As you all know, the new Steyr AUG's are shipping.

Sabre Defence was making AUG's for the US market at one time, but went belly up due to some legal problems. Sabre's assets were sold to Manroy USA which is another small arms manufacturer. The sale was presumably for just under $5m.

Steyr comes back into the picture by re-introducing the AUG to the US market this month. I'm not sure what the relationship is between Steyr and Manroy, but the new Steyr rifles still wear "Sabre Defence" markings on the receiver.

Here's a picture of my new NATO AUG:



I'm sure as stocks of old Sabre receivers are sold the new rifles will no longer have Sabre Defence markings. It stands to reason that Steyr is now in possession of Sabre's old manufacturing tooling.

I also wanted to clear something up that's been circulating the internet since the new A3 AUG's have been listed on the Steyr website.

Steyr lists the caliber simply as ".223" on their website. Here's a picture.



The markings on my new NATO AUG show that the rifle is in fact a 5.56mm rifle. Here are the markings found on my rifles barrel. The old Sabre Defence rifles were only marked .223 on their barrels.



Here's the rifle I received this week: