FN Lands Army M4 Contract. Underbids. COlt, Remington.

As for the price differential.. For the military the company would produce and assemble the rifle put it with thousands of other rifles and ship them off..

For the civilian market they would make the rifle, a manual, a special box, a whole bunch of warning labels and stickers, assemble the package and then ship off hundreds to a distributor or less to a retailer..
All the extra stuff adds extra shipping, labour and cost..

Think about it this way.. The machines that make these probably make 2 or 3 times as many as they did 5 years ago as materials, methods and tooling have changed. And as they say time is money..
 
Just curious if that counts for H&K G36, standard issue rifle for the German's, nothing h&k is lowest bidder.

or what about Swiss Arms and there SG550

Are these made by "the lowest bidder"

Those are European countries....

That being said if the Military sets there standard and all the companies bidding meet there requirements then it doesn't really matter...

Plus the G36 was fast replacement for the G11...

Can't say much about the SG550 though, don't know much about them but I would love to get a 7.62x51mm version...
 
Just curious if that counts for H&K G36, standard issue rifle for the German's, nothing h&k is lowest bidder.

or what about Swiss Arms and there SG550

Are these made by "the lowest bidder"

At the time, the requirements and what they were competing against. Yes.
 
Lowest "qualified" bidder.

If the requirement is for them to be manufactured in a certain country by an organization with a history of delivering small arms to that same country the list of possible bidder shrinks fast.
 
I'd like to know how Colt gets royalties on M4 carbines. Hasn't the patent for the AR direct impingement design expired a looooooong time ago?

Colt owns the M4 TDP, and FN is already making the M16's anyway...

As to the lowest bidder argument, this is irrelevant, the M4 is a very good and reliable weapon. The bid can be very cheap, but it is still meeting the requirements, which is the TDP and thus the same weapon is being produced in the end, just with a different rollmark.
 
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