Jump to content

Fabricaciones Militares

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fabricaciones Militares
Sociedad del Estado
Company typeState-owned company
IndustryArms
Metallurgy
PredecessorDirección General de Fabricaciones Militares
Founded1941; 84 years ago (1941)
FounderGovernment of Argentina
Headquarters
Buenos Aires
,
Argentina
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Cdor. Hugo Pascarelli (President)
ProductsUAVs, freight wagons, small arms, fertiliser, artillery, SAMs
OwnerGovernment of Argentina
ParentMinistry of Defence
Websitefm.gob.ar

Fabricaciones Militares Sociedad del Estado (Spanish for Military Industries State Corporation) is a state-owned Argentine arms manufacturer based in Buenos Aires. The company was a government agency under the name Dirección General de Fabricaciones Militares ("Directorate General of Military Industries").

Founded in 1941, over the years the company has diversified into different areas such as mining, petroleum, rolling stock and petrochemicals. The company is under the direction of the Argentine Ministry of Defence.

History

[edit]

The company was created in 1941, under Argentine law 12.709,[1][2] in order to expand the Argentine defense industry to compensate for the shortfall of imports that came about during the Second World War. In its early years, it produced primarily small arms and munitions whilst aiding in the development of other key industries in the country. The company expanded quickly and would eventually have 14 factories around the country.[3] However, starting in the 1980s, many of these plants were sold to private firms.[4][5][6]

The company has a long history of producing rolling stock for the Argentine railways. It has produced trams, urban commuter rail trains, and trains for the Buenos Aires Underground.[7]

In more recent years, the company has begun to grow again, acquiring new factories and expanding into more areas outside the arms industry.[8] This includes the production of rolling stock for the state-owned rail operator Ferrocarriles Argentinos's freight division Trenes Argentinos Cargas y Logística, which ordered over 1,500 carriages in the mid-2010s.[7]

In June 2015, the first 10 hopper cars manufactured by FM to transport cereal were officially introduced as part of a contract to build 1,050 cars for state-owned freight lines.[9] The wagons were produced in FM's factory in Río Tercero, Córdoba and each one has a capacity for 45 tons of grains. It is expected that the factory will manufacture 3 wagons per day, to be used in the three lines operated by the National Government, the San Martín, Belgrano and Urquiza.[10]

Other types of freight wagons to be produced by FM are flat, spine and tank cars.[10]

On December 9, 2016, the Argentine Ministry of Defense announced FM had signed an accord with Beretta to produce the ARX-200 rifle and Px4 pistol under license. It is expected these weapons will replace the FM license-built FN FAL and Browning Hi-Power currently in Argentine inventory.[11][12]

After World War II, Fabricaciones Militares began recruiting foreign specialists, including a group of highly qualified Polish engineers. The most numerous group consisted of Polish technicians contracted by Fabricaciones Militares, led by engineer Witold Wierzejski, who had previously served as General Director of Armaments Manufacturing in Poland and later worked in France and the United Kingdom. After the war, he was hired by the Argentine Ministry of War to oversee modernization of the arms industry. Wierzejski, one of the Polish engineers in Argentina, also became the first president of the Polish Engineers and Technicians Center in Buenos Aires and helped launch a multilingual technical journal published by the Center. Other Polish specialists recruited to Fabricaciones Militares included Alejandro Stulgiński, a professor of machine elements and materials resistance, who also taught metrology and authored a textbook based on his many years of academic work.[13]

Military production

[edit]

Pistols

[edit]

Submachine guns

[edit]
  • FMK-3 - 9 mm indigenously designed submachine gun.
  • PAM-1 & PAM-2 - Licensed version of M3 submachine gun.

Rifles

[edit]

Machines guns

[edit]
  • FN MAG - Produced under license.

Artillery

[edit]

Munitions

[edit]

Other products

[edit]

Civilian production

[edit]
[edit]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Mariela Ceva (2000). Historia social argentina en documentos. Editorial Biblos. pp. 198–. ISBN 978-950-786-245-8.
  2. ^ Claudio Belini; Marcelo Rougier (1 January 2008). El Estado empresario en la industria argentina: conformación y crisis. Ediciones Manantial. pp. 336–. ISBN 978-987-500-122-0.
  3. ^ Industria argentina: revista de opinión e información tecnológica. Industria Argentina. 1978.
  4. ^ Varios Autores (3 October 2012). Argentina. La búsqueda de la democracia. Tomo 5 (1960-2000). Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España. pp. 144–. ISBN 978-84-306-0161-5.
  5. ^ Siderurgia latinoamericana. ILAFA. 1995.
  6. ^ Claudio Belini; Marcelo Rougier (1 January 2008). El Estado empresario en la industria argentina: conformación y crisis. Ediciones Manantial. pp. 77–. ISBN 978-987-500-122-0.
  7. ^ a b Fabricaciones Militares construirá más de 1000 vagones para el Belgrano Cargas Archived 2015-05-09 at the Wayback Machine - Fabricaciones Militares
  8. ^ Fabricaciones Militares Argentinas inaugura una nueva planta de producción de explosivos Archived 2015-07-05 at the Wayback Machine Defensa - 23 July 2014.
  9. ^ Cristina presentó los primeros vagones construidos en Fabricaciones Militares - Telam, 1 July 2015.
  10. ^ a b "Presentaron vagones de carga fabricados en Río Tercero", Cadena 3, 1 Jul 2015
  11. ^ Porfilio, Gabriel (21 December 2016). "Fabricas Militares licensed to make Beretta weapons". IHS Jane's Defence Weekly. 53 (51): 13.
  12. ^ Infodefensa.com, Revista Defensa. "Fabricaciones Militares de Argentina producirá pistolas y fusiles Beretta". Infodefensa (in Spanish). Retrieved 2021-10-23.
  13. ^ Pyzik, Estanislao P. Los Polacos en la República Argentina y América del Sur desde el año 1812. Buenos Aires: Comité de Homenaje al Milenio de Polonia, 1966, pp. 275–278.

Further reading

[edit]
  • Dirección General de Fabricaciones Militares: un pilar industrial del país. Torino, Manuel Cornejo. Ediciones Universidad Católica de Salta, Salta, Argentina, 2003. ISBN 950-623-010-2 (in Spanish)
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fabricaciones Militares.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fabricaciones_Militares&oldid=1301618906"