Indian Army needs to abandon its ad hoc approach to arming the infantry

The Indian army must institute data-driven decision making for firearms acquisitions.

An announcement from arms maker SIG Sauer last week will elicit both relief and dismay among Indian observers. On August 26, the company announced it had signed a contract to provide an additional 73,000 SIG 716 rifles to the Indian Army. This would be in addition to an earlier batch of 72,400 rifles the company has already supplied.

The announcement is a relief because it ensures infantry soldiers are well armed. However, it is bound to cause dismay because the deal doesn't solve underlying problems with India’s small arms procurement process, including ad-hoc decision making, piecemeal acquisitions, and a failure to seed a thriving Indian ecosystem for infantry armaments.

Since the new SIG rifles deal has bought it some time, the Indian Army must take the opportunity to go back to the drawing board. It must plan for the acquisition of a new generation of carbines, rifles and machine guns to replace the assortment of weapons presently in service. Done right, this will ease training, simplify logistics, and create economies of scale.

Global war catalyses a small arms revolution

World War II offered clear lessons on combat small arms. One was that most infantry engagements took place at ranges under 300 metres. This meant that traditional full-powered rifles, which could fire small numbers of long-range bullets, were of limited use. Two, it became clear that lightweight portable machine guns were critical for providing suppressive fire on a fluid battlefield.

The superpowers would heed these lessons, albeit sometimes grudgingly. The Soviets were the first to take the initiative, creating the Kalashnikov series of rifles, which came with 30-round magazines of an intermediate power, 7.62x39mm cartridge. The new rifle allowed soldiers to carry more ammunition and made it easier to fire rapidly. Combined with more portable machine guns, Kalashnikov rifles revolutionised infantry firepower at realistic combat ranges.

The Americans took a more circuitous route. Initially, they foisted a traditional full-power cartridge, the 7.62x51mm on their NATO allies only to later adopt a lighter 5.56x45mm round for their AR-15/M16 series of weapons. A version of this round became the NATO standard in the 1980s for assault rifles and light machine guns, while the more powerful 7.62x51mm cartridge was retained for general purpose machine guns and sniper rifles.

The Indian experience

Like many countries outside the communist bloc, India first adopted the full-powered 7.62x51mm round for its famed self-loading rifle, or SLR. However, by the 1980s, it decided to make the switch to an intermediate calibre ‘assault rifle’ similar to the Kalashnikov or the M16.

As a stop-gap measure, the Indian Army purchased large numbers of Kalashnikovs from the erstwhile Soviet bloc in the 1990s. That same decade it also adopted the INSAS family of weapons which included both a rifle and a light machine gun that fired an Indian variant of the 5.56x45mm NATO round.

It did not take long for the army to be dissatisfied by the INSAS. Besides reliability problems and manufacturing defects, the INSAS weapons already seemed outdated compared to offerings from foreign arms makers.

Unrealistic approach of 2011

While the army began looking for a replacement, it was also concerned about the perceived lack of ‘lethality’ with the 5.56x45mm round compared to the Kalashnikov’s 7.62x39mm bullet. While this impression was not backed by a systematic empirical study, it nevertheless resulted in a bizarre 2011 General Staff Qualitative Requirement (GSQR) for a rifle that could swap calibres from the Kalashnikov 7.62x39mm to the NATO 5.56x45mm.

The idea was that the ‘lethal’ Kalashnikov round was suited to counterinsurgency while the NATO round was optimised for conventional warfare. The GSQR was highly unrealistic, since switching calibres on a firearm requires changing critical components, including the barrel. If it was ever fulfilled, the GSQR would result in a rifle that was heavier and costlier, besides causing grave logistical complications during wartime.

Switching to an SLR successor

Following the failure of the GSQR, the Indian Army decided to return to the old full-powered 7.62x51mm NATO round. In 2019, it ordered the first batch of 72,400 SIG 716 rifles chambered in this cartridge. In essence, the army had adopted a modern successor to the old SLR.

Along with this, the Indian government also announced that it would locally produce the AK-203, the latest version of the Russian Kalashnikov rifle. The logic was that the SIG716 would be used by frontline infantry units while everyone else would use the new Kalashnikov rifle.

A small arms mess that can be fixed 

India’s small arms procurement system is a mess. To fix it, the Indian army must institute data-driven decision making for firearms acquisitions. Since much of its acquisition problems have been driven by concerns about bullet performance, it must conduct extensive tests with each major calibre. Some aspects of bullet performance can also be tweaked with design modifications. For example, the US developed a more consistently lethal variant of the 5.56x45mm round after its own experience with counterinsurgency. The army can work with the private sector to develop variants of existing rounds that meet its desired performance characteristics.

The next step would be to adapt a whole new family of carbines, rifles, light machine guns and general-purpose machine guns. Here the Indian Army must conduct transparent, rigorous tests in competitive trials involving both homegrown companies and foreign arms manufacturers who are prepared to manufacture domestically.

If it accomplishes these tasks, the Indian Army’s infantry soldiers will be better armed and the country will possess its own military small arms industry. If it doesn’t we can expect more ad hoc purchases.