Consumers have been excruciatingly patient in waiting for the MDR by Desert Tech. To help alleviate those frustrations Desert Tech’s Director of Marketing, Carson Jenkins, put out a statement on Friday, January 5th to give consumers a status update on production:

Dear Valued Customers,

Our November 2017 update stated that our expectation was to ship a small batch or two of MDR’s prior to February and then move to high volume production in late February 2018.

Shortly after this update went out, we received news from our MIM supplier stating that they were able to speed up the schedule of the MDR side panels, allowing a sooner than expected ramp up. This information was not announced publicly but was released to our customers on the direct pre-order list and many of our dealers.

Most recently, a situation beyond the control of Desert Tech and our MIM supplier arose that postponed the time line of the December batch. The issue lies with the foreign government where our MIM supplier is located. It has recently instated more stringent export regulations on firearms parts. The added scrutiny put a freeze on firearm parts being exported from the country, requiring our MIM supplier to jump through additional, unforeseen hoops of bureaucratic regulation to export firearm parts to the US. These new regulations were not unique to Desert Tech and affected many U.S. Firearms manufacturers.

Over the past few weeks, Desert Tech teamed up with our MIM supplier and several large U.S. firearms manufacturers to present a case to the foreign government, requesting relief from these added regulations. Thankfully, with the help of all involved, their government ruled in our favor, has released the parts, and noted additional considerations will be made in future regulations.

These parts were scheduled to arrive in December. We now expect they will arrive by the end of next week (January 12th).

While we await the arrival of these parts, MDR’s are being assembled and are only waiting on these parts for final testing. Once the parts arrive, they will be finished, installed and tested in the assembled MDR’s, then packed and shipped.

We are hopeful that our next shipments will begin in late January and that we will transition to high volume by the end of February.

Our internal goal is to have all MDR .308 Rifle pre-orders filled before the end of April 2018.

On another note.

I’m super excited to inform you that our testing of the .223 MDR is on track and we remain hopeful to meet our current timeline. We will have fully functioning .223 MDR’s at SHOT Show Range Day; along with a couple of surprises in our booth that will add even more excitement to the MDR.

If you are going to SHOT Show, stop by our Booth #31502. If not, stay up to date via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and talk to your local Desert Tech dealer for the latest MDR info.

Sincerely,

Carson Jenkins, Director of Marketing

Desert Tech LLC

So there you have it!

A lot of bureaucratic nonsense has significantly delayed the production of the MDR .308 Win rifles, but the testing and development of the MDR .223 Rem rifles is so far on schedule.

It will be interesting to see what cool stuff Desert Tech is hiding from us (for now) that will be at their SHOT Show booth…