<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by George Hill:
AUCUP - Blunder?
Nay - Its called Principles... and I always respect that. Selling out just to turn a buck means nothing. Besides - I can walk out this door here and inside 10 minutes buy a brand new L1A1 for $400.00 plus tax...
There is parts enough right there.[/quote]
George, I believe the post is more about market forces than politics. The HK G-3 was the largest competitor to the FAL over the decades and was much more successful than a German made FAL would have been. As a result, large portions of the world market were eaten up by the German weapon.
Namely: Abu Dhabi, Bangledesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei, Burma, Chad, Chile, Columbia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Dubai, El Salvador, West Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sharja, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, Upper Volta, and Zambia. (source: Small Arms of the World by Edward Ezell) This doesn't begin to count the police and civilian market over the years. And when we add this to the derived MP-5 that likely would never have developed without the G-3 we should see a missed opportunity for FN of tremendous proportions.
BTW: This was a GERMAN design born in Nazi Germany and refined first in France, then in Spain, and finally back in Germany when the stigma of the Second World War began to wane.
Yes, the failure of FN to allow Germany to license produce the FAL led in large part to a blunting of the stellar market performance of the FAL. Otherwise, the CETME might have been as obscure in service as the AR-10. Principle be damned, from a marketing standpoint it was a bomb.
And who said the FAL was a Browning design? Browning was dead. The design was perfected by Dieudonne Saive, a brilliant designer in his own right.
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God made us in his own image.
Thomas Jefferson made us free.
John Browning made us equal.
Without Browning, we might not know about the other two...
