Four-year-old hunt for army assault rifle may be called off

NEW DELHI: The humble foot-soldier's torturous wait for a new-generation assault rifle may now get longer. India is likely to scrap its four-year-old hunt for new-generation assault rifles with interchangeable barrels for conventional warfare and counter-insurgency operations.

Ordinary infantry jawans are often forgotten in the race for acquiring big-ticket weapons like fighters, helicopters, submarines, tanks, howitzers and the like. Leave alone advanced weaponry, they are even now still to be adequately-equipped with modular bullet-proof jackets, webbing and light-weight ballistic helmets with internal communication gear.

Consequently, the 1.18-million strong Army's quest for new rifles for its 382 infantry battalions was made a "Priority-1" project to address the neglect. But sources on Tuesday said the double-barrel foreign rifles on offer - with a 5.56x45mm primary barrel for conventional warfare and a 7.62x39mm secondary one for counter-terror operations - have "not been found robust enough" for the military operations envisaged when the global tender was floated in 2011.

The project was to kick off with the direct acquisition of 65,000 rifles from the selected foreign vendor, at an estimated cost of around Rs 4,850 crore, to equip the 120 infantry battalions deployed on the western and eastern fronts. The Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) was to then subsequently manufacture over 1,13,000 such rifles after getting transfer of technology from the foreign company.





"Though no final decision has yet been taken, the tender may have to be scrapped. There is a rethink about going in for double-barrel rifles. Other options are already been considered," said a source.

One could be to get a foreign rifle company to shift some of its manufacturing facilities to India. Incidentally, foreign firms like Colt (US), Beretta (Italy), Sig Sauer (Europe), Ceska (Czech) and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) participated in the trials for the double-barrel rifles.

Conversely, the OFB could produce the new assault rifles with foreign collaboration. Weighing around 3.5-kg, the new rifle will need to have advanced night-vision devices, holographic reflex sights, laser designators, detachable under-barrel grenade launchers and the like.

The Army has for long been keen to replace its 5.56mm indigenous INSAS (Indian small arms system) rifles that have suffered from technical bugs since their induction in 1994-95, as reported by TOI earlier.

With an effective range of just 450-metre and weighing over 4.25-kg, INSAS rifles had replaced the even more cumbersome 7.62mm self-loading rifles. The Army also uses over one lakh AK-47s, known the world over for their sheer ruggedness and fail-safe nature, for counter-insurgency operations in J&K and northeast.