Indian Army's Rifle Crisis Is A Mess Of Its Own Making

Years after fielding the SIG-716 as a stop-gap, the army has belatedly acquired the night optics that should have come with the guns.

On 15 October 2025, the Ministry of Defence signed a Rs 659 crore contract for Night Sight (Image Intensifier) for its SIG-716 assault rifles, along with accessories for the Indian Army. The sights will allow soldiers to fully exploit the SIG-716’s longer effective range, engaging targets up to 500 metres even under starlit conditions.

Importing equipment without critical aids and then paying again to rectify that omission years later is a long and storied tradition in Indian defence procurement.

The army’s handling of the T-90 tank purchase in the late 1990s followed a similar pattern, with an insistence on importing the tank, a willingness to compromise on capability, and a disregard for logic and long-term planning.

At the time, former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda had opposed the deal, arguing that India could simply upgrade its existing fleet of T-72 tanks with modern fire-control systems and night-fighting gear at a fraction of the cost.

His objection was not entirely misplaced. Even the Russian Army had shown little enthusiasm for the T-90, preferring to improve its older tanks instead.

However, the army and the Ministry of Defence were determined to push the deal through. To neutralise Gowda’s resistance, they struck an understanding with Rosvoorouzhenie, Russia’s arms export agency. The plan was simple and cynical. The T-90 would be priced only marginally higher than the T-72 by stripping away several key systems, which India would then purchase later through separate contracts once the tank was in service.

Among the features removed was the Shtora active protection system, designed to intercept incoming anti-tank missiles. That this was omitted despite Pakistan’s missile-heavy anti-tank defences reflected poorly on the logic of India’s procurement. Short-term convenience trumped battlefield sense.

Useful as it is, the contract for night sights is only the latest chapter in a decade-long story of stop-gaps and false starts.

A Saga of Failures

Almost every debate about defence modernisation in India starts and ends with experts berating the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for inordinate delays in procurement.

The military, and the army in particular, is mostly spared. It is often seen as a victim of the civilian bureaucracy at the MoD and escapes scrutiny despite playing a critical role in the procurement process.

Make no mistake, the MoD babus deserve all the brickbats and more for their Antony-esque incompetence. 

The MoD's convoluted process of procurements, which former army chief General VK Singh (Retd) once described as a "snakes and ladders game" with "no ladders," is perhaps the most incorrigible obstacle to defence modernisation.

But the military is not blameless. Its penchant for drafting fantastical qualitative requirements (QRs) has repeatedly delayed or aborted the acquisition of badly needed equipment, often after prolonged technical evaluations and trials.

In 2015, then defence minister Manohar Parrikar, describing the phenomenon at the India Today Conclave, said those writing the QRs were perhaps watching “Marvel comic movies," disguising his vexation as a jest. Former army chief General Bikram Singh, sitting next to him, quickly shifted the conversation back to the tardy procurement procedure, which is mostly the responsibility of the MoD. It was no surprise. The army's record on QRs is the worst among the three services.

In 2012, the then defence secretary told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence that as many as 41 of the army’s tenders had been withdrawn in previous years due to "faulty and stringent General Staff Qualitative Requirements or GSQRs."

Drafting QRs, which lay down the preliminary specifications of equipment, begins after services receive responses to requests for information (RFIs) issued to domestic or foreign vendors.

Often, information available in the brochures supplied by vendors is collected and the best of the capabilities are compiled as requirements. At times, this is done without mapping the capabilities or parameters to cost and stipulated timelines. 

The draft document then moves up the chain of military command in the service headquarters, gathering new suggestions at every stage. In many instances, what emerges at the end is a "well-compiled wish list of utopian dimensions."

In some cases, QRs are tweaked in favour of a particular vendor, such as with Singapore Technologies' Pegasus 155 mm howitzer, which General VK Singh discusses in his autobiography Courage and Conviction.

As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted in her 2020 budget speech, such cases often lead to single-vendor situations, which Defence Procurement Procedures have discouraged since 2005. This results in tenders being rescinded and acquisitions being endlessly delayed.

The army has added to its already impressive list of QR blunders in recent years. One such misstep has turned its quest to equip frontline troops with new snipers and rifles into an unending saga of failures, practically worthy of a novel on its own.

Take, for instance, the case of assault rifle procurement to replace the troubled INSAS 5.56x45 mm rifles that entered service in the mid-1990s.

In 2011, the army issued a global tender for multi-calibre assault rifles. Initially, 66,000 rifles were to be procured for a total requirement of around 7,50,000.

However, the army's imaginative QRs ensured the procurement hung in balance for over four years. It required a rifle with interchangeable barrels to allow the use of two completely different cartridges, the 5.56 mm INSAS round for conventional warfare and the 7.62 mm AK-47 round for counter-terror operations.

The "overambitious experiment" failed as no weapon could meet the requirement. The tender was scrapped in 2015.

In 2019, the army contracted for 72,000 SIG716 rifles from USA’s Sig Sauer as a stop-gap measure to equip frontline troops, with the option of adding another 72,000.

The rifles had been imported without the sights. Various operational glitches, including jamming, also surfaced after the rifle was issued to troops. For a while, it seemed the army had decided against placing a repeat order. However, in 2024, the situation changed with an order for over 70,000 more SIG716 rifles.

Meanwhile, the deal with Russia to licence-build 6,71,000 Kalashnikov AK-203 assault rifles in India made little progress, first due to disagreements over price and localisation, and then due to supply-chain issues caused by Russia's engagement in Ukraine. Although a deal was reached in 2021, only 35,000 rifles had been delivered by July 2024, with only 10,000 handed over to troops.

Under the deal worth over Rs 5000 crore, 6.1 lakh AK-203 assault rifles are being made in India with technology transfer from Russia. The first 70,000 rifles are produced with 5 per cent localisation, gradually increasing to 70 per cent, while the remaining rifles will be made with 100 per cent localisation.

At the current pace, the Russia-India joint venture might take years to deliver 6 lakh rifles, leaving the army with no solution in sight for its rifle woes and only itself to blame.

If not for its overly ambitious QRs in 2011, a new rifle could have been procured for the army in the first half of the last decade.

The procurement of sniper rifles has similarly become a never-ending tale of cancelled tenders.

It is often argued that services draft 'futuristic' QRs to prevent equipment from becoming obsolete quickly, but this reasoning is flawed.

First, what services defend as 'futuristic' is, in many cases, fanciful or even absurd. This was amply demonstrated in the case of assault rifle procurement, where even foreign vendors could not find solutions for the unrealistic requirements set by the army.

Second, the argument that any equipment inducted with contemporary capabilities will become obsolete within years disregards the role of iterative improvement and upgrades in keeping combat platforms effective against evolving threats.

As Vivek Krishnan of SSS Defence, a small-arms maker based in Bengaluru, pointed out in his viral social media post on the repeat order for Sig Sauer rifles, the army often uses the argument that Indian manufacturers are "not there on metallurgy" or their "designs are behind time" to reject indigenously developed weapons.

While continuing with Sig Sauer might be justified for logistical reasons, the army's fixation on unrealistic QRs, resembling Marvel comic weapons, at the expense of Indian private sector players is indefensible.

For Make in India to succeed in defence, the private sector needs more than talk. It requires a fair chance. The army must avoid sabotaging this with its QR blunders.