By IANS,
New Delhi : The army’s 1.13 million troops will soon get pairs of high quality and new design combat boots and comfortable sports shoes for physical training, replacing the vintage ones, from this year.
These new boots and shoes will be provided to the soldiers every two years, an army officer said here Tuesday.
“The Indian Army has always endeavoured to provide the best equipment to its troops. In tune with this, vintage pattern physical training shoes are being replaced with sports shoes, based on current design and technology available in the market. The new pattern of sports wear would serve a dual purpose for physical training and games,” the officer said.
“In addition, the army is also introducing a new pattern of combat boots, which is presently being specially designed, keeping in view the requirement of the soldiers to operate in different types of weather and terrain,” he added.
The new combat boots will be of a superior quality than the existing issue, which have a life of about 24 months. These new design boots too will be supplied to the soldiers every two years, the officer said.
The combat boots, usually worn along with the battle fatigues, would be designed, manufactured and supplied to the troops by the ordnance factories.
In the case of existing old model physical training shoes, these were supplied to the soldiers every nine months. Now, the army intends to issue an open tender to seek top commercial manufacturers to compete for the supply of good quality sports shoes to the soldiers, the officer said.
“Once the sports shoes are chosen, after receiving the samples from the manufacturers, these would be supplied once every two years to the soldiers. This is because the sports shoes are expected to last longer than the physical training shoes given to the troops now,” the officer said.
This decision will also help the army in saving some recurring expenses from its budget every year, he said, but declined to quantify the saving.