Army scraps the world's largest assault rifle tender

[Hari Sud]

India’s soldiers still have to fight with clunky, outdated and unreliable rifles


(This following article written or authored by Daniel Ismail of Reuter or Janes is lamenting about loss of contract to supply 65,000 or more assault rifles for India Army. He fails to state that tests on foreign assault rifles failed miserably, hence the project was scrapped. He foul mouths INSAS with old and outdated problems which have been fixed.

Ha..... Ha..... Ha. Having trouble digesting the failure to make the cut the Indian requirement of assault rifle, the Western suppliers have turned to foul mouth Indian made supply)



One of the world’s largest tenders for assault rifles has been scrapped. And, as a result, one of the world’s largest armies must continue to wait for reliable weapons for its frontline troops.Last month, after four years of deliberations, India’s defence ministry finally called off a project worth Rs4,850 crore ($765 million) to purchase 65,678 new assault rifles for the world’s third largest standing army. Assault rifles are weapons primarily used by the army’s infantry troops.

“I can confirm to you the information that the Indian Government has cancelled the tender,” Hana Smilkova, a spokesperson for Czech-rifle maker Ceska zbrojovka A.S, told Quartz via email. A defence ministry spokesperson did not respond to phone calls or messages from Quartz.

According to the 2011 tender, 65,678 assault rifles were to be procured from one of the five international companies that were invited for trials, with an option to make another 113,000 in India through technology transfers. American gunmaker Colt, Italy’s Beretta, Czech Republic’s Ceska, Israel Weapon Industries and SiG Sauer of Switzerland were the other companies selected for trials.

“The army remains without a critical and basic weapon system for the infantry, that forms the bulk of the fighting force,” James Hardy, Asia-Pacific editor for IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, told Quartz via email.
For long, the Indian Army has attempted to find a replacement for its 5.56mm indigenous INSAS (Indian small arms system) rifle,which is currently in use. India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had started work on the INSAS rifles in the early 1980s based on some foreign weapon designs, including the Kalashnikov. The prototype was finally designed in 1986 and went into bulk production in 1994. These rifles were introduced as a replacement for the much heavier 7.62mm self-loading rifles.

But the INSAS rifles were also known to have defects, which became increasingly prominent after the Kargil war of 1999. In 2003, for instance, a major revamp of the rifle was carried out as it reportedly splashed oil on the faces of soldiers while firing, if excess oil was used to clean the weapon. In 2010, before the tender was issued, as many as 69 incidents or defects were reported.

“It is inefficient and unable to operate in cold and hot climates,” said Hardy. This is a problem given the frontline terrain where the Indian Army is deployed.

That’s why a new weapon for the Indian infantry is so critical, although the procurement process was not without its problems. The rifles, according to the tender, were to have interchangeable barrels that can fire both the 5.56 mm INSAS and the 7.62 mm AK-47 rounds, which isn’t a particularly popular configuration.
“The assault rifle project was flawed from the beginning,” Ajai Shukla, a defence expert and a former Colonel in the Indian Army, said. “The costs were high and no country in the world uses such kind of rifles. It should have been scrapped a long time ago.”

Earlier this year, India’s army chief General Dalbir Singh had listed assault rifles as one of the seven most critical requirements of his troops. But with this tender scrapped, the Indian Army must now wait for a few more years before getting its hands on a new, reliable rifle.

http://idrw.org/indias-soldiers-still-have-to-fight-with-clunky-outdated-and-unreliable-rifles/

 

[Bhadra]

@Hari Sud

If Army has scraped World's Biggest Assault Rifle Tender and choosen your third class product, be happy and scrap your useless rants...

Ha Ha Ha ... No meaning..

Respect it and carry on...

still you wish to vent your rants and bad mouth someone for whom you work..

 

[Hari Sud]

Before I answer you, I like to know your identity a bit more accurately.

Who are you anyway? Your flag is Indian, you have "Banned" attached to you. So are you a well informed Paki or Chinni, paid to hijack any fruitful discussion on this thread and any thread?

My is not a useless rant. All the western rifles which underwent tests in India failed. The west is having difficulty digesting that news and have hired useless fellows like you to carry the worthless rant farther.

@Hari Sud

If Army has scraped World's Biggest Assault Rifle Tender and choosen your third class product, be happy and scrap your useless rants...

Ha Ha Ha ... No meaning..

Respect it and carry on...

still you wish to vent your rants and bad mouth someone for whom you work..

 

[pmaitra]

@Hari Sud, that "Banned" tag appears to be a technical glitch, and has not been deliberately attached. He is not banned, and that is obvious because he is able to post. The technical staff has been notified about the glitch. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Coming back to the topic, Jane's Defence Weekly is not a philanthropic organization. It is a western organization and the people who work for it are not volunteers. They get paid to do whatever they do. Jane's Defence Weekly is owned by IHS Inc., based out of Colorado, USA, and is traded in the New York Stock Exchange.

We have already found out wrong map being published by Jane's Defence Weekly alleging Russian troops around Belgorod, and that has been posted in DFI about a year ago.

Many people swear by Jane's Defence Weekly. Personally, I don't trust them.

 

[Bhadra]

Before I answer you, I like to know your identity a bit more accurately.

Who are you anyway? Your flag is Indian, you have "Banned" attached to you. So are you a well informed Paki or Chinni, paid to hijack any fruitful discussion on this thread and any thread?

My is not a useless rant. All the western rifles which underwent tests in India failed. The west is having difficulty digesting that news and have hired useless fellows like you to carry the worthless rant farther.

@Hari Sud

By calling me a Pakistani you are trying to devise a new method of howling ..... hooooowwwwllllllllllllllll....

 

[Hari Sud]

@Hari Sud, that "Banned" tag appears to be a technical glitch, and has not been deliberately attached. He is not banned, and that is obvious because he is able to post. The technical staff has been notified about the glitch. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Coming back to the topic, Jane's Defence Weekly is not a philanthropic organization. It is a western organization and the people who work for it are not volunteers. They get paid to do whatever they do. Jane's Defence Weekly is owned by IHS Inc., based out of Colorado, USA, and is traded in the New York Stock Exchange.

We have already found out wrong map being published by Jane's Defence Weekly alleging Russian troops around Belgorod, and that has been posted in DFI about a year ago.

Many people swear by Jane's Defence Weekly. Personally, I don't trust them.

Got your point Mr. Moderator.

But how do you remove people like Bhadra from The Forum. In Pakistani Defence Forum, a person like Bhadra is given two warnings and then removed from posting for a week or a month etc. Why can we not have that policy here too. I noticed that Pakistani Defence Forum has an Indian section too. There are more visitors, (Indian Flag) in that section than in DFI. Why?

Because they are frustrated by excessive allowance given to people like Bhadra.

 

[Bhadra]

Army plans request for information for single calibre assault rifle
Published July 7, 2015 | By admin
SOURCE : PTI

http://idrw.org/army-plans-request-for-information-for-single-calibre-assault-rifle/#more-67929

The Indian Army is likely to soon issue a ‘Request for Information’ for a new single calibre assault rifle to replace its INSAS rifles after it scrapped a four-year-old tender for purchasing 1.8 lakh multi-calibre weapons. Defence sources also ruled out that the army has shortlisted any particular gun to replace the INSAS, which had entered service in the late 1990s.

“A Request for Information is likely to be issued soon for single calibre guns. This will be open to all,” sources said, adding that the project would finally be taken up as part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative.

Army had initially wanted a rifle with interchangeable barrels firing different calibres — the 5.56-mm INSAS round and the 7.62-mm AK-47 round.

That was because troops use AK-47s in counter-insurgency operations while the INSAS rifles are issued for peace stations.

However, none of the firms which had pitched for the contract could satisfy the army with sources saying that the General Staff Qualitative Requirements “could well have been too ambitious”.

“There was no point on working on something that cannot be worked out,” the sources added.

Army had on June 15 informed the four short-listed international firms that it was retracting the multi-crore contract.

-----------------------------------------------------------------


So the partying was immature ...

 

[Bhadra]

There will a competition for the Design of single calibre Assault Rifle Through RFI....

So responds to RFI ... Hadkamp in the Camp ... Hadkamp..

 

[Abhijeet Dey]

Indian Army is wasting a lot of time in procurement of new assault rifles. It seems as if import lobbyists in the Defence ministry have been given a second chance. Moreover if this is how Indian military procurements are going to be in the coming future then they should start tender for new Helmets and bulletproof jackets right now.

 

[marrakesh]

Indian Army is wasting a lot of time in procurement of new assault rifles. It seems as if import lobbyists in the Defence ministry have been given a second chance. Moreover if this is how Indian military procurements are going to be in the coming future then they should start tender for new Helmets and bulletproof jackets right now.

Gold words! Assault rifle is just a piece of equipment. Helmet, body armor, tools for communications, positioning and monitoring, clothing, carrying bags - all those should be a single set for Infantry.

 

[Bhadra]

Gold words! Assault rifle is just a piece of equipment. Helmet, body armor, tools for communications, positioning and monitoring, clothing, carrying bags - all those should be a single set for Infantry.

INSAS does mean Infantry Soldiers as a System which includes everything that a soldier is supposed to be equipped with.

How ever these guys are stuck with AR only.

 

[Hari Sud]

First thing, first:

Fire all those who are connected with the previous assault rifle RFI preparation. They call them experts but proved to be inadequate for the job. The GQSR, methodology has turned out to be self serving and flawed, it should be disband and replaced with a lot more effective structure to procure hardware.

Anything you do to reduce the influence of arms lobbyists in the Army and the Defence Ministry will be a step in the right direction.

That lethargic testing procedure be accelrated.

 

[Bhadra]

@Hari Sud

Say something constructive rather than howl at the system outside. First have a look at your system wherever you are - DRDO or OFV or MoD.

Read this backgrounder to realise what a deep trouble is Indian Army in on a issue like Small Arms,. Though tha article in time lined 2014, it still is relevant :

Opinion » Lead July 4, 2014
Updated: July 4, 2014 00:28 IST

The big deal about the Army’s small arms

Even deciding on a multi-purpose tool, akin to a Swiss knife, for example, has been delayed despite trials in 2011 featuring European and American vendors.

Shortly after taking over as the Chief of Army Staff in May 2012, General Bikram Singh had emphatically declared that upgrading the small arms profile of his force was his foremost priority.

Two years later, as Gen. Singh prepares to retire in end July, neither the 5.56mm close quarter battle (CQB) carbines nor the multi-calibre assault rifles he promised are anywhere in sight for the Army’s 359 infantry units and over 100 Special Forces and counter-insurgency battalions, including the Rashtriya Rifles and Assam Rifles.

The Army’s prevailing operational reality is that it does not own a carbine as the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) ceased manufacture of all variants of the WWII 9mm carbines, including ammunition, around 2010.

And, two years later, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) finally endorsed the Army’s persistent complaints regarding the inefficiency of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-designed INdian Small Arms System (INSAS) 5.56x39mm assault rifles. It agreed that they needed replacing.

The former Defence Minister, A.K. Antony, was forced into admitting in Parliament in late 2012 that the INSAS rifles had been overtaken by “technological development” — a euphemism for a poorly designed weapon system which the Army grudgingly began employing in the late 1990s and, unceasingly, had complained about ever since.

Among largest arms programmes

The Army’s immediate requirement is for around 1,60,080 CQB carbines and over 2,20,000 assault rifles that it aims on meeting through a combination of imports and licensed-manufacture by the OFB. Ultimately, the paramilitaries and special commando units of respective State police forces too will employ either or both weapon systems in what will possibly be one of the world’s largest small arms programmes worth $7-$8 billion.

Gen. Singh’s guarantees, however, remain delusional and, expectedly unaccountable. And, in time-honoured Indian Army tradition, they will now be transferred to his successor, the Army Chief-designate, Lieutenant Gen. Dalbir Singh Suhag, to vindicate.

An optimistic time frame in inking the import of 44,618 carbines, which have been undergoing an unending series of trials since August 2012, is another 12-18 months away if not beyond. The deadline to acquire assault rifles, trials for which are scheduled to begin in August, is even longer — certainly not before 2016-17, if not later.

Till then, the Army faces a fait accompli of making do without carbines, a basic infantry weapon. It will also have to make do with inefficient INSAS assault rifles, another indispensable small arm for the force’s largest fighting arm.

Currently, three overseas vendors are undergoing “confirmatory” trials at defence establishments and weapon testing facilities in Dehradun, Kanpur, Mhow and Pune with their CQB carbines. The November 2011 tender for CQB carbines also includes the import of 33.6 million rounds of ammunition.

Competing rivals include Italy’s Baretta, fielding its ARX-160 model, Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) with its Galil ACE carbine and the U.S. Colt featuring the M4. The U.S. subsidiary of Swiss gunmaker Sig Sauer, which was originally part of the tender with its 516 Patrol Rifle, has failed to turn up at the ongoing carbine trials.

Sig is under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on charges of alleged corruption in potentially supplying its wares to the Indian paramilitaries. Alleged arms dealer, Abhishek Verma and his Romanian wife, Anca Neacsu — both are in Tihar jail — once represented Sig’s operations in India.

Inefficiencies

The carbine trials, expected to conclude by mid-July, will be followed by a final report by the Army, grading the vendors on the performance of their systems. Thereafter, the MoD will open their respective commercial bids, submitted over two years earlier and begin price negotiations with the lowest qualified bidder — or L1 — before inking the deal.

According to insiders associated with the project, this intricate process is almost certain to be protracted, despite the inordinately high expectations of efficiency from the Narendra Modi government. They believe the carbine contract is unlikely to be sealed within the current financial year. However, once signed, weapon and ammunition deliveries are to be concluded within 18 months alongside the transfer of technology to the OFB to licence build the designated carbine.

In short, no Army unit will be equipped with a carbine till well into 2016.

The saga of the assault rifles is even starker.

A multi-service internal review in 2012 of the INSAS assault rifles revealed that they were made from four different kinds of metal, an amalgam almost guaranteed to impair their functioning in the extreme climates of Siachen and Rajasthan.

Surprisingly, the Indian Air Force was the most vociferous in castigating the DRDO over as many as 53 operational inefficiencies in the rifle that the country’s prime weapons development agency took nearly two decades to develop and at great cost.

Inexplicably, the DRDO insisted on the OFB developing the SS-109 round, an extended variant of the SS-109 NATO-standard cartridge for 5.56x39mm rifles aimed at achieving marginally longer range, a capability unnecessary for such a weapon system. This operational superfluity delayed the INSAS programme as it required the import of specialised and expensive German machinery and necessitated the “stop gap” import of millions of ammunition rounds from Israel.

The DRDO-designed and OFB-built rifle also cost several times more than AK-47 assault rifles of which around 100,000 were imported from Bulgaria in the early 1990s for less than $100 each as an “interim” measure at a time when the Kashmiri insurgency was its most virulent and Islamist militants better armed than Army troopers.

The MoD issued the tender for 66,000 5.56mm multi-calibre assault rifles in November 2011 to 43 overseas vendors, five of who responded early the following year.

The competing rifles, required to weigh no more than 3.6kg and to convert readily from 5.56x45mm to 7.62x39mm merely by switching the barrel and magazine for employment in counter-insurgency or conventional roles, include the Czech Republic’s CZ 805 BREN model, IWI’s ACE 1, Baretta’s ARX 160, Colt’s Combat Rifle and Sig Sauer’s SG551. The latter’s participation, however, remains uncertain. A transfer of technology to the OFB to locally build the selected rifle is part of the tender.

Meanwhile, field trials for the rifles are scheduled for early August, nearly 30 months after bids were submitted, as that is the extended time period it surprisingly takes the Army to conduct a paper evaluation of five systems.

But these too have already run into easily avoidable problems.

On security grounds, the rifle vendors are objecting to the Army’s choice of its firing range at Kleeth in the Akhnoor sector hugging the Line of Control (LoC) as the venue for the initial round of trials. A final decision on this is awaited. Thereafter, other trials will follow in diverse weather conditions in Leh, Rajasthan and high humidity areas, all regions where the assault rifles will eventually be employed.

Transforming the soldier

Acquiring these modular, multi-calibre suite of small arms is just part of the Army’s long-delayed Future-Infantry Soldier As a System (F-INSAS) programme envisaged in 2005, but interminably delayed.

The F-INSAS aims at deploying a fully networked infantry in varied terrain and in all-weather conditions with enhanced firepower and mobility for the digitised battlefield. It seeks to transform the infantry soldier into a self-contained fighting machine to enable him to operate across the entire spectrum of war, including nuclear and low intensity conflict, in a network-centric environment.

But senior military officers concede this programme stands delayed by six to seven years almost exclusively because of the Army’s inability in formulating qualitative requirements (QR) to acquire many of these ambitious capabilities.

Even deciding on a multi-purpose tool, akin to a Swiss knife, for example, has been delayed despite trials in 2011 featuring European and American vendors. Officers associated with F-INSAS said this, like other equipment acquisitions, was due to the Army’s rigid procedures, inefficiencies and inability to take timely decisions.

The Army continually blames the MoD for creating bureaucratic hurdles in its modernisation efforts, but fails in acknowledging its own shortcomings in drawing up realistic QRs, conducting timely trials and, above all, realistically determining its operational needs and working towards them economically.

Senior officers privately concede that the “uniforms” are largely responsible for the lack of modernisation, but manage to successfully deflect their own limitations sideways onto the MoD.

Gen. Singh’s tenure, like several other chiefs before him, exemplifies this. It is highlighted by their collective inability to even incrementally upgrade the Army’s war waging capacity be it night fighting capability for its armour fleet, modern artillery, light utility and attack helicopters or infantry combat vehicles, among others.

(Rahul Bedi is a New Delhi-based defence analyst.)

 

[Bhadra]

@Hari Sud

Now that the Competitions and trails are over - why do not you write the GSQR - let us see you.

 

[Bhadra]

India to renew hunt for assault rifles after scrapping 4-yr-old tender
TNN | Jul 2, 2015, 08.13AM IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ping-4-yr-old-tender/articleshow/47905147.cms


NEW DELHI: India will now re-launch the hunt for new-generation assault rifles for its 1.18-million strong Army, following the scrapping its four-year-old tender for the guns worth around Rs 4,850 crore.

TOI on May 20 had reported that the proposed mega project for the assault rifles, with interchangeable barrels for conventional warfare and counter-insurgency operations, was on the verge of being scrapped since it had run into major problems.

Now, the armament firms that had participated in the extensive trials -- Colt (US), Beretta (Italy), Ceska (Czech) and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) - have been told that the proposed contract was being retracted.

This is a serious blow to the long-standing demand for new rifles to replace the 5.56mm indigenous INSAS (Indian small arms system) guns, which have suffered from technical bugs since their induction in 1994-95.

As per the now-cancelled project, 65,000 rifles were to be directly acquired from the selected foreign vendor 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.

But the proposal for the new rifles -- with a 5.56x45mm primary barrel for conventional warfare and a 7.62x39mm secondary one for counter-terror operations - was found to be "impractical" both in terms of high costs and technical requirements, said sources.

The plan now is to either get a foreign arms company to shift some of its manufacturing facilities to India or task the OFB to manufacture the new assault rifles with foreign collaboration.

Weighing around 3.5-kg, the new rifle will need to have a 1-km range, advanced night-vision devices, holographic reflex sights, laser designators, detachable under-barrel grenade launchers and the like.

The INSAS rifles, with an effective range of just 450-metre and weighing over 4.25-kg, 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

 

[sob]

This is nonsense going on. We cannot decide on a AR and the process has to take years.

One day we get reports that the Excalibur has been accepted with minor modifications and MCIWS will undergo trials soon. Now we get report we are going back to the tender again. Nonsense, utter trash.

 

[pmaitra]

Lots of conflicting reports. I guess we cannot decide which report is true. Anyway, here are a few things about the scrapped tender:

India Scraps Assault Rifle Competition
Excerpts:

Army officials say the specifications were deeply flawed. Five international firms — Beretta of Italy, Israeli Weapons Industries (IWI), Colt Defense of the US, Ceska Zbplojovka of Czech Republic — were shortlisted.

All the weapons they presented for the trials were prototypes, meaning, none of them were actually in service with their respective armies.

The contract appeared doomed right at the start in 2012 when the Army first delayed the technical evaluation of the rifles. Companies then began asking for extensions for sample submission. As of 2015, no trials of the competing weapons were conducted.

A whiff of corruption accompanied the contract. It was speculated that the GSQRs were tailor-made by Army brass to favour one of the vendors.

Another concern the Army had was cost. At over Rs 2 lakh a piece, each multi-caliber assault rifle with a conversion kit cost twice the price of a regular imported assault rifle and six times the cost of a Rs 35,000 OFB-made INSAS rifle.

A General called the MCAR contract the equivalent of equipping a mass transport taxi service with Mercedes S-class saloons.

Major General Mrinal Suman (retired) says the failure of the rifle contract shows the Army’s deeply flawed system of framing GSQRs.

‘Just because you drive a car for 20 years does not give you the capability to design one. Acquisition staff are neither trained nor equipped to select weapons,’ he says.

Excerpt from ToI article:

The INSAS rifles, with an effective range of just 450-metre and weighing over 4.25-kg, 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

Another source has a different take on weight:

Looks like Excalibur will be heavier than the current INSAS. This is expected, as it will be full-auto capable. The reasons are here:

There is always a tradeoff that is required. The laws of physics will not change as per our whims and fancies.

If we want a fully automatic rifle, then it has to be heavy, because it needs a heavy barrel. If the barrel is light, then it will overheat quickly, and jam. If the barrel is heavy, the rifle will also be heavy.

Similarly, if we want a rifle that fires large calibre and/or over a long distance, then the barrel has to be heavy. When the cordite/gunpowder explodes, it exerts force in all directions. So, a heavier rifle will have a smaller thud than a comparatively lighter rifle. If we want longer range, we need more cordite in the ammo.

So, if we want a light rifle, we have to sacrifice on range and/or calibre. If we want range/calibre, then we have to sacrifice on the weight.

We have reached a plateau in firearm development. I would like to know about some ground breaking research in bullet shape, or rifle design. AN-94 comes to mind, but it is complicated, expensive and slow to manufacture, and I am not aware of its reliability. Perhaps @marrakesh and @Cadian can inform us on this weapon.

 

[ersakthivel]

Army plans request for information for single calibre assault rifle
Published July 7, 2015 | By admin
SOURCE : PTI

http://idrw.org/army-plans-request-for-information-for-single-calibre-assault-rifle/#more-67929

The Indian Army is likely to soon issue a ‘Request for Information’ for a new single calibre assault rifle to replace its INSAS rifles after it scrapped a four-year-old tender for purchasing 1.8 lakh multi-calibre weapons. Defence sources also ruled out that the army has shortlisted any particular gun to replace the INSAS, which had entered service in the late 1990s.

“A Request for Information is likely to be issued soon for single calibre guns. This will be open to all,” sources said, adding that the project would finally be taken up as part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative.

Army had initially wanted a rifle with interchangeable barrels firing different calibres — the 5.56-mm INSAS round and the 7.62-mm AK-47 round.

That was because troops use AK-47s in counter-insurgency operations while the INSAS rifles are issued for peace stations.

However, none of the firms which had pitched for the contract could satisfy the army with sources saying that the General Staff Qualitative Requirements “could well have been too ambitious”.

“There was no point on working on something that cannot be worked out,” the sources added.

Army had on June 15 informed the four short-listed international firms that it was retracting the multi-crore contract.

-----------------------------------------------------------------


So the partying was immature ...

All these ,"name less source " business is just paid news stuff.
When IA chose Excalibur, The name of Dalbir Singh was mentioned stating it explicitly.

 

[ersakthivel]

India to renew hunt for assault rifles after scrapping 4-yr-old tender
TNN | Jul 2, 2015, 08.13AM IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ping-4-yr-old-tender/articleshow/47905147.cms


NEW DELHI: India will now re-launch the hunt for new-generation assault rifles for its 1.18-million strong Army, following the scrapping its four-year-old tender for the guns worth around Rs 4,850 crore.

TOI on May 20 had reported that the proposed mega project for the assault rifles, with interchangeable barrels for conventional warfare and counter-insurgency operations, was on the verge of being scrapped since it had run into major problems.

Now, the armament firms that had participated in the extensive trials -- Colt (US), Beretta (Italy), Ceska (Czech) and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) - have been told that the proposed contract was being retracted.

This is a serious blow to the long-standing demand for new rifles to replace the 5.56mm indigenous INSAS (Indian small arms system) guns, which have suffered from technical bugs since their induction in 1994-95.

As per the now-cancelled project, 65,000 rifles were to be directly acquired from the selected foreign vendor 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.

But the proposal for the new rifles -- with a 5.56x45mm primary barrel for conventional warfare and a 7.62x39mm secondary one for counter-terror operations - was found to be "impractical" both in terms of high costs and technical requirements, said sources.

The plan now is to either get a foreign arms company to shift some of its manufacturing facilities to India or task the OFB to manufacture the new assault rifles with foreign collaboration.

Weighing around 3.5-kg, the new rifle will need to have a 1-km range, advanced night-vision devices, holographic reflex sights, laser designators, detachable under-barrel grenade launchers and the like.

The INSAS rifles, with an effective range of just 450-metre and weighing over 4.25-kg, 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

"The plan now is to either get a foreign arms company to shift some of its manufacturing facilities to India or task the OFB to manufacture the new assault rifles with foreign collaboration."--This plan was born out of the wet dreams of the reporter and has no source in reality.

It is not for nothing we all fondly call it TOIlet,

They wer all jumping up and down that MMRCA deal is signed now, today, yesterday, tomorrow , etc ,etc, for years tarnishing HAL as the villian in the piece holding up MMRCA deal by insisting on dassault guarantee for HAL built rafales!!!

But truth was much starker, The MMRCA was just too costly , and Dassault was not ready for any critical TOT, so the new govt just scrapped it and capped it with 36 numbers for niche strike roles.Even that seems to be in doubt as a few reports indicate that it will be tough for Dassault to meet price and 50 percent Off set obligation.

So TOI and Rajat pandit are just welcome entertainment on a boring day, making up fistful of stories quoting un named officials,and nothing more,

 

[ersakthivel]

@Hari Sud

Say something constructive rather than howl at the system outside. First have a look at your system wherever you are - DRDO or OFV or MoD.

Read this backgrounder to realise what a deep trouble is Indian Army in on a issue like Small Arms,. Though tha article in time lined 2014, it still is relevant :

Opinion » Lead July 4, 2014
Updated: July 4, 2014 00:28 IST

The big deal about the Army’s small arms

Even deciding on a multi-purpose tool, akin to a Swiss knife, for example, has been delayed despite trials in 2011 featuring European and American vendors.

Shortly after taking over as the Chief of Army Staff in May 2012, General Bikram Singh had emphatically declared that upgrading the small arms profile of his force was his foremost priority.

Two years later, as Gen. Singh prepares to retire in end July, neither the 5.56mm close quarter battle (CQB) carbines nor the multi-calibre assault rifles he promised are anywhere in sight for the Army’s 359 infantry units and over 100 Special Forces and counter-insurgency battalions, including the Rashtriya Rifles and Assam Rifles.

The Army’s prevailing operational reality is that it does not own a carbine as the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) ceased manufacture of all variants of the WWII 9mm carbines, including ammunition, around 2010.

And, two years later, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) finally endorsed the Army’s persistent complaints regarding the inefficiency of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-designed INdian Small Arms System (INSAS) 5.56x39mm assault rifles. It agreed that they needed replacing.

The former Defence Minister, A.K. Antony, was forced into admitting in Parliament in late 2012 that the INSAS rifles had been overtaken by “technological development” — a euphemism for a poorly designed weapon system which the Army grudgingly began employing in the late 1990s and, unceasingly, had complained about ever since.

Among largest arms programmes

The Army’s immediate requirement is for around 1,60,080 CQB carbines and over 2,20,000 assault rifles that it aims on meeting through a combination of imports and licensed-manufacture by the OFB. Ultimately, the paramilitaries and special commando units of respective State police forces too will employ either or both weapon systems in what will possibly be one of the world’s largest small arms programmes worth $7-$8 billion.

Gen. Singh’s guarantees, however, remain delusional and, expectedly unaccountable. And, in time-honoured Indian Army tradition, they will now be transferred to his successor, the Army Chief-designate, Lieutenant Gen. Dalbir Singh Suhag, to vindicate.

An optimistic time frame in inking the import of 44,618 carbines, which have been undergoing an unending series of trials since August 2012, is another 12-18 months away if not beyond. The deadline to acquire assault rifles, trials for which are scheduled to begin in August, is even longer — certainly not before 2016-17, if not later.

Till then, the Army faces a fait accompli of making do without carbines, a basic infantry weapon. It will also have to make do with inefficient INSAS assault rifles, another indispensable small arm for the force’s largest fighting arm.

Currently, three overseas vendors are undergoing “confirmatory” trials at defence establishments and weapon testing facilities in Dehradun, Kanpur, Mhow and Pune with their CQB carbines. The November 2011 tender for CQB carbines also includes the import of 33.6 million rounds of ammunition.

Competing rivals include Italy’s Baretta, fielding its ARX-160 model, Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) with its Galil ACE carbine and the U.S. Colt featuring the M4. The U.S. subsidiary of Swiss gunmaker Sig Sauer, which was originally part of the tender with its 516 Patrol Rifle, has failed to turn up at the ongoing carbine trials.

Sig is under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on charges of alleged corruption in potentially supplying its wares to the Indian paramilitaries. Alleged arms dealer, Abhishek Verma and his Romanian wife, Anca Neacsu — both are in Tihar jail — once represented Sig’s operations in India.

Inefficiencies

The carbine trials, expected to conclude by mid-July, will be followed by a final report by the Army, grading the vendors on the performance of their systems. Thereafter, the MoD will open their respective commercial bids, submitted over two years earlier and begin price negotiations with the lowest qualified bidder — or L1 — before inking the deal.

According to insiders associated with the project, this intricate process is almost certain to be protracted, despite the inordinately high expectations of efficiency from the Narendra Modi government. They believe the carbine contract is unlikely to be sealed within the current financial year. However, once signed, weapon and ammunition deliveries are to be concluded within 18 months alongside the transfer of technology to the OFB to licence build the designated carbine.

In short, no Army unit will be equipped with a carbine till well into 2016.

The saga of the assault rifles is even starker.

A multi-service internal review in 2012 of the INSAS assault rifles revealed that they were made from four different kinds of metal, an amalgam almost guaranteed to impair their functioning in the extreme climates of Siachen and Rajasthan.

Surprisingly, the Indian Air Force was the most vociferous in castigating the DRDO over as many as 53 operational inefficiencies in the rifle that the country’s prime weapons development agency took nearly two decades to develop and at great cost.

Inexplicably, the DRDO insisted on the OFB developing the SS-109 round, an extended variant of the SS-109 NATO-standard cartridge for 5.56x39mm rifles aimed at achieving marginally longer range, a capability unnecessary for such a weapon system. This operational superfluity delayed the INSAS programme as it required the import of specialised and expensive German machinery and necessitated the “stop gap” import of millions of ammunition rounds from Israel.

The DRDO-designed and OFB-built rifle also cost several times more than AK-47 assault rifles of which around 100,000 were imported from Bulgaria in the early 1990s for less than $100 each as an “interim” measure at a time when the Kashmiri insurgency was its most virulent and Islamist militants better armed than Army troopers.

The MoD issued the tender for 66,000 5.56mm multi-calibre assault rifles in November 2011 to 43 overseas vendors, five of who responded early the following year.

The competing rifles, required to weigh no more than 3.6kg and to convert readily from 5.56x45mm to 7.62x39mm merely by switching the barrel and magazine for employment in counter-insurgency or conventional roles, include the Czech Republic’s CZ 805 BREN model, IWI’s ACE 1, Baretta’s ARX 160, Colt’s Combat Rifle and Sig Sauer’s SG551. The latter’s participation, however, remains uncertain. A transfer of technology to the OFB to locally build the selected rifle is part of the tender.

Meanwhile, field trials for the rifles are scheduled for early August, nearly 30 months after bids were submitted, as that is the extended time period it surprisingly takes the Army to conduct a paper evaluation of five systems.

But these too have already run into easily avoidable problems.

On security grounds, the rifle vendors are objecting to the Army’s choice of its firing range at Kleeth in the Akhnoor sector hugging the Line of Control (LoC) as the venue for the initial round of trials. A final decision on this is awaited. Thereafter, other trials will follow in diverse weather conditions in Leh, Rajasthan and high humidity areas, all regions where the assault rifles will eventually be employed.

Transforming the soldier

Acquiring these modular, multi-calibre suite of small arms is just part of the Army’s long-delayed Future-Infantry Soldier As a System (F-INSAS) programme envisaged in 2005, but interminably delayed.

The F-INSAS aims at deploying a fully networked infantry in varied terrain and in all-weather conditions with enhanced firepower and mobility for the digitised battlefield. It seeks to transform the infantry soldier into a self-contained fighting machine to enable him to operate across the entire spectrum of war, including nuclear and low intensity conflict, in a network-centric environment.

But senior military officers concede this programme stands delayed by six to seven years almost exclusively because of the Army’s inability in formulating qualitative requirements (QR) to acquire many of these ambitious capabilities.

Even deciding on a multi-purpose tool, akin to a Swiss knife, for example, has been delayed despite trials in 2011 featuring European and American vendors. Officers associated with F-INSAS said this, like other equipment acquisitions, was due to the Army’s rigid procedures, inefficiencies and inability to take timely decisions.

The Army continually blames the MoD for creating bureaucratic hurdles in its modernisation efforts, but fails in acknowledging its own shortcomings in drawing up realistic QRs, conducting timely trials and, above all, realistically determining its operational needs and working towards them economically.

Senior officers privately concede that the “uniforms” are largely responsible for the lack of modernisation, but manage to successfully deflect their own limitations sideways onto the MoD.

Gen. Singh’s tenure, like several other chiefs before him, exemplifies this. It is highlighted by their collective inability to even incrementally upgrade the Army’s war waging capacity be it night fighting capability for its armour fleet, modern artillery, light utility and attack helicopters or infantry combat vehicles, among others.

(Rahul Bedi is a New Delhi-based defence analyst.)

This another old load of crap not useful any more. You can find fistful of fancy articles like these all the times by paid imported lobby guys expecting IA to import the next best arm from abroad forever,

As it turns out the two struck rounds per 24000 firing by excalibur was better than imported weapons, so IA decided that Excalibur is more reliable, tailor made as per their specs in varied indian climatic conditions than any imported rifle, thats all.

SO the guy can load this "Till then, the Army faces a fait accompli of making do without carbines, a basic infantry weapon. It will also have to make do with inefficient INSAS assault rifles, another indispensable small arm for the force’s largest fighting arm." crap somewhere else!!!