GOING GREAT GUNS
THE WEEK India|January 22, 2023
As a response to the belligerence of Pakistan and lately China, a military-industrial complex seems to be fast taking shape in India. The past few years have seen private firms in the defence sector-leading innovation and indigenisation
SANJIB KR BARUAH
GOING GREAT GUNS

Sumeet can feel the cold in his bones. The winter air reminds him of his village in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh. Posted at a mountainous forward post on the Line of Control, the soldier is on a hawk-like vigil. Nothing can be left to chance in an area prone to infiltration by Pakistan-propped militants. A few metres ahead flows a mountain brook that marks the Line of Control—the de facto border between India and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

To the untrained eye, Sumeet’s guardhouse might look the same as before. But, in the past two years or so, a lot has changed. Giving Sumeet company is his trusty INSAS rifle, a 5.56mm x 45mm weapon, leaning nonchalantly on the stone wall. But in the barracks behind, there are several ‘sector-specific’ weapons like the American Sig Sauer rifle, the Israeli Tavor assault rifle and the good-old AK-47 to choose from.

There is a mounted telescopic sight just next to Sumeet, a four-screened CCTV set on a table and a hotline, although mobile signals have improved considerably in the last year or so. On the roof of the guardhouse is a solar panel for uninterrupted power.

Sumeet’s body armour is made of fibre, unlike the iron plates of old, which has cut down the weight by a third, to under 20kg.

A little distance behind Sumeet, in another outpost, two soldiers amble into a futuristic, US-made Polaris ATV (all-terrain vehicle)—a far cry from the once ubiquitous Maruti Gypsy—to go on reconnaissance patrol. This particular unit is equipped with quadcopters, Finland-made Sako sniper rifles, Israeli Negev LMGs (light machine gun), handheld thermal imagers fitted with rangefinders for surveillance....

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