.
There have been numerous reports saying that soldiers are unhappy with the performance of the rifle. Defects range from the brittle construction of the plastic parts to the rifle shooting in full automatic mode when it is not meant to and so on.
In counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir and the north east, soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles, the premier counter-insurgency force, don’t carry INSAS but AK-47s and it variants which have imported in large numbers from former Warsaw Pact countries like Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany etc over the last 30 years.
This has been necessitated because the volume of fire unleashed by the AK and its near bullet-proof reliability can’t be matched by the INSAS. By the way, all militant groups operating in India and everywhere else have armed their cadre with the AK-47 because it is cheap, available in numbers and very reliable.
It is incredulous that a firearm which has been in service for close to 25 years hasn’t had its defects removed and made better and more reliable. The Kalashnikov AK-47, which is the most popular and successful firearm in the history of mankind was designed by a Russian army sergeant when he was recuperating from battle injuries right after the Second World War.
It was near perfect and a few changes and modifications made it even better and by the late 40s and early 50s it had become the weapon of choice for many armies across the world.
If a Russian could make such lethal weapon which is so simple to operate and maintain and is a byword for reliability, way back in the 1940s, can’t Indian small arms designers in the 21st century remove the niggles of the INSAS and make it perfect? Is it rocket science? Not at all! But the people in charge of the INSAS programme appear to think so. They have given up trying after ‘improved’ INSAS models they came up didn’t meet the expectations of the army.
The INSAS will be gradually phased out from frontline use and will be used by paramilitary forces like Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, state police forces and the like.
All major powers like the US, China, Russia, UK etc don’t import a basic weapon such as a rifle for their defence forces. India is unique in this sense. While we have mastered the science of sending spacecraft to the Moon and as far as Mars, yet we find it hard to master the designing and manufacturing of a lethal and reliable weapon as rudimentary as a rifle.
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Ramandeep Singh Bajwa, Senior Associate Editor
bajwa.rs@gmail.com
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