Now, army wants to dump the indigenous Insas rifle

Yet another move by the Indian Army to dump indigenous equipment has come under sharp focus within the services and outside. The decision to look for a foreign replacement for the Indian small arms system (Insas) assault rifle — the standard rifle of an Indian soldier — came as the army is under attack from various quarters for its resistance to the Arjun tank.

The Insas and Arjun are indigenously made, and are among rare successes for India, which is heavily dependent on foreign firms for defence equipment.

The army wants to dump the Insas as it allegedly doesn’t measure up to its requirements. One of the arguments is that it does not instantly kill the enemy. But its defenders pointed out that it was not supposed to kill the enemy, but injure him so that in a battlefield more of his fellow soldiers are busy evacuating the injured.

A serving senior officer from the infantry said it was baffling that the infantry directorate has issued a global tender for replacing the Insas. “It has been designed precisely according to our quality requirements. If we have new requirements, we should ask the ordnance factory board to rework it, and not scrap the project,” the officer, who was involved in the induction of Insas, told DNA. He pointed out that the rifle had undergone several refinements, so it is now a “good weapon”.

Insas is a 5.56mm rifle, and performs as well as any in its class, argued its supporters. “It may not be as finished as others, but then you get an Insas for only Rs24,000. Its comparative guns are in the range of Rs1.25 lakh,” an official pointed out.

The global RFP (request for proposal) issued for a new assault rifle for the army stipulated that it had to be lighter than 3.5kg, making impossible for the Insas to even compete in the tender; an Insas weighs 4.1kg.