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Egozi: Will India Purchase Large Quantities of Small Arms from Israel?

Jan 19, 2018

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

By Arie Egozi

India is fast-tracking the purchase of assault rifles for its armed forces. The Indian Ministry of Defense has cleared a proposal worth $554 million to purchase assault rifles and carbines, expecting competitive bidding to start soon.

This may be a deal that would attract less media publicity, but it is an opportunity for Israel to sell India large quantities of rifles. The Israeli-Indian collaboration in this field could offer the Indians high-quality small arms. The Tavor assault rifle manufactured by Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) is one of the world best assault rifles.

According to India’s Defense Ministry’s announcement on pib.nic.in, “the Defense Acquisition Council has cleared procurement of 72,400 assault rifles and 93,895 carbines on fast track basis for 3,547 crores (approx $554 million).” The Indian Army also requires an additional 600,000 assault rifles and 325,000 carbines. These will be made available to the forces in two tranches — one fourth by the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board and the remaining by local private industry, defense sources told sputniknews.com.

“There are systemic failures in acquisition of such primary weapons by the Indian Army ranging from lack of evolution of concept for a family of small arms, faulty General Staff Qualitative Requirements (GSQRs), change in GSQRs at the last minute, abandonment of projects at the last minute and so on,” Rahul Bhonsle, a retired Indian Army brigadier and defense analyst, told sputnik.com.

In September 2017, the Indian government had canceled a tender won by Galil Ace of Israeli Weapon Industry (IWI) for least 44,618 close quarter battle carbines and 33.6 million rounds of ammunition because of a “single vendor situation” which goes against India’s defense procurement policy.

A few months earlier, in May 2017, Punj Lloyd and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) inaugurated India’s first private sector small arms manufacturing plant in India. The joint venture Punj Lloyd Raksha Systems (PLR) was to manufacture four products X95 carbine and assault rifle, Galil sniper rifle, Tavor assault rifle and Negev Light Machine Gun (LMG), according to the hindu.com.