The UK Ministry of Defence say that it has reaffirmed its strategic commitment to strengthening domestic firearms manufacturing as part of a wider push to secure sovereign defence capabilities and stimulate economic growth, according to parliamentary responses issued on 30 April 2025.
In response to questions from Edward Morello MP (Liberal Democrat – West Dorset) concerning both the adequacy of current firearms production and the steps being taken to increase it, Minister of State for Defence Maria Eagle cited the Government’s Defence Industrial Strategy as central to long-term planning.
“The strategic aim of this Government’s Defence Industrial Strategy is to make sure the imperatives of national security and a high-growth economy are aligned,” she said.
Eagle added that the strategy “will signal to industry the areas we want to grow our onshore production capability, and where we will work with allies.” The intention, she explained, is to ensure that “the UK has the industrial base needed to meet the potential threats of the future, as well as maximise economic benefits to the UK, ensuring UK suppliers get more value out of our procurement spend.”
She emphasised that procurement decisions within the Ministry of Defence are not made solely on performance criteria, stating:
“All Ministry of Defence procurement decisions are carefully considered, taking into account not only the capabilities of the equipment but also the wider economic impact and the need to maintain operational sovereignty.”
Many of the small arms used by the British Army since the Enfield per Russian rifle have had foreign origins in design
Snider
Martini Henry
Lee Metford
Lee Enfield
SLR
Vickers mg
Bren gun.
Building under licence isn’t a problem but losing the manufacturing capacity is. How you deal with feast and famine is problematic for any private company. We may need to return to the idea of a state owned arsenal.
Yes.
Agree to the state owned arsenal.
Mass produce a bare bones ar-15 and glock clone, sell them cheap to the American domestic market.
Or just change Britain’s ridiculous gun laws and allow them to be sold here.
The only way to maintain domestic arms production is to have a domestic market.
‘Britain’s ridiculous Gun Laws’…Are you for real?..We are not nor (hopefully)ever will be America…Thank god.
American gun culture is largely a continuation of English law and custom. The UK’s extreme gun control laws are a recent phenomenon. If the US seems too anarchic for you, Czechia or Switzerland also have high rates of gun ownership and are fairly peaceful.
If you make gun ownership a taboo, you should not be surprised when your gun industry atrophies. It’s not just a question of supply and demand. People need to be encouraged to take an interest in firearms, otherwise why will they want to make them?
We dont have to be America. Most of the world allow far more legal ownership than the over restricted uk. Israel, Switzerland,
Czech Poland Finland Malta France all have far more Firearm ownership than the UK, dont have gun culture, do it safely and allow far more freedoms than the over the top UK laws.
Unfortunatly 99% of gun crime is commited with illegal guns, however UK goverments restrict the law abiding owners as its too hard to find criminal guns.
We have destroyed our firearm production business’s which makes us unable to rearm quickly
The reason why we haven’t had a repeat of the Dunblane school massacre is due to the UK’s gun laws. All four of the guns carried by Hamilton’s were legally owned.
Meanwhile in the USA, a school shooting is almost a weekly event…
then why do all the other western countries that allow pistols and semi auto rifles have practically no mass shootings? our murder rate and crime rates are high with stabbings replacing shootings.
Legal licensed guns account for statistically no deaths except suicide. Hungerford and Dunblane and Portsmouth were all police failings to one degree or another.
Your confusing the cause of americas mass shootings. Its not legal guns its gun culture that causes it. The Swiss have huge amounts of legal gun ownership yet practically no mass attacks, same with czech which has their own version of the Second amendment.
According to your logic all these countries should be war zones yet they have lower crime rates and murder rates than the UK.
How do you resolve that?
Its not one or the other. Your talking as if the choices are the US or the OK. No many other countries allow far better levels of gun ownership for licensed individuals and do it far better with far less restrictions and yet far less deaths than the UK.
We need to learn from these nations instead of just banning things cart blanch.
Alchohol kills far more and costs Millions yet we dont ban it, we learn how to do it responsibly
Most of the US is nowhere near as violent as you think it is. School shootings do not happen every week. Despite the stereotypes, ordinary Americans do not just run around with guns killing each other. Most gun violence is caused by organized crime and concentrated in specific, extremely violent areas. In comparison to other countries *in the Americas*, the US is quite peaceful.
In the UK, how many kids have been stabbed at school in the years since Dunblane? And how many people have died or been seriously injured because the British government prevents them from defending themselves? That may seem like a tasteless comparison but on a statistical level I don’t think the UK’s gun laws are as beneficial as you think.
The US Gun culture is a product of what people watch on TV or their PC’s. This is extremely violent stuff some of it. Self censorship in UK and Europe resulted until recently low murder rates.
Pretty sure American import laws make that difficult btw.
Other than a few shotguns and sniper rifles, what firearms industry do we have to strengthen?
We manufacture quite a lot of firearms in the uk from the m2 browning 50 to GPMG at the FN factory obviously we are a major player in military sniper rifles we also make very high end shotguns
I honestly didn’t know we had an FN factory on the UK! I knew we made low numbers of the M2, but not much more aside from accuracy international.
Not sure if that means we might get an FN service rifle, and expand out the only small arms factory we still have? Whenever it is that we decide to replace the SA80A3, of course
Yes it’s in Kent I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the sa80a3 replacement will probably be a sig rifle I only say that as the production ability of that company is huge but I could be wrong and we get a FN product
The comments section is working again- I got a notification of your reply! Good job George.
It could very easily be Sig, I believe that their MCX platform is in use with our SF already. I would really like to get the CZ Bren selected, which has apparently been well received by the Ukrainian military; no idea how it stacks up against FN and Sig options (among the many others), would just like to have a Bren back in squaddies’ hands!
That said, I doubt very much we’ll get a replacement this decade- no reason to as long as we can get enough A3 models.
Sig & their hybrid 6.8mm are IMO like the Anglo-French 40mm. Yes they work, but why bother. Something Ukraine & Russia is showing, numbers matter. At the basic on the ground level, if you can’t supply & support numbers then you are wasting your time. At the high end, it’s a different matter. But at the basic end, it’s purely a numbers game. If what you are producing is twice as good but you can’t deliver at least half as much, then it’s a loosing proposition.
Per Russian? Percussion. Isn’t predictive text brilliant.
Ah, now it makes sense. Saw an Enfield 0.544 caliber rifled percussion musket on display at the tank museum on the Isle of Wight a couple of months ago. I always think of the film Glory and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment in connection with this weapon.
Cheers CR
Perhaps we could talk BAE into building a new Vickers small arms factory? Vickers not only made the famous watercooled .303 machine gun, but also Luger pistols in the early 1920s (when Germany was briefly banned from making them). Gen 3 Glocks are out of industrial protection & there are many generic clones being made in USA/Turkey. Same applies to Browning Hi-power.
Browning High Power has been out of service for well over a decade.
It is making a comeback among US civilian shooters & some small police forces. They have 15 round magazines now, among other improvements. Even FN is back making an improved version. Some polymer guns have self destructed with the vast amount of ammo, some Americans fire. Hence the drift back to metal frame pistols.
And? We don’t produce guns for the US market in the UK.
The point I am trying to make, is that there are a lot of tried & tested Pistol & Rifle designs, where the industrial IP has lapsed. So US & Turkish firms are now free to make their own generic versions. There is nothing to stop a UK firm making its own versions of Glock gen 3 or AR-15 for UK forces,( or similar suitable designs.)
Okay but then your arguing against a strawman because the point I raised was about the Browning Hi Pow.
The weapon you are talking about is called the Hi Power but is not the classic weapon you think it is, it has an entirely different mechanical set up and is not out of patent at all.
FN dropped the Hipower, only to see Girsan of Turkey come out with their MC P35, in various versions with a 15 rd magazine. They also did a compact version with a light aluminium frame. That prompted FN to bring back an updated Hipower with a 17 rd magazine & various tweaks for modern construction. You could not copy the latest FN P35 as that has IP, but the classic version is free for anyone to copy, as Girsan has shown. Same with Glock. You cannot copy the latest gen, but the old gen 3 is now fair game. Gen 3 clones are made by Canik, Kimber, SAR, Stoeger & Zev, among others.
It still in service with various militaries around the world (in ever reducing numbers I will admit). However the replacement has generally fired the exact same ammunition. Hi Power works. Is it the best out there – no. But consider that 75% of the military really don’t care. Does it work, go bang when you want it to & is ammunition available? Worn out weapons may not go bang, but a new build Hi Power or Sig, if you are air force or navy, or non front line army, does it really matter? They don’t fire enough to know the difference. Ammo matters. That’s why it has stayed the same. Rifles are a little different.
We’re not starting up a production line in the UK for a fire arm in foreign service that we don’t use in the UK. We also aren’t going to adopt it again. Hi Power was withdrawn from service because it was physically old, and why buy old pistols that will be just as expensive as modern ones? Especially since the L9 had a 13 round magazine, while Sig had 15 and Glock has 17… which actually does make a difference even if people don’t fire them often enough to take full advantage of the pistol.
This is also a side note; but I’ll quickly point out that the Glock is issued with a rail mounted light to some units, which is not a possibility for the Hi Power
Girsan & Springfield Hipower clones have 15 rd magazines, new FN Hipowers have 17rd magazines.
I was talking about the L9. But hey if you think that the MoD should have replaced it’s aging pistols with an old design, when a new design wouldn’t have cost any more please do make that argument.
Do not mistake a factual comment for a personal attack.
John I didn’t suggest you made a personal attack did I now? I pointed out that you are taking the goalposts and running away with them and making a completely different argument. If you can’t take your inconsistency being pointed out without crying about personal attacks maybe try reading?
I wonder if she recognises that the ability to ensure sovereign capability only exists because of Brexit?
Before, any non tech military equipment had to be offered for tender across the EU, including small arms. Which is fine if the agreement is for enough qty for licence production, but the qty we typically ordered didn’t warrant it.
Yes, but there’s nothing to prevent any agreement stipulating local production. It may not end up being cheaper but it certainly creates capacity if that’s what you are worried about.