Certainly not no. Fabrique Nationale moves more inventory in terms of GDP than we do, it's just that France's economy is smaller than ours. For crying out loud dude the French were still selling anti aircraft rockets to the Taliban two entire years after we invaded them lol. The Chinese are just as bad, they hock their knockoff AKs all over the southern hemisphere.
F/N isn't subsidized or underwritten by NATO either, by the way. They haven't been for decades since they don't abide by NATO doctrine on a bunch of things, most notably those ridiculous bullpup rifles they invented a while back. The sole thing the French can do is manufacture NATO standard 5.56 ammunition, that's about it. For all their myriad of faults the French actually deserves some respect for actually maintaining some military independence of both us and Brussels.
For heavy industry manufacturing nations that IS them looking out for themselves. Weapons exports existed long before NATO was founded. Fact of the matter is that most countries will not have a robust domestic arms industry. Once again I use the Ukraine as an example.
Certainly not no. Fabrique Nationale moves more inventory in terms of GDP than we do, it's just that France's economy is smaller than ours. For crying out loud dude the French were still selling anti aircraft rockets to the Taliban two entire years after we invaded them lol. The Chinese are just as bad, they hock their knockoff AKs all over the southern hemisphere.
F/N isn't subsidized or underwritten by NATO either, by the way. They haven't been for decades since they don't abide by NATO doctrine on a bunch of things, most notably those ridiculous bullpup rifles they invented a while back. The sole thing the French can do is manufacture NATO standard 5.56 ammunition, that's about it. For all their myriad of faults the French actually deserves some respect for actually maintaining some military independence of both us and Brussels.
For heavy industry manufacturing nations that IS them looking out for themselves. Weapons exports existed long before NATO was founded. Fact of the matter is that most countries will not have a robust domestic arms industry. Once again I use the Ukraine as an example.