German arms maker takes Finland to market court over rifle choice

[cyclone]

.
When H&K is the one being told "because you suck and we hate you"?

....

The German company accuses the Finnish defence forces of breaching Finnish and EU competition rules with a ten-year agreement, made in March jointly with Sweden, to buy assault rifles and other handguns from the Finnish arms maker Sako Ltd, owned by Italy's Beretta. ....

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/german-arms-maker-takes-finland-market-court-over-rifle-choice-2023-08-08/?fbclid=IwAR2eE2mZphXHS52kL8JyuoBN6lLkF-J2oG1Hgj6_MZwyH4ti1jeR_vW5Y1o

 

[greentips]

The fins want to give their own money to their local boy SAKO for local job creation is just a natural thing. Problem is that SAKO is owned by Italian really so why should a German company to be excluded if they are all part of the EU family, huh? Truth to be told some EU country in the East don't care either but no one will be winning court cases against the local boys in those places.

Getting SAKO to make an AR clone is actually pretty hilarious. SAKO has no history of making this sort of weapons, they probably hire a bunch of consultants and try to learn to make this sort of things. Kinda like Colt Canada tries to make bolt action rifle and GPMG, expect some problems to come along. Looking at their prototype, not sure they know how to make a sturdy AR yet.


In truth, they would be better served by HK since Norway is already using it, but it is all about making sure the jobs stay in Finland and sweden.

 

[hsatimmy]

for the $ involved in these contracts, they "could" contract with locals to produce the firearms. Get people who are actually experienced in the production of these types like Greentips mentioned, and start a new division to focus on training, parts and service once production is done. You can keep the jobs and production domestic while running the op from the motherland office.

 

[mildot]

Just buy a "license" from HK .

 

[greentips]

HK will probably license to the Swedes, but not sure they are willing to license to SAKO though. I don't think SAKO AKA Beretta will pay HK either - Beretta is a failure when it comes to making assault rifles. SAKO probably thinks they can hack together an AR if SIG and small commercial makers can do it. Realistically they can most likely do it without great disasters on the way but hiccups will be expected , given the time line is like 3 to 5 years before the first one to get delivered. They will probably end up buying 500K to 750K for the entire run, so there is money and there will be will + time.

Combining the Swedes and Finns for one bid is great coup by SAKO. I bet lots of influences behind the scene for this move.

 

[Lee Enfield]

Just buy a "license" from HK .

AR's kind of have the advantage of not really needimg to license anymore.

I'm fairly confident Benelli et al. can effectively reverse engineer an M16 or AR10.

Pretty much everyone else has been able to - HK, FN ect.

 

[Robbs]

Beretta is a failure when it comes to making assault rifles.

I don't know about that? The ARX160 is a very nice rifle.

 

[joe6167]

German defense firms suing everyone and everyone when they don't get the contract is par for the course.

I had the chance to work with a whole bunch of H&K guns. I didn't like any of them, and I don't know why they exist.

And who wants to buy expensive german crap, and then you gotta deal with their export laws...

An HK33 crapped these out one day. And I'm still traumatized from all the jams a dying MP5 was having. I've seen all these guns at their worst.

 

[medvedqc]

remember boeing 767 vs airbus 330 tanker ... at the end the country launching the contract will decide what fits them and not only on the best to come ...