Indian Army to purchase second batch of 72,000 American Assault Rifles from US

New Delhi, July 13: In the midst of an ongoing dispute with China along the Line of Actual Control, the Indian Army will be purchasing another batch of 72,000 Sig 716 assault rifles from the United States.

 

 

"We are going to place an order for 72,000 more of these rifles under the financial powers granted to the armed forces," Defence sources were quoted as saying.

 

This is the second order by the Indian Army after it India has placed orders for 72,400 rifles under fast track procedures to equip its frontline soldiers with more capable guns. The first lot of 10,000 SiG 716 assault rifles had arrived in India last year in December and was been sent to the Northern Command and other operational areas.

 

The newly placed rifles will be replacing the existing Indian Small Arms System (Insas) with 5.56x45mm intermediate cartridge used by the Army which was manufactured locally by the Ordnance Factories Board. However, American assault rifles use the more powerful 7.62x51mm cartridge.

 

According to the reports, around 1.5 lakh imported rifles were to be used by the troops in the counter-terrorism operations and frontline duties on the Line of Control (LoC). Meanwhile, the remaining forces would be provided with the AK-203 rifles, which are to be produced jointly by India and Russia at Amethi ordnance factory.

 

The work on the project is yet to start due to several procedural issues faced by the two sides. The Indian Army had been trying to replace their standard INSAS assault rifles for many years but the attempts failed due to one reason or the other.

 

Recently, the Defence Ministry placed an order of 16,000 light machine guns (LMGs) from Israel to do away with the shortage of these guns.

 

India and China are in a stand-off position in Eastern Ladakh as the Chinese Army has deployed more than 20,000 of its troops since May first week. Though agreements were made between the Corps commanders of both the countries after a few top level-talks took place, the Chinese have still maintained heavy troops presence in the rear areas.