GOING GREAT GUNS

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

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....