Lucknow: Indo-Russian Rifles Private Ltd (IRRPL) in Korwa in Amethi district has manufactured and successfully test-fired its first AK-203 assault rifle made entirely from Indian components and input materials, marking a major step in the indigenisation of the weapon being manufactured for the army.IRRPL CEO and managing director Maj Gen Sudhir Kumar Sharma said every component and input material used in the prototype had been sourced from Indian industry. He described it as end-to-end indigenisation rather than localisation of selected components.“The first fully indigenised rifle has undergone firing tests, including burst firing, with encouraging initial results. IRRPL is now working on producing the required number of fully indigenised prototypes for handing over to the Army for trials in Sept 2026,” he said.The company is also working to increase manufacturing capacity to a production rate of one AK-203 every 100 seconds.Sharma said capacity enhancement, indigenisation and production optimisation could enable IRRPL to advance the delivery schedule for approximately six lakh rifles to the Indian Army by a year.Lt Gen (retd) Satish Dua, former commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps who played a pivotal role in planning and overseeing the cross-LoC operations following the Uri terror attack in Sept 2016, welcomed the development but flagged the time taken by the project.“While I’m very happy for this achievement of ‘atmanirbharta’, but it has taken us too long. I accompanied the defence minister on 2018 as CISC, when we started this process with Kalashnikov. We need to compress our timelines and processes,” he said.“However, it does not take anything away from your achievement,” Dua said.
