"GI Factory" on the Military Channel

[Slater]

If you get a chance check out this show. Tonight's installment was a tour of the M16 rifle assembly line at FN's factory in South Carolina. A lot of interesting detail on how this rifle is manufactured, The other two spots were on how the M1114 Up-Armored HMMWV and the Advanced Combat Helmet are manufactured.

An interesting sidelight was a conversation with one of FN's employees. He had spoken earlier with his son who is in the Air Force and currently serving in Iraq (with Security Forces, evidently). They got to talking about the M240 machine gun and the serial number of the particular weapon that the son was using, and it turns out that the guys son was using an M240 that his father had given final inspection on in the plant. Pretty cool.

 

[Cyanide_357]

The Up-armored HMMWV factory showed tonight isn't all that far from me. My dad sees them road test them or transport them all the time when he comes home from work.

Cyanide

 

[Onmilo]

Was FN using Toyoda CNC machines to mill the upper and lower receivers???

 

[Chipperman]

I had the Tivo set to record it. Will watch it tonight.

The ad clip showed the host firing a Beretta. He was holding it like he'd never fired a gun before.

 

[Owen]

At the moment they have mainly Mori Seiki machines.

 

[Slater]

I think the Beretta spot is on another episode. The one I saw only featured the M16, M1114 HMMWV, and the combat helmet.

 

[Legion1776]

Yea, I didn't see anything about a beretta. He made reference to have been in the military in 92. Also on some of the close ups it looked like he may have had a service academy ring on. All in all pretty neat.

 

[JoseM]

I never heard of GI factory until I was scrolling through the menu on cable...I saw the M16 description so I thought I'd tune in....the coolest part I thought was the guy that checked the accuracy of the weapon before giving it the final, o.k....well this guy had a son in the air force that was over seas...and he said that his sun got to his new location and was issued a gun, he tried it out and gave dad a call to tell him that they make nice guns there The son gave his dad the serial number and the dad later checked it up and the dad actually did the testing on that particular weapon. So QC is pretty important to those guys!

 

[Slater]

Episode 2 is supposed to be a visit to the Beretta factory in Maryland, a tour of the General Dynamics factory in Lima, Ohio (M1A1/A2 Abrams manufacture and overhaul), and a trip to Fort Knox to show Abrams tank training.