ok here goes
-AFAIK the problem about jamming was related to the quality of the bullets. Thats what the general openion i got from the officers. Not only the INSAS even the HMG and LMG have problem with the rounds. As a matter of fact 7.62mm rounds for the Dragaunov are specially imported.
In cold climate the main problem the soldiers mentioned had to do with the breakage of the plastic casing due to harsh temperature. And the pastic case once broken cannot be fixed unlike the ones used in SLR etc.
LMG just started getting issued during the standoff around the fourth month or so. LMG is accurate but yes it does have problem with the positioning of the rifle as not only the magazine is fed from below the gun bipod is also not fully stable as the joint has something like a ball bearing type that can also rotate the gun in trasverse direction to facilitate the user. But ironically doesn't give any advantage over the bren L4. But regarding INSAS LMG you can use the same big magazine pouch for the INSAS Rifle and even the sight is interchangable and to some extent a few parts.
regarding the firing mode lever which is arranged on the trigger guard just above and its quite possible that it might interfere when palced on the right shoulder. But its is quite common in all rifles so i don't seem that there should be problems with it. According to me the problem could be traced back maybe to the maintainence of the rifle. If its quite rugged enough to begin with then you require force to change the selection from say safety to single shot to burst mode i hope you understand what i mean.
Scope - Ok scope is good serves the purpose. To add to that is dirt Cheap. But they could have improved on it as its all plastic cover rather than the ones used on the Draganauov which are metal based. Heavy but much sturdy. But its illogical to say that every time you change the scope you have to recalibrate the site. I don't agree with it. Because the officer changed the site for me on two different guns and it seemed to have no problems with accuracy. But yes they could have made the whole system more rugged. It serves the purpose but it looks fragile.
To tell you the truth INSAS is indeed a good rifle. I can gurantee and say that if the Indians had marketed the same rifle with a foreign name and said its imported the soldiers would have liked it, same goes for many officers. Trust me its a mindset of ppl towards indian equipment. Its so that when an indian soldier gets used to one kind of LMG or a rifle its hard for him to change over espeically when its being replaced by indian indegenous equipment. Especially when he would have heard stories from his superiors or more senior ppl about the success of say SLR or AK-47. AK-47 carries a name with it that is indisputable, even if the rifle sucks it has to better than the INSAS and a small rumor can spoil thigns badly. Who says BREN LMG doesn't have problems or in a matter of fact HMG or even SLR. They all jam, even the freaking AK-47 jams. To take a similar case the new Koflach shoes given in siachen were refuted by the soldiers as they had changed the design from the usual orginal one and thus a rumor spread that its indian shoes and blah blah and then finally the thing was rejected withought going thru much of a trial. To add to that koflach company even sued the indian govt for spoiling its name.
![Mad :mad:](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)
and now what? no shoes? a soldier has such a bad mindset that he would rather wear a old koflach than a new ASOLO which are quite good themselves.
But atleast one thing is sure about the INSAS. No one has questioned the accuracy of the rifle and i have always good good comments about it. Thus the major factor is fulfilled. Problems will stay only to be removed slowly. Just for thinking sake the rifle has only seen service for less then 5 years. Give it some time.
Hope it answeres some queries.
Abhisham