Couple of things need to be clear, INSAS is the family of firearms, You are talking abt 1B1 ..
I got to hear this alot, Does because its western and foreign means better ??, I am not sure all those shining looking rifle have what use in battle ..
All Western Rifles competing to replace 1B1 failed in trails in India during joint trails 2012 and 2014.
And i have used all three version of 1B1 INSAS in IA, Tell me more that i don`t know abt ..
In 1999, we fought a three-month-long undeclared war with Pakistan. It was also the combat debut of India’s new Insas battle rifle.
During the conflict—waged over the disputed and mountainous Kargil district in the province of Kashmir—the Indian troops’ rifles jammed, and their cheap, 20-round plastic magazines cracked in the cold weather.
To make a terrible weapon worse, the Insas had a habit of
spraying oil directly onto the handler’s face and eyes.
Designed to shoot in semi-automatic and three-round burst modes, some soldiers would pull the trigger, and the gun would unexpectedly spray rounds like a fully automatic.
Soldiers also preferred the heavier 7.62-millimeter rounds in the FAL rifle, which the Insas and its 5.56-millimeter rounds replaced.
Then in 2005, Maoist rebels attacked a Nepalese army base. The Nepalese troops had Insas rifles bought from India. During the 10-hour-long battle, the rifles overheated and stopped working. The Maoists overran the base and killed 43 soldiers.
“Maybe the weapons we were using
were not designed for a long fight,” Nepalese army Brig. Gen. Deepak Gurung said after the battle. “They malfunctioned".
In November, Central Reserve Police—which uses the rifle—finally had enough. The CRPF is a counter-insurgency force tasked with fighting Maoist in several eastern states.
“We have sent a proposal to the government that all Insas rifles with the force be replaced by AK rifles,” CRPF general director Dilip Trivedi told the
Times of India. “The Insas has a problem of jamming. Compared to AK and X-95 guns, Insas fails far more frequently.”
Another CRPF soldier alleged New Delhi chose to “lose the lives of our jawans to promote a
faulty indigenous gun,” he said.
The Insas make up almost half of the CRPF’s arsenal. That’s become an acute problem as Prime Minister Narendra Modi push the counter-insurgents to
crack down hard on the Naxalites.
As part of this offensive, the CRPF is relying more on heavier weapons such as mortars and grenade launchers. At the same time, the Maoists are building bigger bombs to use against the CRPF’s armored, “mine-protected” vehicles.
But there’s larger reasons why the Insas is such an awful gun.
To be sure, India had practical needs for a new weapon. Well into the 1990s, the Army and para-military relied on a mix of old, 1950s-era FALs, Lee-Enfields — first developed in the 1890s — and Russian-made AK-type rifles.
The Insas turned into a hybrid, combining features of both the FAL and the AK-47. But the result was an awkward weapon—and one prone to failure.
A few years ago, a pseudonymous Indian gun blogger inspected several of the rifles.
There’s lots of redundant parts and features that seem to serve no purpose except to make the rifle more complicated and expensive to produce. Its plastic hand guard is wobbly. The gas cylinder—which powers the reloading mechanism—is prone to breaking.
The Insas is also “several times” more expensive than an AK, according to a 2012 report in
The Hindu.
In addition to the plastic parts, there’s “four different kinds of metal, an amalgam
almost guaranteed to impair their functioning in the extreme [mountainous] climates of Siachen and Rajasthan,” the paper added.
Nilkamal Plastics—the Indian plastic furniture giant—produces the crack-prone magazines.
“In the end it shoots fairly accurately and with reasonable reliability,” the gun blogger wrote. “But it’s plagued by shitty quality and needless refinements of dubious value.”
After the poor performance in the Kargil War, the Indian Army fixed some of the rifle’s flaws—such as the problem with the spraying oil. But the rifle still sucks.
Last year, the Army tested the Israeli Galil ACE, the American CM-901 Modular Carbine and the Italian ARX-160 rifles as a potential replacements. But it’ll still take years to swap out the Insas. And that’s a big if.
But remember what the counter-insurgency troops said. India could always buy more AKs.
I would like to know about Trichy Assault Rifles. It created some buzz...stated to be better than AK-47.
