Stop foul mouthing INSAS rifle.
This rifle after a period of gestation has reached its maturity. It works under all climate conditions. Dump the old reports which the fanboys keep quoting. This rifle works fine as good as M-16. The latter also jams under some conditions. Other columnist who foul mouth INSAS are paid by arms merchants to write all the odd things about it.
Imagine these very writers writing bad things about miserable F35 plane which is ten years late and 1200% cost overrun. If anybody foul mouths F35, he or she will loose their jobs quietly.
About the INSAS rifle, it was ninties era mistake of the top army brass to opt for 5.56 rifle and in semi automatic format. Army is trying to correct its mistake by blaming sometime the manufacture, sometime the design and most of the time it's semi automatic status. Two of the three above are army mistakes which they are trying to correct without admitting it. The manufacture defects are purely not upgrading the manufacture early enough at factory level, rather using FAL production machinery and metallurgy to produce it in bulk. It should have been corrected in nineties but was corrected in early part of this century.
Now the problems have been corrected, but foul mouthing continues.
The Excaliber rifle by the same factories is an excellent rifle but still 5.56 category. It is fully automatic and it passed all tests which the imported prototypes failed. But the Army will not accept it wholeheartedly, but somewhat in a Luke warm manner. Excaliber does not correct Army's 5.56 mistake, done under US propaganda of versatility of 5.56 round to badly injure and not kill and put a huge pressure on the soldiers' mates to carry him back for medical treatment. In fact, the current crop of terrorists taught Indian army a lesson or two that automatic format is definitely better and 7.62 format still better over 5.56. It kills with gusto. That is what the soldier wants when facing a terrorist.
So the army demanded a multi caliber rifle, which will fire three different type of rounds. No other army in the world has multicaliber rifle as a standard infantry man's weapon. But Indian Army is going for it. Three manufacturer's prototypes did not succeed in tests recently, so Indian army is back to the drawing board.
Now the pressure is on to grudgingly introduce Excaliber rifle and develop further an Indian version of multi caliber rifle. It is likely that both will succeed. Indian army in five years have Indian version Excaliber - an upgraded INSAS and an Indian version of multi caliber rifle.
What a costly mistake the military brass of nineties made. It is an $8 billion mistake. It is being corrected now. But it puzzles everybody that army chose to foul mouth INSAS first and then admit their judgemental mistake.
Cheers
