{"id":16419,"date":"2019-02-03T09:54:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T04:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/?p=16419"},"modified":"2019-02-03T09:54:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T04:24:51","slug":"indian-army-to-get-us-made-rifles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=16419","title":{"rendered":"Indian Army To Get US-Made Rifles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><i>NEW DELHI \u2014<\/i><\/strong><i> In major move towards modernisation of the Indian Army&#8217;s infantry, the defence ministry has cleared a long-pending proposal to procure around 73,000 assault rifles from the US under fast-track mode, official sources said on Saturday.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman approved procurement of the Sig Sauer rifles, which will be used by troops deployed along the nearly 3,600-km border with China, the sources told PTI.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>They said the rifles, being used by US forces as well as several other European countries, are being bought under the fast-track procurement procedure.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;The contract is expected to be finalised within a week. The US firm will have to deliver the rifles within one year from the date of finalising the deal,&#8221; said a senior official involved in negotiation of the deal said.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Army sources said the US-manufactured rifles will replace the INSAS rifles. The world&#8217;s second-largest standing Army has been pressing for fast-tracking the procurement of various weapons systems considering the evolving security threats, including along India&#8217;s borders with Pakistan and China.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>In October, 2017, the Army began the process to acquire around 7 lakh rifles, 44,000 light machine guns (LMGs) and nearly 44,600 carbines.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Around 18 months ago, the Army had rejected an assault rifle built by the state-run Rifle Factory, Ishapore, after the guns miserably failed the firing tests. Following this, the Army started scouting for rifles from the global market.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The procurement of assault rifles has witnessed significant delays due to a variety of reasons including the Army&#8217;s failure to finalise the specifications for it. The Army needs around 7 lakh 7.62&#215;51 mm assault guns to replace its INSAS rifles.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW DELHI \u2014 In major move towards modernisation of the Indian Army&#8217;s infantry, the defence ministry has cleared a long-pending proposal to procure around 73,000 assault rifles from the US under fast-track mode, official sources said on Saturday. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman approved procurement of the Sig Sauer rifles, which will be used by troops [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}