First Batch of LMGs Delivered, Over 50% Made in India, Says IWI CEO Shuki Schwartz
The Hindu Businessline | March 28, 2026
As reported by The Hindu Businessline on March 28, 2026, PLR Systems, the joint venture between Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) and India's Adani Group, has handed over the first 2,000 locally produced Prahar light machine guns to the Indian Army, with IWI CEO Shuki Schwartz confirming that roughly half of each weapon is now manufactured domestically and signalling that the figure will climb toward full indigenisation over the course of the programme.
The delivery, flagged off from Adani Defence & Aerospace's Small Arms Complex in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, marks the first visible output of one of the most-watched Indo-Israeli defence manufacturing partnerships of the decade. The Prahar is a licensed Indian variant of IWI's 7.62×51 mm NEGEV NG7 light machine gun, a platform already combat-proven and in service with the Israel Defense Forces, and was selected by India's Defence Acquisition Council in 2023 to replace the ageing INSAS LMGs that have equipped Indian infantry since 1998. The 2,000 guns in this batch are part of a much larger contract covering roughly 41,000 units in total, with the remainder now moving through a domestic production line designed, tooled, and run inside India under the joint venture's Precision, Lethality, and Reliability (PLR) branding.
The operational and commercial detail Schwartz shared with The Hindu Businessline centred on localisation. About 50% of each Prahar unit is currently composed of locally manufactured components, and PLR Systems' explicit target is to raise indigenous content to 100% over time, an ambition aligned with India's Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat policies for defence self-reliance. The partners say the handover was completed roughly 11 months ahead of the contractual schedule, a pace PLR has framed as proof of the joint venture's ability to translate a technology-transfer agreement into serial production faster than the original timeline anticipated. From April 2026, production is expected to scale to around 1,000 Prahar units per month, with the Adani facility capable of manufacturing up to 100,000 small arms per year across its full product mix. A further 4,000 Prahar LMGs are slated for delivery during the remainder of 2026, with the complete order of roughly 41,000 weapons planned to be fulfilled over the next three years.
For IWI and its parent SK Group, the Prahar delivery is more than a contract milestone, it is a reference case for the company's long-term commercial posture in India. IWI's relationship with Indian security forces already spans more than two decades, including an earlier 2020 delivery of 16,000 Israeli-manufactured NEGEV LMGs that remains in active operational service. By moving to indigenous production through PLR Systems, IWI is shifting from exporter to industrial partner, a model that is increasingly a precondition for winning large Indian procurement programmes. Schwartz also used the briefing to address one of the more politically sensitive questions facing Israeli defence suppliers today: whether regional tensions in the Middle East could disrupt export commitments. His answer, in substance, was that the IWI–PLR structure has been deliberately designed so that India's supply is insulated, with IWI's Israeli facility continuing to support IDF requirements while the Indian joint venture operates as an independent producer capable of meeting Indian needs on its own.
The next markers to watch are straightforward: whether production at Gwalior holds the announced pace of around 1,000 units per month from April onwards, how quickly the indigenous content figure climbs through the remainder of 2026, and whether the parallel PLR contract for roughly 170,000 Close Quarter Battle carbines, another major IWI-origin platform now moving through the Indian pipeline, graduates into the same kind of visible, flagged-off handover. For Indian infantry, the Prahar rollout promises a meaningful generational upgrade; for IWI, it is the template for everything that comes next.
To read the full article in The Hindu Businessline, click here.