Small Armaments & Infantry Equipment - News & Discussion

[Manish_P]

...
Too late copying SiG Sauer pistols. May have to compete with original.

Sarkar has to support, Thakur Sa'ab.

If not frontline then para military... If not them then police.

[Thakur_B]

[ritesh]

Sorry for off topic ...
Why can't any local company come out with affordable sub10k pistol for civvies? In today's times of zombies going on rampage, can't rely on police and paramilitary to come to rescue at a moment notice. People at large needs to armed to defend themselves against 0.5front we are facing. Also, govts shd make automatic license for all the tax payers to promote to this on a large-scale.

[rajkumar]

Sorry for off topic ...
Why can't any local company come out with affordable sub10k pistol for civvies? In today's times of zombies going on rampage, can't rely on police and paramilitary to come to rescue at a moment notice. People at large needs to armed to defend themselves against 0.5front we are facing. Also, govts shd make automatic license for all the tax payers to promote to this on a large-scale.

It is extremely difficult for an Indian citizen to get a gun licence. Also the max calibre which you can purchase is 0.32

[ernest]

To add to this, a sub-10k INR pistol is very difficult to make. The cheapest pistols in the US market go for $250 before taxes and shipping. Indian market is smaller, and has more regulations.

[ritesh]

To add to this, a sub-10k INR pistol is very difficult to make. The cheapest pistols in the US market go for $250 before taxes and shipping. Indian market is smaller, and has more regulations.

That makes it around 21-22k. Guess MII can easily save off 5k if produced in decent volumes and then exports can help in economies of scale.

Do know, rules prevents gun ownership, but those were britishit and congi era laws. It's time Bhajapa, RSS, VHP etc. understand the due importance of proliferation of license weapons for our safety and accordingly make changes.
1lac rupees iPhone will not come rescue when there are blood baying malsi around.

Need to have gun ranges across the country and easier laws for ownership.

Pasting link from Gogi Tech, who has reviewed many air pistols and guns.
https://youtu.be/rlov6hKya2A?si=JhEyxjJY3D03i5Kr

[Shameek]

Showcases all current guns and manufacturing processes.

Inside SSS Defence: A Closer Look at India's Cutting-Edge Defence Industry

DefTech on The Chanakya Dialogues with Major Gaurav Arya provides an exclusive factory tour of SSS Defence, a company specializing in the manufacturing of weapons and high-end optics for military and law enforcement agencies. The video highlights their motto, "Born in Bharat," while exploring their cutting-edge technologies and commitment to excellence.

Major Arya interviews key leaders of SSS Defence, including Managing Director Satish Machani, CEO Vivek Krishnan, CTO Dinesh Shivanna, Chief Security Officer and Para SF veteran Havildar Kifayet Hussain Lone (Retd.), and Plant Head Giridhar Iyli, to gain deeper insights into the company, its values, and its operations. This insightful video sheds light on the company's ethos and its dedication to innovation and the 'Make in India' initiative.

[Rakesh]

Showcases all current guns and manufacturing processes

Please provide a short description of the video for other readers. Your post has been edited. Please check.

[Anoop]

Quite an impressive assembly line with a high degree of automation and quality control for small arms ammunition at Adani's factory in Kanpur.

https://youtu.be/tGOiduX5T1g?si=UzcwFHLLTMfKkJ43

[rajkumar]

Very Impressive.

SSS defense, India’s truly indigenous small arms manufacturer goes global

Indian small arms manufacturer SSS Defence is now exporting sniper rifles. Deputy Editor Snehesh Alex Philip visits the SSS Defence facility in Bangalore to understand how rifles are made and the road ahead.

[Yagnasri]

They are doing exceptional work. But we do not buy anything from them. What can we say.

[Manish_P]

....What can we say.

Somewhere a babu / afsar is saying "If we do the right thing this time, we will have to do the right thing again next time"

[VinodTK]

Army to Boost Firepower with 70,000 AK-203 riffles as part of Russia deal
IA to recive
75,000 thousand rifles in 2025
100,000 thousand rifles in 2026

Received 35,000 rifles in 2024

[VinodTK]

India-Russia Joint venture hands 40,000 India-made AK203 to MoD

[Rakesh]

India made Sniper rifle trumps American in police commando competition
https://theprint.in/defence/india-made- ... n/2504645/
21 Feb 2025

National Security Guards won the All India Police Commando competition in the sniper category with the Saber.338, the only indigenously designed and manufactured sniper rifle.

[Manish_P]

SSS defense M-72 assault rifle wins UP police tender as lowest bidder

IDRW news article

Order is for 2000 rifles

Good for them. Good for our growing industry.

[ashishvikas]

𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 | 𝗔𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗦𝗦-𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲

@sssdefence to supply 405 quantities of 7.62x39mm Assault Rifles to UP Police. Beating giants like AWEIL, their weapon i.e P-72 cleared the Technical Evaluation and turns out to be L-1.

Congratulations @Viv_Krishnan

https://x.com/alpha_defense/status/1900 ... bz29w&s=19

[ashishvikas]

National Security Guard to acquire 1000 units of 7.62x39mm Assault Rifles.

https://x.com/alpha_defense/status/1900 ... jBSxQ&s=19

[srai]

SSS defense M-72 assault rifle wins UP police tender as lowest bidder

IDRW news article

Order is for 2000 rifles

Good for them. Good for our growing industry.

Forget the IA.

Arm all the Indian police & paramilitary. Bigger market.

[Hriday]

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states ... ets-patent

From today's Manorama newspaper Sunday supplement.

Jayesh Natarajan, a Malayali obtained a patent on the design of an Automatic Twin Magazine Rifle. When the first magazine gets empty, the second magazine automatically connects to the gun barrel.

To complete the research, the assistance of the defence ministry is required, and he contacted them through V.Muraleedharan, former minister of external affairs. He got the reply with the headline 'Most Urgent'. Subsequently got a call for an interview from the Armament Research Centre of DRDO, Pune. After one year he got the patent. Seeing the news Army Design Bureau contacted him. They told him that they were sending his model to the Regional Technical Node in Bangalore for design procedures. Presently the work there is progressing.

[Manish_P]

...

Forget the IA.

Arm all the Indian police & paramilitary. Bigger market.

Satya Vacchan

+1

The 2-3 posts before are indicators of the potential

[Yagnasri]

It looks like our internal non-army market is not keenly tapped by Gora fellows. Our police are largely unarmed and already have a lot of arms purchased long back, still in some working conditions. Anti-terror units are having old AK47s. Even in Kashmir, they use the primary same. So, there is no internal market.

[A Deshmukh]

wouldnt army retired INSAS be good enough for police?

[ernest]

wouldnt army retired INSAS be good enough for police?

I was gonna add that INSAS is the most common weapon arming police forces in India. Followed by AK variants. The overall requirements from police forces might not be too high for equipping the larger force, as they'll have enough INSAS for the short term. Our local designs will start with the elite, ATS, Anti-Insurgency units, then Armed Police. This is the way we are seeing it develop with SSS orders with NSG. In the next decade, we'll start seeing large orders in 10s of thousands for force-wide equipment.
The above was w.r.t rifles. For pistols and pistol caliber carbines / Sub machine Guns, we can see large reqquirements from police forces. most of them are equipped will large number of Stens, and a small number of expensive SMGs like MP-5. Handguns are mostly our OFB produced 1A, or imported Glock-17/19. We can expect a big market there as well. These weapons will be more suited to police forces than assault rifles, and would see larger orders from police forces in the short to medium term

[Tanaji]

Interview with CEO of SSS Defence

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O_6kW3Mrkm8

Long but worth watching what it takes to set up something from scratch.

[rajkumar]

DRDO new 6.8 x 43 mm Assault Rifle

The DRDO's small arms division in the ARDE has fielded a new assault rifle chambered for the 6.8 x 43mm cartridge. This was done on the request of the Indian Army.
The DRDO had developed the 6.8x43mm cartridge for the shelved MCIWS multi-caliber assault rifle. the cartridge was based on Remington's 6.8x43 mm SPC. The Indian Army already uses three rifle calibers- 7.62x39, 5.56x45 and the 7.62x51. There is however no thrust currently to add a fourth rifle caliber. This is most likely an R&D project kept aside for future requirements. Even though the 6.8 mm has found favor with a lot of militaries. The US Army is adopting the Remington 6.8x 51mm (.277 Fury) cartridge, designed for the XM7 rifle and XM250 light machine gun, as part of the Next Generation Squad Weapon program, intended to replace the M4 and M249

[ramana]

Can depend on Army to experiment once again with another caliber!

[Manish_P]

Would be useful for all those joint exercises

On a more serious note we might try using it with a few units. We are a very large army.

IIRC poster 'Thakur_B' had posted in detail on it's merits - terminal ballistics like a 5.56 with stopping power closer to 7.62. Smaller logistical footprint as well so that troops could carry more rounds.

If nothing else then we could look at them purely for exports. Uncle has a voracious appetite for ammo and would gladly waive off tariffs, if any.

[uddu]

DRDO new 6.8 x 51 mm Assault Rifle


DRDO MCIWS- India's first AR-15 type rifle

[nachiket]

DRDO new 6.8 x 43 mm Assault Rifle

The DRDO's small arms division in the ARDE has fielded a new assault rifle chambered for the 6.8 x 43mm cartridge. This was done on the request of the Indian Army.

Even though the 6.8 mm has found favor with a lot of militaries. The US Army is adopting the Remington 6.8x 51mm (.277 Fury) cartridge, designed for the XM7 rifle and XM250 light machine gun, as part of the Next Generation Squad Weapon program, intended to replace the M4 and M249

DRDO new 6.8 x 51 mm Assault Rifle

Too much confusion here between 6.8x43mm and 6.8x51mm. The two cartridges are not comparable. This is like getting confused between 7.62x39mm and 7.62x51mm just because they have similar bullet diameters. The performance in terms of range, accuracy and terminal ballistics, felt recoil, controllability in full-auto etc. will be very different.

[Thakur_B]

Sandeep Unnithan made a typo in the video title. It is 6.8x43 mm only.

[Thakur_B]

Saurav Jha, Sandeep Unnithan and Shriram from SSS Defence discuss what ails Indian Small Arms industry.

One interesting point that comes up is that it is easier to get export orders than getting small proof of concept orders for Indian state.

[Prasad]

uhh there's no association with sss

[VinodTK]

CARACAL and ICOMM Inaugurate State-of-the-Art Small Arms Manufacturing Facility in Hyderabad

Under this initiative, the facility will produce:

. The mission-proven CAR 816 close-quarters battle rifle, chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO
. The highly-reliable CAR 817 assault rifle, chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO
. The lightweight CSR 338 bolt-action sniper rifle, chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum
. The lightweight CSR 308 bolt-action sniper rifle, chambered in .308 Winchester
. The highly-accurate CSR 50 bolt-action anti-materiel sniper rifle, chambered in 12.7x99mm NATO
. The modern CMP9 submachine gun, chambered in 9x19mm
. The versatile CARACAL EF and CARACAL F GEN II combat pistols, chambered in 9x19mm

[Manish_P]

....

Saurav Jha, Sandeep Unnithan and Shriram from SSS Defence discuss what ails Indian Small Arms industry.

One interesting point that comes up is that it is easier to get export orders than getting small proof of concept orders for Indian state.

This pillar was missing in the Circus... great to have them involved as well

[Tanaji]

Is Caracal a UAE design house or somewhere else? I know it is based there… how did they manage to get so far so quickly?

[Manish_P]

Is Caracal a UAE design house or somewhere else? I know it is based there… how did they manage to get so far so quickly?

Simple. Gulf money and western engineering.

The state owned (Royalty owned) parent company hired designers from Western firms like HK, Sig Sauer, Colt etc and created adaptions of western designs based on the AR platform.

As to getting far quickly, being owned by Oil Royalty helps in greasing the wheels....

[nachiket]

Is Caracal a UAE design house or somewhere else? I know it is based there… how did they manage to get so far so quickly?

By paying western designers to develop rifles for them. The CAR 816 was designed by one of the guys who developed the HK 416 and another guy who worked on the SIG 516. The basic design is the same as the HK 416 which itself is an improved AR-15 platform with a short-stroke gas piston system (derived from the G36) mated to it. I'm sure the 816 has a few changes but there is nothing ground breaking here. Just like there is nothing ground breaking in the AK203 either. Both the AR-15 and AK platforms are well understood, time tested and battle proven. It is a shame we are paying everyone else to make new rifles for us based on those designs, something a country of 1.4 billion people should be able to do on its own.

[Manish_P]

.... It is a shame we are paying everyone else to make new rifles for us based on those designs, something a country of 1.4 billion people should be able to do on its own.

Nachiket sir, a few out of those 1.4 billion people are well capable of doing it on their own.. they have proven it as well.

The issue is that a few others out of those 1.4 billion people have shown their power in stopping them from doing so.

[nachiket]

.... It is a shame we are paying everyone else to make new rifles for us based on those designs, something a country of 1.4 billion people should be able to do on its own.

Nachiket sir, a few out of those 1.4 billion people are well capable of doing it on their own.. they have proven it as well.

The issue is that a few others out of those 1.4 billion people have shown their power in stopping them from doing so.

I am well aware of that Manish ji. My comment was directed at our decision makers who do not seem to be willing or capable of making it happen.