A military weapons plant in Greater Kaohsiung, the 205th Arsenal, is reported to be undertaking programs to manufacture a new series of assault rifles and handguns to upgrade the firearms carried by soldiers and law enforcement officers.
However, it attracted criticism from the media when it was revealed that it had put out an open tender in recent weeks soliciting companies to supply replicas of 10 well-known firearms.
The tender calls for 10 models or BB-gun-type replicas of the Smith & Wesson MP 9 semi-automatic pistol, Beretta PX4 pistol, Russian AK-74 assault rifle, MK47 machine gun, AW 338 sniper rifle and KRISS Vector submachine gun, among others.
The 205th Arsenal is under the Materiel Production Center of the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Armament Bureau, and specializes in the development and production of indigenous firearms, including the T65 assault rifle, T74 machine gun, T86 assault rifle, handguns and ammunition.
A report on online news site Storm Media News quoted unnamed public officials calling the arsenal’s tender “a waste of time” and accusing it of a “lack of professionalism and misguided technical application” for trying to develop the weapons based on replicas.
However, military experts said that showed a misunderstanding of the purpose of the tender, and that real effort and technical expertise is being put into developing the next generation of small arms for the armed forces and law enforcement agencies.
“The tender is to provide the 205th Arsenal’s research and engineering team with new design concepts and firearm innovation ideas from other countries,” said Colonel Chen Chi-yu (陳繼宇), a supervising officer from the Materiel Production Center. “The foreign models in the tender indicate our direction for firearms production. Much effort is being put to developing new lines of indigenous handguns and assault rifles.”
“By developing the firearms at our own factories, with our own engineering teams, we can produce all the key components, spare parts and ammunition, so we do not need to buy from foreign countries and arms dealers, where they hold the core technology and patents,” he added.
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