FNH USA does it yet again. They issued a press release on August 16th that says essentially…SOCOM informed FNH that the Milestone Decision Authority (MDA) made a Full-Rate Production Decision Review which occurred on July 30, 2010. Well, duh. The MDA made a Milestone C decision back in April and FNH USA made sure we all knew about it. This latest press release really means nothing without the revised Basis of Issue Plan (BOIP) which dictates how many and of which type of SCAR, SOCOM will purchase. To take it at face value, a reader would assume that SOCOM is going to buy oodles of Mk 16 and Mk 17 rifles along with Mk 13 grenade launchers. But the truth is, we don’t know how many they will purchase if any at all since SOCOM has said that they are going to purchase different numbers than originally planned.
The other issue with this press release is the following paragraph…
“FN Herstal, a worldwide recognized firearms supplier to generations of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines since 1897, has ramped up production and assembly at its manufacturing facilities to meet the delivery orders placed by USSOCOM.”
Does this mean that the SCAR will finally be manufactured in the US? We don’t think so, but based on the context of the overall subject matter, it would leave the casual reader to make that assumption.
None of this would really be that big of a deal if FNH hadn’t run out and posted it on every military and firearms message board they could find. FNH continues to try and twist this thing and every time they publish another one of these ill conceived press releases they hurt their credibility and beg more scrutiny. Actually, it would explain a lot if the same folks who are writing their press releases were working on the SCAR program. If this is the case; stop.
We miss the FNH that was on top of their game building great machine guns. Please come back.
Feel free to read the entire thing here.
Tags: FNH USA