The Long Road Ahead

With internal security being a high-priority task for the NDA-3 government, speedier paramilitary and police modernisation have become highly imperative. Starting with automatic assault rifles, carbines, machine guns, grenade launchers, pistols, body armour, helmets and ending with modern communication gadgets, the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) need to undergo a complete overhaul in terms of operational deployment of cutting-edge technology and equipment. Amartya Sinha identifies some areas where urgent attention is required

- Amartya Sinha

Central Armed Police Forces (paramilitary in public parlance) are always considered a crucial part of a nation’s internal security mechanism, without which anti-national elements can’t be tackled and socio-political order can’t be maintained. While the three branches of the armed forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) are expected to counter external security threats at the border,

Paramilitary and State Police Forces are expected to reign in internal sub-conventional level threats emanating from isolated pockets. It goes without any saying that the forces need better arms and ammunitions to live up to task expected from them.

Replacing old assault rifles

Assault rifles are one of the primary weapons being used by CAPF troopers in sub-conventional level battlefields. Starting with close quarter battle (CQB) engagements with left-wing insurgents in an asymmetric warfare environment and ending with long-range direct line of sight (LRDLOS) shooting at infiltrating terrorists at the border, the assault rifle remains the standard issue weapon of paramilitary soldiers for countering threats. While the Indian government decided to phase out the L1A1 Self Loading Rifles (SLR) and the highly obsolete Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles from the Indian Army’s armoury during the early 1990s, many of these scrapped weapons were handed over to CAPFs till the advent of INSAS (Indian National Small Arms System) weapons in the late 1990s. Large numbers of AK series rifles were also inducted into paramilitary forces as a stopgap measure till the induction of INSAS weapons.