Boosting Soldier Lethality

While infantry weapons’ modernisation is a very long and tedious process, a good beginning has been made under the ‘Make in India’ programme, writes Amartya Sinha

- Amartya Sinha

Infantry weapons are considered one of the prime requirements of a country’s armed forces without which ground wars cannot be won and pitched battles with terrorists cannot be taken to a conclusion. Since times immemorial, mainstay weapons of armed forces have been helping nations meet their basic security needs and handle the emerging challenges in the domain of tactical level battlefield. As the fourth-largest standing army in the world, the Indian Army’s requirements for meeting its operational needs are significantly large. While the budgetary constraints being faced by the government is quite understandable, the Indian Army needs to undergo massive infantry weapons modernization drives in the not-too-distant future, pending which alarm bells may start ringing in the corridors of power in Delhi. Starting with automatic assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket launchers, sniper rifles, pistols, carbines, Under-Barrel Grenade Launchers (UBGL) and ending with Light Machine Guns (LMG), the Indian Army requires brand new weapons for replacing the aging vintage tools currently being used in all spheres of operational deployment.

The urge for newer assault rifles

Assault rifles are one of the most crucial infantry weapons being used by soldiers on the battlefield. Starting with close-quarter engagements in an asymmetric warfare environment and ending with long-range direct line of sight (LRDLOS) firing during infantry sweeps towards the enemy during wars, the assault rifle remains the standard issue weapon of the ground soldier. While India decided to phase out the L1A1 Self Loading Rifles (SLR) and the highly obsolete Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles during the early 1990s, more than 100,000 AKM rifles were inducted into the Indian Army as a stop-gap measure till the advent of INSAS (Indian National Small Arms System) weapons in the late 1990s.