We have posted news before that the French Army might just replace their home-grown FAMAS with the Heckler & Koch 416, but in this guest article posted at the Firearm Blog, there is no actual confirmation about it. Although some units in the French Army are using some H&K guns, there is no mass adoption yet of the HK416. The article, though not written by an authoritative source from the French Armed Forces, or from the Defense Industry, can be seen as enlightening, since it's written by someone who has no stake in terms of business connections, nor being part of the Army, nor from the bureaucracy. It is written by a French firearms enthusiasts who is concerned about the French Army.

Since we don't speak nor write French, we sometimes don't keep track of developments in their armed forces, with some exceptions through some English-language publication or through some translated news for us. Whereas our encounter with the FAMAS rifle is via Tokyo Marui's FAMAS F1 AEG, we cannot say much about the actual real steel FAMAS and we have to say that this article states the issues concerning the rifle and the problems of money in keeping the soldiers equipped with it, and this also goes for the rest of the equipment for the French Army.

According to the author, here are the candidates for the FAMAS replacement, and take note that there is no mention of the HK416, but may change in the future, if Heckler & Koch decides to join and give their tender. Right now, the company has a big contract with the USMC due to winning the IAR bid:

"Mannlicher. Reliable, with rails all over the handgard and user friendly. It appears to be new assault rifle in the French Air Forces, but in fact the acquisition process has been 'frozen'.

The Sig Sauer 55X assault rifle, but that is just rumors. These rifles are known to be excellent, but a bit expensive to manufacture for our broke army.

The Thales F90 (Steyr Aug). Thales is a French high tech military equipment company. The F90 is produced by the Australian subsidiary company and is similar to the F88 assault rifle, the Australian version of the Stey AUG developed by the Australian program LAND 125 Soldier Combat System (Like US Land Warrior And French FELIN). Thales would work with the Austrian company Steyr Mannlicher in order to produce it.

A French made variant of the AR 15, produced by the 'Société France Armes' for 2200 € each. Etienne Faverjon, owner of the France Armes company is also the designer of this rifle. Despite the fact that we no longer have a firearms industry, this dynamic young weapon engineer decided to start a company in France. The rifle has a "clean" gas system to avoid jams, a four positions fire selector, NATO standardised and fully compatible ammunition, very simple maintenance, ambidextrous controls, Picatinny rails and, above all, a competitive and affordable price."

As the search (and perhaps some soul-searching too in the French Army) for the replacement of the FAMAS, better read the full story at the Firearm Blog.

All photos from the FAMAS Wikipedia Entry.