Ghatak Of Indian Army To Be Equipped With New Sniper Rifles

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Swiss, Russian and Israeli firms are in the fray for supplying over 2,000 sniper rifles to the Indian Army for equipping the 'Ghatak' (strike force) in its more than 300 Infantry battalions.Every infantry unit has Ghataks.They are basically the ad hoc Commando Platoon that the infantry battalions had and the nomenclature was changed by Gen Bipin Joshi to Ghataks.

The Request for Proposal for the procurement was issued earlier this year by the Indian Army to replace and augment the existing inventory of Dragunov and Galil sniper rifles.

"Fresh commercial bids have been submitted by five vendors for the contract," said an Army source.

XM-500

The sniper rifles are being procured for the Ghatak in the Indian Army after the Government decided that they would also be used as counter-terrorist grids while they are deployed in peace locations to tackle 26/11 type attacks.

After the attacks, the elite Para Special Forces battalions were assigned the task of training these regular Infantry battalions to tackle such attacks in an urban environment.

M-24

The Directorate General of Infantry was also asked to initiate procedures for procuring specialized counter terrorism equipment for these units.

Till now, these Ghataks comprising of best soldiers in battalions were used only in Jammu and Kashmir and the North Eastern states for taking on the terrorists there.

SR-25

VKS Vychlop from Russia

OSV-96 large caliber sniper from KBP