Joint Venture Protective Carbine

The Joint Venture Protective Carbine, abbreviated JVPC and known until 2014 as the Modern Sub Machine Carbine or MSMC, is an Indian gas-operated, magazine-fed, select-fire carbine chambered for the 5.56x30mm MINSAS cartridge. It was designed by the Armament Research and Development Establishment of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and is built by Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited and Kalyani Strategic Systems Limited. It was meant to replace the 9mm Sterling submachine gun used by Indian forces. Development was an offshoot of the INSAS small arms programme: earlier carbine prototypes failed army trials between 2006 and 2009, DRDO and the Ordnance Factory Board then pooled their work in 2010 and renamed the design, and Indian Army user trials ran from 2016 to 2021 in extreme heat and in the cold desert of Ladakh. The carbine is compact, with a collapsing stock, a pistol grip, a barrel of 300 mm and rate of fire of 800 to 900 rounds a minute. It entered service with the Central Armed Police Forces in 2017, and about 6,000 were supplied by the 2021 to 2022 reporting year.