SRINAGAR: The informal wars on the Kashmir border are expected to get nasty as the two soldiers have the best of the snipers than man has ever made. After a series of sniper attacks by Pakistani border guards, now the India soldier has the best sniper rifle to react, media reports said.
“The new rifles, namely Barrett M95.50 BMG and Beretta Scorpio TGT Victoria .338 Lapua Magnum, were recently inducted into some units on the LoC to negate the advantage enjoyed by Pakistan there,” newspaper Pioneer reported. “Till now, they had better sniper rifles, Remington, with a range of more than 1.5 km while the Indian Army gun’s range was far short. The new rifles have a kill range of 1.5 km to 1.8 km.”
The induction of new weapon system is also to ensure a halt in infiltration. Amit Shah, India’s new Home Minister has asked the security set up to adopt an approach wherein “infiltration was nipped in the bud”.
“Explaining the significance of the deployment of these sniper guns at vulnerable points at the LoC, they said it comes at a time when Pakistan will now try to push in terrorists into Kashmir after snow has melted thereby opening up all the ingress routes in South and North of Pir Panjal,” the Pioneer reported. “Though no infiltration bids have come to notice so far, the operational commanders are not taking any chances and have further strengthened the counter-infiltration grid all along the LoC, they said.”
The newspaper said that acquiring a “superior sniper power” was inevitable in wake of India losing six soldiers in Pakistani sniper attacks on the LoC in 2018. It has lost “identical number” in 2017 as well.
“Realising the seriousness of the situation, the Northern Command went in for immediate procurement of at least 30 new rifles which are now in use by snipers trained abroad, officials said here on Saturday,” the newspaper said. “They also said the new rifles were bought under the provision of special powers given to the Northern Command chief for such emergency and critical requirements.”
The new rifles are made in US and Italy and are pretty in vogue in most of the armies across the world. These will replace the 1963 vintage Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifles inducted into the service in 1990, which is semi-automatic with a kilometre long kill-range.
However, the newspaper said the special forces were using advanced sniper rifles, the Galil which Isreal manufactures. Now Finnish Sako sniper rifles are being inducted, the newspaper added.
