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Regarding India's use often British specs for previous service rifles.....well sort of, I have been in the lucky position in the past to carefully examine Indian SMLE's alongside British and Lithgow examples....interchangeably was a factor prior to indipendance, but not after!TRX wrote:The INSAS is actually quite a nice design; I like the forward cocking piece, the fire control group is much nicer than the somewhat primitive Kalashnikov design, and there are small but thoughtful improvements throughout.
Unfortunately there's a wide gap between "design" and "construction." The AK-47 has been successfully manufactured (either by reverse engineering or license) by such industrial giants as Ethiopia, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, and Venezuela, or hand-made with files and hammers by Darra gunsmiths in Pakistan.
India has the dubious distinction of being the only nation that couldn't build an AK that would work. There's nothing wrong with the design. The factory managed to build FALs and SMLEs, and Martinis to British specifications. A few years ago when I became aware of the INSAS (hey! cool!) and its problems I spent a while reading Indian newspaper articles. The problem isn't design or manufacture. The manufacturing part is a horror story. Too many corners were cut; parts don't fit properly or break in service, quality control is nonexistent, and there are persistent reports of guns being issued to troops that are missing parts or simply won't fire, much less reliably hit anything.
It's a level of dereliction of duty, outright thievery, nepotism, bribery, slimy politics, and sheer incompetence that would make any generic banana republic blush. As in, so large, with so many different people involved, for so long, that there's too much slime spread around for any party or group to effectively do anything would involve admitting their own involvement and guilt.
So the only politically-acceptable solution is to shut down production and adopt a completely different gun, with a large group advocating that, for fear of contamination by the INSAS fiasco, that they just purchase them from some foreign power instead of building them themselves.
The closest my country can come to that is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but since it has been "in process" for 20 years none have actually been put into service yet. (it will replace both the Harrier and the F-18! And there will be a special Zamboni edition! What could possibly go worng?)