>>64383156
>I am still confused on how a nation like India has so much trouble designing their own domestic service rifle and to keep it practically unaltered for decades.
Extreme levels of corruption. They know the rifle is shit, they know they could have built a better rifle if they truly tried.
The point of the INSAS wasn't to be a good rifle, it as to LOOK like it was a good rifle while stuffing cash into the correct pockets.
For example the plastic mags for these things are notoriously fragile and just generally terrible, they break all the fucking time, and the cost for each mag is docked from the cost of the solider that breaks it, usually costing around half a month's salary.
Soldiers fucking HATE that, but the people who make the terrible mags, and their friends/family love it, because it makes them a ton of money.
>Only to throw their hands up in the air and partner with Russia for their new service rifle.
Gun development and manufacturing in India is basically a state monopoly, just like everything else state-run in India, it's extremely corrupt.
The people there don't try to make good and modern products, they try to make the minimum amount of effort to maximize profits flowing into their own accounts, and no-one has a choice in buying another (superior) gun, because the government has a monopoly on arms sales/manufacturing.
The russians are also very corrupt and they know how to sell guns to corrupt nations.
As far as I understand it, the russians have sold a package deal where they'll help the Indians manufacture rifles and set up factories in India staffed by Indians.
This maximizes the potential for corruption benefits to the local Indians.
They get a rifle which they know works, they get it "cheap", and they get a ton of opportunities to be corrupt as fuck in the process.
And if the rifles all fail because they're made out of melted down tin cans due to corruption, well, then the Indians get to blame the russians for selling a "faulty" design.
