Bharat Rakshak

X-post :

Lots of amazing footage of the MARCOs and its training.

Marcos East in the vid = Vizag unit?

The gun is probably a IMI Negev. I remember seeing a pic of an Indian soldier (don't remember if he was from MARCOS or PARAs) firing a negev long time back. I'm unable to locate that pic anywhere now.

marcos east could be in port blair or elsewhere in A&N..thats their playground

the LMG looks like M249 SAW used in khan forces.

Also what concerned me was the worn out weapon in the second pic (lost his cheekrest). Either the Designated Marksman is very very comfortable with his own weapon or could it be something else.

^^^Marut, there is nothing like a Ghatak batallion....it is a platoon within an infantry unit. Those pics are infact of men from MARCOS. There was a detailed discussion on these pics and Dargunov version on BRF.

<SNIP>Rohitvats, can you point towards the discussion of those pics of MARCOS and their Dragunovs?
Thanks

Agree there.

Dragunov SVD was the 'best for us' and in most cases is likely to remain so.

What I was thinking of was M82/M107 class weapon used in all sort of settings. A .50 BMG cal weapon firing twice the distance of an SVD, could be a great force multiplier. I dont know what is used by IA for roles suitable for such bigger calibres.

but there are other vendors like barrett and more if we need 0.50cal and bigger rifles. its not a unique product.
barret is used by a huge list of countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M82_Barrett_rifle

A British-Nigerian operation, using helicopters and hundreds of troops including the elite SAS, to rescue two abducted foreigners went awry on Friday with the militant group Boko Haram killing the captives.

The special troops failed in their daring bid after waging a gun battle lasting over seven hours, with the Briton, Chris McManus, and his Italian co-worker, Franco Lamolinara, killed in the operation.

Italy seethed with anger for being kept in the dark about the deadly raid in the northwestern Nigerian city of Sokoto. At least two of the captors were also killed in the raid.

In the strongest condemnation, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano told reporters in Rome: “The behaviour of the British government in not informing Italy is inexplicable.”
“A political and diplomatic clarification is necessary.”

While Nigerian President Jonathan Goodluck blamed Boko Haram for the death of the hostages and said the killers had been arrested, British Prime Minister David Cameron took responsibility for authorising the botched operation.

Cameron said he had given the go-ahead for the rescue mission after the UK received “credible information” about the location of the two hostages.

their small arms looks like a good mix of colt M4, ak56 and H&K.

what sniper rifle is used here in the chennai test match
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tacks.html

to me it looks like a heavy barrel FN-FAL with bipod and scope. is that unit chennai police ATS ?

Is that a Chankian use of hyphenation to distribute the blame?

That sir.. is good old PSG-1, in use with NSG and other services since 80s.

New Delhi: India’s secret force of Tibetans, the SFF (Special Frontier Force), raised after the 1962 border conflict with China, has been without parachutes for nearly two years on the suspicion that senior officers tried to take kickbacks.

The SFF, sometimes also referred to as Establishment-22, has been a part of India’s external intelligence agency, R&AW, and was originally raised to play a role behind enemy lines in China in the event of a war.

Raised with the help of the CIA post-1962, it is a Special Forces unit almost the size of an army division and headed by a Major General on deputation. At the time of the procurement it was headed by Major General Dalbir Singh who has subsequently moved on to the North-East on promotion to command an army Corps. Parachutes are essential equipment for the SFF and are critical to the constant training and operations that the SFF undertakes on a regular basis.

Last year the SFF began the process to procure new parachutes since the ones in stock had either been used for the mandated 100 jumps or had lived their shelf life of 15 years. By May 2011 the tenders were sent out using the usual procedure that R&AW uses to mask its purchases, by using the front of a public sector undertaking that is under a different Union ministry.

The SFF put in a major criterion to select the parachutes. Any company that was bidding for the tender should have supplied parachutes to its armed forces. They also added another clause mandating that the parachutes must have been used by the military for at least five years to establish a proven track record. The SFF also ensured that the parachutes had to match the aircraft from which they would be deployed. So for any parachutes that were to be used for the Russian IL-76 aircraft, the parachutes had to be from an erstwhile “Warsaw Pact” country.

This ensured that two companies from Ukraine emerged as the front-runners for a supply of 150 parachutes for one batch, while a Spanish company emerged as the front-runner for a western aircraft that is currently used by the SFFF. Both put together, the initial purchase was to be of 300 parachutes followed by larger orders to equip the whole force. Each parachute costs about Rs1.25 lakh.

However, once the user trials began, senior officers noticed a major anomaly in the samples sent across by the two Ukranian companies. The samples, sources told DNA, were matching sequentially. “We noticed that if the serial number was 514 in one parachute, the other sample was 515. How was that possible if two separate manufacturers had sent us separate random samples? Even the lettering was the same which meant they were sent from the same manufacturer,” a senior officer from R&AW, familiar with the case, told DNA.