I was browsing around on the web today and noticed that the Indians are dumping their old service rifle to try and acquire a new family of weapon systems. Does anyone have more details on this program than what Wikipedia has to offer? I’m also curious about what exactly the entry by Colt called the Combat Rifle is specced out to be. From my guess it could be some variant of the LE901 in order to have 7.62x39 capabilities and apparently Colt has also sent some weird version of the 6951 based off of what I could find. Any additional info would be great.
The Indian INSAS rifle had lots of reliability and durability issues. It was a kind of home grown combo AK/Galil knockoff, and it never worked reliably.
LOL. Reading about the Colt ACR submission is…wow. Guess it’s reflective of the line of thought at the time.
Pretty cool stuff, there was a lot of talk for years now about how the Indian mil was thiiiiiiiiiis close to replacing the INSAS with a weapon they’ve already chosen. Last I heard, they still hadn’t shit, but were reluctant to get off the pot.
Wonder if it’ll be Colt’s piston rifle? What was it, the M5? (civvie version is the 6940P of course)
I would imagine that given the size of India’s military it’ll be a lucrative contract.
I admit I’m more interested in this project than I would have expected. I expect that the Colt offering has a fair chance of making the cut considering how many Asian countries have started to adopt the AR as their main service rifle. I do wonder whether or not the CZ or Beretta offerings will be able to make the cut or I guess IWI could win this one. Supposedly they are supposed to decide a winner soon but if the US Army is representative of the rest of the world then I would suspect that it’s entirely possible that no final information will be released until 2025 when the project has been scrapped.
I suspect the winner will be based 1st on ability to kickback cash to the right people and 2nd on technical ability.
In other words, just like how stuff works here.
H
I’m calling it now, no winner will be selected. Instead they will use the test samples to backwards engineer a rifle exactly like one of submissions and rip off all the companies.
Didn’t they already do that? The INSAS is kinda a AK/FAL fusion, and they couldn’t get that to work right.
H
I think that’s a good call.
It’s amazing that IWI/IMI (and everybody else) didn’t learn from when they sent the Indians Galils to test. Maybe India made them certain promises this time around.
If memory serves, the Indians were only able to construct a barely competent SMLE MkIII* clone in the Ishapore 2A and -2A1. Although it might just be that all the surplus’d rifles coming into this country (that I’ve seen) have been neglected and beat to snot.
OTOH, if Indian Army ammo is anything like the P.O.F. Ammo that I’ve tried, the engineers have their work cut out for them.
Maybe a system that detects what pressure the ammo is loaded to and adjusts a gas valve automatically…
H
Here is an interesting thread on the INAS from an Indian messageboard some interesting photos: http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?p=94020
Wow, any Comblock factory that turned out AKs that looked like that would have had the factory workers taken out and shot for sabotage.
H
Thanks for posting that. The indiansforguns website is very interesting. It is great to know that there is a pro-gun, pro-self defense movement in India.
And the final product will be a disaster. They have a long and distinguished history of just this sort of thing.
Colt seems to be heading into the final stretch:
http://www.janes.com/article/39829/indian-army-kicks-off-final-carbine-trials
The Beretta ARX-160, Colt M4, and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) Galil Ace carbines will undergo a series of tests at army establishments and weapon-testing facilities until the end of July. These include weapon sights, furniture, and ammunition trials.
Their new rifle will be called the INSAS ARX ACE 16 MOD 4.
It’ll be called a major disaster if they start producing it on their own.
The articles haven’t been clear as to whether this will be a licensed production or what.
Hard to believe the Indians developed nuclear weapons technology with the engineering prowess witnessed in the INSAS rifle.
Sure they’ve got Nuclear weapons, but what kind of delivery system do they have to use them? Compare their Apocalypse capabilities to ICBMs sitting in Submarines in undisclosed locations across the globe.
Getting back on topic, the would be wise to invite the company that they choose their small arm from into their country to form a solid manufacturing and replenishment base.
It looks like Colts submission is labeled as the MGI…the picture I saw(which came from India) could be a fake .jpg grab to have something, or a legit picture but it looks like a joint venture between colt and MGI with the Hydra to meet the multi cal requirement.