The Indian Army’s Special Forces (SF), which carried out surgical strikes in PoK targeting at least seven terror launch pads, used weapons that should have been replaced with modern ones as per Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s directives in June last year.
According to an Indian Express report, the delay in replacing the weapons, the procurement estimated to be about Rs 180 crore, forced the para commandos to use old-generation weapons during the strikes on September 28 night.
It may be worth mentioning here that it has been more than 15 months since Parrikar had ordered that the modernisation should proceed on a “fast-track basis”.
The proposal of modernisation was put before Parrikar during a presentation after the cross-border operation in Myanmar by the 21 SF battalion last June, days after the attack in Manipur by suspected NSCN-K militants that killed 18 soldiers.
“The idea was to procure certain weapons urgently for the SF if another Myanmar-like operation was to be carried out,” an Army officer was quoted by Indian Express as saying.
If the modernisation plan was timely implemented, the para commandos who carried out the surgical strikes last month, would have used a more modern and lightweight rocket-launcher instead of the three-decade-old Carl Gustav 84-mm version.
The proposal for SF modernisation involves buying six types of weapons: 1,200 modern personal automatic rifles, 36 sniper rifles, 36 automatoc GPMGs (General Purpose Machine Guns), 24 lightweight rocket-launchers, 24 shotguns and 500 pistols.
“None of our SF battalions has a GPMG, which has been authorised for us. We are either using MMGs (Medium Machine Guns) like the infantry battalions or PIKA guns. The Tavor rifle that we use is 5.56mm, whereas we need a 7.62mm weapon for anti-terrorist operations. We also have a restriction on ammunition for training. There is a shortage of underwater diving equipment and free-fall parachutes,” said an Army official.
“For example, we need 12,000 free-fall parachutes but have only 400-odd whose shelf life is about to get over. The OFB (Ordnance Factory Board) has not been able to make them, and a dozen parachutes have been bought from the Army Commanders’ Special Powers Fund,” he further added.
Officials said that instead of identifying specific makes of these weapons, qualitative requirements had been finalised so that the identified weapons could be procured without going through the standard four-year-procurement process.
“We wanted to use the SF equipment as a test-case for fast-track procurement under the new DPP. The new DPP has been notified in June, and this case will move on a fast-track basis. We are hoping to get a proposal from the Army soon,” said Defence ministry sources.
On the other hand, the Army headquarters and Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the matter.
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