Indian Army's INSAS Rifle (Updated)

 Vladimir Onokoy has published a couple articles on the Indian Army's INSAS rifle at The Firearm Blog (Part 1) (Part 2). The articles are ostensibly about planned upgrades to the rifle manufactured by a company called Star Aerospace, including a new magazine, folding adjustable stock, pistol grip, new handguard, and a receiver cover with integrated Picatinny rail. This upgrade kit will apparently be the subject of a future Part 3 [update: you can read Part 3 here), because Part 1 goes into the history of the INSAS and why it is probably one of the worst combat rifles in general use and Part 2 relates the author's experience with the rifle and what he learned from others that have actually used the weapon.

    First, some history. Onokoy writes:

    INSAS is an abbreviation that means Indian Small Arms System. It was developed in the 80s by the Small Arms System Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to replace SLR, an FN FAL variant used by Indian forces, which was produced in-country.

    INSAS is manufactured by the state-run Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), which recently was divided into several smaller companies. In 1993, the first batch of 1500 INSAS rifles was officially handed over to the army by the Ishapore factory.

    INSAS is not a copy of any existing design and more of a compilation of many different rifles. The charging handle location is similar to HK G3, the overall design often reminds people of Galil (and let’s not forget RK 62, the Galil’s predecessor), but at the end of the day, it is an original design.

The problem is that the rifle is poorly designed and manufactured and, therefore, very unreliable. Onokay writes:

    Here is what I was told: the stories are true, and one of the main concerns for soldiers was magazines. Not just cracks in the magazine body - locking lugs breaking off.

* * *

    Some officers told me that the receiver cover of INSAS does not hold zero. This same complaint was also published by the Times of India:

    Zeroing (adjusting the sight for aim) has to be done each time the rifle is opened to clean or for any other reason. Lack of proper zeroing hampers the working of night vision device.

    The Indian army still trains in bayonet fighting, so soldiers were complaining to me about bayonets bending during practice and lugs not retaining bayonets properly. The stock would break during hand-to-hand combat practice.

    There were a lot of complaints about the selector: the lever being too soft and switching on or off accidentally.

    But that is not all, often a rifle would fire single shots when the selector is in 3-shot burst mode and vice-versa. At times, rifles also fired in long bursts, even though full auto mode is limited to 3 shot burst only.

    Many officers complained that stoppages were so bad that they had to put the rifle on the ground, barrel up, stock pressed to the floor, and try to rack the bolt carrier using their foot.

    This motion reminded soldiers of a motorcycle Kickstarter, so they started calling the INSAS rifle “Bajaj”, which is a famous brand name for the factory that makes scooters in India.

He also relates his own experience with shooting the rifle, which resulted in at least one stoppage for each magazine he shot.