Special Forces to be Equipped with Machine Guns
After floating a tender for rifles to arm its infantry troops, the Indian Army is planning to issue a tender worth around USD 30 million dollar global request for proposal for equipping its Special Forces with General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs).
We are desirous of procuring GPMG for the 11 Parachute (Special Forces) Battalions of Indian Army and we are going to issue a tender worth USD 28 million soon, Army sources said to defencenow.com.
The Indian Army has 11 Special Forces battalions under the Parachute regiment and has deployed them in conflict zones in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources said the tender will be issued to companies from Israel, Belgium, Switzerland but more companies can be invited for the bidding process depending on the response to the Request for Information issued recently.
It should be ideally suited for as a Squad Automatic Weapon for the Special Forces and should be able to be used as a multipurpose weapon intended to fill the role of Light Machine Gun and a Medium Machine Gun, they said.
The Army wants that the global rifle should be able to fire ammunition produced in Indian Ordnance factories and be able to sustain the rigours of airborne operations.