Uruguay Adopts Glock 17, Bizarrely They Will be Supplied As Kits
Jane’s reports that The Uruguayan National Army will be replacing their 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistols with 9mm Glock 17 pistols. In what is a bizarre twist, Glock will supply Uruguay with 1,500 pistol kits which will be assembled at Army workshops.
This screams of clever procurement hack. No doubt each pistol at the Glock factory will be assembled, tested, then disassembled, shipped, then reassembled in Uruguay. The Uruguayan politicians can claim they are creating local jobs, when in fact they are just needless tax payer subsidized jobs.
Uruguay claims that once they have assembled all the 1500 pistols they are procuring, which can’t take very long, they hope to export Glocks to other South American countries, possibly with locally manufactured parts. I think it is safe to say that this is more political BS. Sometimes it is comforting to know that politicians are the same the world over.
Many thanks to Albi for the tip.
I founded TFB in 2007 and over 10 years worked tirelessly, with the help of my team, to build it up into the largest gun blog online. I retired as Editor in Chief in 2017. During my decade at TFB I was fortunate to work with the most amazing talented writers and genuinely good people!
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I'm late to the party, but as an Uruguayan, I feel obliged to chime in.
My guess is that this a move to circumvent neighboring countries' import duties. Uruguay by itself is irrelevant as a market for Glock. However, by placing a "Factory" here, it's very likely that they can take advantage of local trade agreements (MERCOSUR), and export pistols to other countries in the region, mainly Brazil and Argentina. In exchange for their "work", the military will get a small cut of the profits.
firearms, not politics?