Eye on Target

Atul Chandra

In a curious irony for the Indian defence ecosystem, the Indian armed forces have had to opt for the import of virtually their entire requirement of infantry small arms from foreign companies. This is despite the success in the recent decade in the development of highly sophisticated defence equipment such as fighter aircraft, helicopters, warships, submarines and a wide range of missiles and rockets. Despite having developed such high-end defence equipment, the Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO) and Indian Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSU) have woefully failed in developing modern infantry small arms for the Indian armed forces.

The MoD has placed orders with Sig Sauer for over 1.4 lakh SIG716 rifles

The ongoing import or assembly under license of lakhs of assault rifles, carbines, light machine guns (LMG), medium machine guns (MMG), sniper rifles and pistols signals the nearly complete collapse of indigenous efforts to develop infantry small arms since the 5.56 millimetre INSAS (Indian Small Arms System) rifle was inducted into service in 1994. As of October 2021, DRDO had supplied approximately 20 lakh INSAS assault rifles and one lakh INSAS LMGs. The INSAS rifles make use of indigenous 5.56x45 millimetre ammunition which is a modified version of NATO SS109 ammunition.

In January 2021, the ministry of defence (MoD) announced that an indigenous 9 millimetre machine pistol had been jointly developed by DRDO and Indian Army. Infantry School, Mhow and DRDO’s Armament Research & Development Establishment (ARDE), Pune had designed and developed this weapon in a record time of four months. In a statement, the MoD announced that the machine pistol was likely to have a production cost under INR 50,000 each with potential for exports. The 3D printing process had been used in designing and prototyping of various parts including the trigger components made with metal 3D printing. The weapon which fires the in-service 9 millimetre ammunition, featured an upper receiver made from aircraft grade aluminium and a lower receiver from carbon fibre.

The MoD stated at the time that there was huge potential in the armed forces for such a weapon for use as a personal small arm for heavy weapon detachments, commanders, tank and aircraft crews, drivers/dispatch riders, radio/radar operators, close-quarter battle, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations, etc. However, it is not clear if the machine pistol has received any sizeable orders