Stumpp Schuele & Somappa Defence LTD

Killbot

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News: SSS Defence is being considered by MoD for carbines alongside Adani and OFB.
That's good.

These things may be reverse engineered, but I don't see what the problem is. OFB reverse engineered AKs. Brits reverse engineered Stoner's AR 180 and made it bullpup in SA 80 platform. CZ reverse engineered (outright copied) SCAR to make Bren. Israelis reverse engineered and modified AK to make Galil. All AR 15 manufacturers copied Colt's design. So what if an Indian private sector company does the same... As long as they have reverse engineered it properly, it should work well...

@Bhumihar @Johny_Baba @Bleh
 

WolfPack86

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Mired in red tape


Four big-ticket Indian Army procurements for carbines, mobile air defence gun-missile systems, light helicopters and shoulder-launched missiles worth over $5 billion (Rs 36,000 crore) have been caught in an impasse for several months now. But for the ongoing military standoff with China, delays in acquiring this urgently required hardware would not have spelt a crisis. This is because India’s process-driven defence acquisitions move at a snail’s pace, with each contract taking an average 7-8 years to be concluded.

These four cases are only part of the Rs 90,048 crore the ministry of defence (MoD) plans to spend on buying new hardware for the forces in the present financial year, minister of state (MoS) for defence Shripad Naik told the Lok Sabha on September 15.

Two cases are particularly urgent as they are meant to replace the army’s vintage in-service military hardware. The army’s 1970s model Cheetah helicopters used to resupply troops in high altitudes at Siachen and Ladakh and the dwindling stock of shoulder-fired missiles meant to provide low-cost air defence solutions, particularly in the frontlines, are nearing the end of their lifespans. The army needs new air defence gun-missile systems to replace the World War II-era L-70 guns. For three of these imports, light helicopters, air defence guns and carbines, we have indigenous alternatives which are fit cases for the government’s ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative. Yet, these deals, held up for reasons ranging from deviations in procedure, budgetary constraints, complaints from competitors and a recent renewed thrust for indigenisation, have become a sort of Gordian knot the ministry seems unable to slice through.


Adding to the difficulties is the looming shadow of India’s largest arms supplier and strategic partner Russia. Russian state-owned firms are in the fray for three of the big-ticket items and Moscow is believed to have lobbied for stalling the deals at the political level. The UAE government, another country with significant diplomatic heft in New Delhi, owns the firm in the fray for carbines. The defence ministry has held a series of recent meetings to resolve the intractable delays in these cases, but without much success.

The eternal loop

On September 15, the defence ministry made its most determined effort to ‘un-jam’ three of these procurements. A meeting attended by chief of defence staff Gen. Bipin Rawat, in his capacity as secretary, department of military affairs, vice-chief of army staff (VCOAS) Lt Gen. S.K. Saini and top MoD officials took some swift decisions. It decided to scrap the imports of over 93,000 carbines from UAE’s Caracal International LLC (the shortlisted firm) and the self-propelled air-defence gun missile systems (SPADGMS) for which South Korea’s Hanhwa Defense had emerged lowest bidder. The carbine deal was scrapped because only one company qualified, an undesirable ‘single vendor situation’; the air defence system because of complaints from the Russian competitor alleging deviations in trials.

Over a month later, however, both deals continue to be in limbo and are yet to be scrapped because the army is keen on going ahead with the procurements. Caracal, a subsidiary of the UAE government-owned EDGE group, has now offered local production (earlier all the weapons were to be imported from the UAE under a fast-track procedure). A key defence ministry official has recommended a smaller, off-the-shelf buy of around 25,000 carbines. The army has been advised to extend the life of its 2019 ‘acceptance of necessity’ given for an order of 350,000 carbines to ‘buy and make’ the weapons in India. The MoD-owned Ordnance Factory Board and private companies like Adani Defence and SSS Defence are in the fray.

It is in the case of the gun-missile system that the delays could be protracted. The army had in 2013 floated a requirement for five regiments of a self-propelled air defence gun-missile system. The 104 units were budgeted at approximately $2.5 billion, with each unit having twin 30 mm cannons and four short-range missiles fitted on a tracked chassis. These self-propelled gun-missile systems are meant to protect vital areas and installations from threats like low-flying aircraft, helicopters and drones. South Korea’s K30, made by Hanwha Defense, emerged as the lowest bidder beating out two Russian contenders.

Cost negotiations did not proceed after the Russian side objected to their exclusion from the deal. The defence ministry recommended that the deal be scrapped on the grounds that the army’s specifications for the contract, dating back to 2011, were nearly a decade old. Hanwha has now offered maximum indigenisation in manufacturing, assembly and integration at existing facilities of Larsen & Toubro or other Indian defence companies, government sources said.

The MoD is also trying to revive a stalled joint Indo-Russian deal to jointly manufacture 200 Ka-226T helicopters. The deal was part of an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) signed in Moscow in 2015 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s summit visit with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Russian Helicopters and Russia’s state arms exporting firm Rosoboronexport formed a joint venture, Indo-Russian Helicopters Ltd (IRHL), in 2017 with a holding of 50.5 per cent, 42 per cent and 7.5 per cent, respectively, but the deal has not progressed because the MoD has flagged a serious divergence in procedure. The deal has been found to be non-compliant with the original requirement of the request for proposal (RFP)—that the indigenous component must be 70 per cent.

The helicopters currently have 70 per cent Russian components and 26 per cent French (the engines). IRHL has said it can achieve 70 per cent indigenous components only in the fourth and final batch of helicopters. Delays in this deal have been a recent bugbear in defence ties between India and Russia and the MoD has suggested that the case be fast-tracked. Government officials say that the army, HAL, IRHL and the MoD have concluded that Russia needs to increase the indigenous content in the helicopters and also transfer critical technologies.

The MoD has two alternatives: altering the RFP requirements, or scrapping the deal altogether. The former would need fresh approvals from the defence acquisition committee (DAC) headed by defence minister Rajnath Singh; scrapping the deal could be difficult since it was part of the 2015 Modi-Putin IGA. But it wouldn’t be the first time India has walked out of similar JVs. In July 2018, then defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the government was backing out of the Indo-Russian Fifth General Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) project. The reasons had to do with an increase in costs and the IAF and HAL’s unhappiness with the technology being shared.

If the MoD does walk down a similar path with the Ka-226T, it has the homegrown Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) to fall back on. The LUH, designed and built by HAL in a short span of five years, demonstrated its ability to operate in high altitudes in September this year. During 10-day trials, the machine flew from Leh and did a ‘hot and high’ hover performance at the Daulat Beg Oldie advanced landing ground which, at over 16,000 feet, is the world’s highest.

HAL officials say the helicopter also demonstrated its payload capability at the Siachen glacier. HAL CMD R. Madhavan says the army version of the LUH is now ready for initial operational clearance (IOC). Government sources, however, say that the LUH’s slow rate of induction will not be able to meet the army’s needs. “Meeting our requirements in an acceptable time-frame dictates dual route induction of Ka-226 T and the LUH…it was a conscious decision taken back in 2015,” says a government official.

The Russian missile

In February this year, Gorgen Johansson, president of Saab Dynamics AB, wrote a letter to Rajnath Singh. The chief of Sweden’s largest defence firm made serious charges against Russia’s Rosoboronexport which had emerged lowest bidder in the Indian army’s decade-old search for a new shoulder-fired air defence missile. Johansson said that the Russian firm ‘had repeatedly been given undue advantages outside the perimeter of the defence procurement procedure’ and hence should have been disqualified. The Russian military was replacing the Igla-S with a newer missile, the Verba, Johansson said, and hence India would not get the benefit of state-of-the-art technology. The letter, which is the second one in two years from the Swedish firm, has put a spoke in the procurement of what the army calls an urgent operational requirement.

The army’s search began way back in 2009 with an AON (acceptance of necessity) to buy 5,175 VSHORAD (Very Short Range Air Defence) man portable systems. The missiles were categorised a ‘Buy and Make’ deal in which the lowest bidding foreign vendor would supply an initial lot of missiles and equipment and transfer technology to an Indian public sector undertaking to manufacture the remaining missiles locally with full transfer of critical technology like the booster and seeker. The deal has been mired in controversy ever since the five-year-long field trials of three missile systems, French, Swedish and Russian, concluded in 2017. Saab’s first letter alleging deviations in trials favouring the Russian side was sent in 2018.

An MoD-appointed committee that year did not see any deviations in procedure and gave the deal the go-ahead. Fresh complications have arisen with the Russian side refusing to transfer booster and seeker technology. The 2020 letter from the Swedish firm, however, has stalled the deal as the ministry looks for ways to overcome this. One option is to buy a limited number of missiles off the shelf under the fast-track procedure and explore indigenous options later. But unlike the HAL-built light helicopter which can be brought to service within five years, there is no swift indigenous solution here. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has made promises of delivering a man-portable missile in three years but it needs to convince the army that it can do so within the time-frame. The army is procuring a certain quantity of lgla-S missiles through the Rs 500 crore emergency powers route delegated to the VCOAS.

Needed, a holistic reassessment

Many of these deals have been in the pipeline for close to a decade and from a time when it was assumed defence budgets would increase to keep pace with the growing requirements of the forces. Meanwhile, the standoff in Leh has refocused the army’s efforts towards a whole new set of hardware requirements, from drones capable of operating at high altitudes to weapons that can shoot down enemy drones to sensors that can look deep across the LAC in all-weather conditions. It remains to be seen if the army’s already constrained budgets will permit these newer acquisitions as well as replace its legacy systems in a unit-for-unit case.

“We require a de novo joint service capability review to remove irrelevant procurements, duplication or multiple inventories,” says Lt Gen. A.B. Shivane, the army’s former DG, Mechanised Forces. Such a capability review would notice, for instance, the multiple inventories created if the MoD went ahead and bought both the Ka-226T and the indigenous LUH, creating two separate production lines for a machine essentially meeting the same requirement. As always, there are no easy solutions without a deep reform of the procurement system.

 

shuvo@y2k10

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Based on the fact that SSS is importing kit from West and branding it as their own IDDM, I think they can look at the following modernization kit from DSA Arms.




With the addition of SCAR type buttstocks, P-rails on top and bottom, suppressors and optics, it looks almost un-recognizable as FALs and look like a modern top of the line rifle.

In India, we have so many SLRs still lying in retirement ( million+ produced by OFB) mainly in the police armory. This type of modernization kit can give a life extension to SLR as a low cost DMR option (in semi-automatic role) for Army, CAPF and police forces. This in my opinion should receive some attention, considering the Army's decision to upgrade its AKs and Dragunovs.
 

Lonewarrior

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Before someone points that I'm an agent of some foreign firm doing a smear campaign against an Aatmanirbhar Swadeshi company, then no. Time and time I've mentioned that we should have adopted Trichy Assault Rifle in place of AK-203 when we all know it's simply Arsenal's AR-M1.

As long as defence companies will behave like Rahul Sharma (Micromax) selling phones on the sentiments of Galwan KIAs; they will have to bear the heat. They're not some messiah of Indian military-industrial complex.
As simple as it is.

Moreover, why should they or for that matter any company give sh*t about what some random people in a corner of internet think? If a product is good, it will win the trial. Nothing is happening here on people's choice vote.
 

FalconSlayers

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Hhmm this is the same Kalashnikov type rifle they shown previously during Defense Expo 2020

even pics were posted here or on thread of DefExpo2020

I shall give my observation on the weapon here via pics

View attachment 56708View attachment 56709

So,

->My observation is they seem to have designed this weird looking receiver here ( or maybe another ;cheeto; ? import-screwdriver-resell ),to me am not sure whether it's stamped steel receiver design or milled receiver as it happen to have a machined block for mounting AR-15 style buttstock and pistol grip but also have got some form of trunnion block to mount barrel (and probably handguards,too ?)
->Seems they took some cue points from Galil ACE and put this (probably stamped ?) magazine well section below the receiver,though i don't get the purpose of it for an AK style "rock-lock" type of magazine,and at the end there is ambidextrous dual paddle magazine release,of course modified AK type.
->As said before,Texas Weapons Systems "Dog Tag" railed hinged top cover + handguards combo = cheeto

BUT they seem to ahve modified it by maybe fixing a small metal block inside it to make it work with takedown pin type of receiver (though imagine a hinged dust cover as "upper" section of a receiver huh ?) and maybe recoil spring too is mounted on same pinned block thing inside receiver ? my speculations
->Keyhole for AK style fire selector on receiver,
Ok my gripe is they did so "mehnat" in making this custom receiver of AK (or in importing it) but they couldn't provide a thumb operated fire selector ? Even current gen Arsenal AKs we import from Bulgaria happen to have it on their M1F41 and M5F41 variants,Galil type of course
As they haven't shown any fire selector on it now it's hard to say whether it'll be having Krebs Custom type finger tabs on it for tactical operations etc

@Lonewarrior bhai anything else you'd like to add ?
That’s a Magpul AFG-2 Grip.
 

Suryavanshi

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Are they still importing kit?
What's wrong with that at this point.
They have signed a deal with HASS machines for cnc machines, more than likely they are manufacturing their own Lowe receiver and barrel.
They may be importing parts now but that is no rocket science which we can do ourselves.
 

gutenmorgen

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What's wrong with that at this point.
They have signed a deal with HASS machines for cnc machines, more than likely they are manufacturing their own Lowe receiver and barrel.
They may be importing parts now but that is no rocket science which we can do ourselves.
Nothing wrong or right. Just wanted to know if they started making everything in house since some of their equipment was being tested by SFs IIRC.
But it does dilute the meaning of terms like "100% indegenous" or fully built in India.
 

Lonewarrior

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1. plastic handguard with pic rails = slim
First thing first; that's aluminium, not plastic.
Second, the very definition of slim handguard is that you won't have picatinny rails sticking on all sides. M-LOK or KeyMod are what makes a handguard slim.

2. here's your "ambi" charging handle
Now coming to charging handle; no, it's not ambidextrous. It can only be actuated by pulling on the left side, not right.

where's my money
Still with me; safe
 

Johny_Baba

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this one here is ambidextrous because it has cocking handle releases on both sides,
something like this
1674392391579.png


the one on vdo above is conventional one which in practice is ambi if you grab it from both sides together and doing so release the lock on left side, but pulling it from other side only might not be much helpful
1674392445090.png
 

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