But now imagine seeing at close quarters, the cold chrome-plated AK-47, the compact lethality of a `Faggot' anti-tank missile or the long-nosed Dragunov sniper rifle, which can pick targets a kilometre away.

In an attempt to bring home the realities of a nine-year-old proxy war waged by Pakistan in Kashmir, the Indian Army will display over 400 weapons captured from ultras in the valley.

The four-day arms gazer's delight will be inaugurated by the Governor Dr P C Alexander on Thursday at the Veer Savarkar Smarak at Shivaji Park and continue till Sunday evening. It will be open to the general public between 10 am and 8 pm.

``The main aim is to project the army's role in this proxy war, how the army is going about doing its duty and its achievements,'' Brigadier P K Chakravarti, Deputy General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Maharashtra and GujaratArea told presspersons at a briefing on Tuesday.

At the exhibition, Mumbaiites can see 430 weapons of various sizes and shapes including the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle and its variants, the compact AK-SU74, Chinese AK-56 rifles, general purpose machine guns, Light Machine Guns, pistols, revolvers, improvised explosive devices and communication gear.

``It won't be a very big occasion, though, after all these weapons have created widows,'' said a senior army officer. In sustained operations against militants in the valley over the last nine years, the army has lost over 900 of its soldiers while 2763 personnel have been seriously injured.At the high end of the exhibition will be sophisticated Austrian and Russian sniper rifles, rocket launchers, mortars, a Chinese 12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine gun recently captured from militants and even a sophisticated portable anti-tank missile of the sort used by the Indian Army. But these weapons are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. ``The Indian Army todayhas 26,169 captured weapons, adequate to arm two and a half army divisions,'' said Colonel P P Singh of the 8th Mountain Division located in the valley. The army has reissued 30 to 40 per cent of these weapons to its troops to be used against militants in the valley.

Propaganda tools like video cassette and literature, inflammatory posters and pamphlets captured from militants will also be on display. Press persons were shown a video cassette of retired Pakistani Colonel Israr Khan giving a pep talk to Kashmiri militants at one of the 89 terrorist training camps in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK).

Faced with a determined Indian Army, Pakistan was qualitatively upgrading its arsenal by inducting state-of-the-art weapons including shoulder fired missiles.