Very interesting assertions, but I am not aware of the price that CRPF acquired thier AKM's for.
Why would you think stuff made in India would be cheaper?
A larger Workshop which has paid off all of it's asset can have much lower overheads, especially private arsenals in eastern Europe which now are part of Europe have excellent manufacturing practices, utilizes automation as well as opex, when you compare that to Indian PSU structure, they are ridiculously overstaffed diminishing any labor advantage it could have, and then have horrible productivity. Such pricing is to be expected. Same reasons Indian MKI's are more expensive than buying directly from Russia.... there is nothing to be surprised about here.
I'm disappointed, not surprised at the prices here.
OFB sells INSAS 1B for $750 to Army and above $1000 for Police. They are notoriously high on overhead charges, and will bleed CAPEX dry if given free reign. Eventually, the only light at the end of the tunnel is Pvt manufacturing like PLR-IWI.
Unfortunately, the whole premise of AK203 deal was to be a two-sided plug that satisfies both Russian lobby and OFB Unions lobby. GOI to the best of my knowledge promised Russians an AK deal early on (and indications are they regretted it afterward like they did Kamov-226 promise, but couldn't avoid it in the end), whereas Unions on the other hand wanted a production order, they couldn't care less if its Indian-design or foreign design as long as they get to keep a factory running with it.
On merit alone, something like a Galil ACE-31 in 7.62x39 manufactured locally by PLR would be both a more modern, ergonomic platform than an AK, and actually cost less to make no doubt thanks to Pvt production line in Gwalior.
But with powerful OFB lobbies in place, such proposals were dead ducks from the start. Nothing will be given to these companies until & unless the OFB monopolies in critical sectors (like ammunition of all calibres) are broken first. As long as they can threaten those supply lines with union strikes, being sole-source suppliers, no GOI/MoD will find the balls to go against OFB Unions.
Haven't given altitude much thought. Altitude reflects in lower barometric pressure and lower atmospheric temps. Now barometric pressure shouldn't cause much of a problem in a good rifle, freezing can be an issue with polycarbonate magazines, some optics which are battery-powered, lights etc. AKM's variants, Ar15 variants, etc. all should remain completely functional in my opinion.
With a lower density of air some of the trajectories will show marginal change but as soon as a system is zeroed, it should be good to go.
I highly doubt that, I do not think there was any comparative analysis, if there was we would have a different selection. Qualitatively there is very little difference between a modernized AKM and AK203. Even the Galil ACE would be stiff competition to the AK203.
As far AK-109, it's the first actual progressive development of the AKM platform in true sense. I highly doubt Indian army evaluated the ak107/109 package, truly in the Indian sense with it's recoil stabilization system it would have been a game-changer. Probably the only AK that would be able to out shoot an AR platform in full auto.
The price could have actually been reduced a fair bit ($700-800 per rifle, will add up to millions over 700k production) if competitive bidding between Kalashnikov-OFB and likes of IWI-PLR and Arsenal-Kalyani took place but Unions don't like competition in industry so that was a non-starter.
And we had an IAS Officer leading the MoD prelim negotiations & evaluation team that went to Izhevsk. Not even an IPS but an IAS, Nuff said. I'm just glad they didn't remove the railed top cover & tri-rail handguard as well in the process of negotiating for reduced price. If what we're paying now is the 'reduced' price I shudder to think what the initial offer was.
As far as I understand it's actually pretty significant. Maybe
@Falcon can provide an input.
The decision was political and the choice was only Russian, obviously other countries were not included. They tested all the AK variants being offered by the company, so there's a high probability they checked out the AK-109 as well. I doubt that the IA is interested in taking risk with a new design for support troops.
A tender is yet to be launched for the main infantry rifle, so that's going to be interesting.
They checked everything out, including the new AK-15. In the end the 203 choice was down to cost.
If they had to negotiate to remove such things as an ergonomic fire selector (with that little ledge for a finger to allow for control without removing hand from pistol grip, see pic) and going back to older, simpler AK103 selector, it's plain to see that they were splitting hairs to reduce bits of cost wherever they could. No way they could afford a AK-109 or AK-15.
AK100/older AK-series:
