FN A1A Special Police Rifle (SPR)

The FN A1A Special Police Rifle (FN SPR) is marketed by FHN USA, a subsidiary of Fabrique Nationale Herstal of Beligan as an bolt-action sniper rifle.

By: marvin Posted: June 17, 2007

Design

The rifle was produced and manufactured in the U.S. Repeating Arms Company (owned by FN de Herstal) to specific FN specifications using official Winchester Model 70 actions. All current models of the FN SPR come in one of a variety of custom McMillan synthetic stocks. The earliest rifles were first shipped in the H-S Precision standard aluminum chassis fiberglass version of the original Winchester Marksman stock. While these "First Generation" sniper rifles were simply dropped into the full aluminum bedding blocks of the H-S Precision stock, the later sniper rifles are all glass bedded by hand.

FN A1A Special Police Rifles of all variations are noted for being both extremely accurate (.5 MOA or somewhat less is not uncommon) and extremely low maintenance, featuring synthetic stocks, quality Parkerized metal finish, and a chrome lined bore in the barrel. This chrome lined bore offers a more corrosion resistant, more durable, and easier to clean barrel for the owner to maintain and is hardly ever found on precision bolt action sniper rifles. The barrels of the "First Generation" sniper rifles were said to be made from the solid hammer-forged blanks used generally for M240 General Purpose Machine Gun production at the original FN Manufacturing Inc. plant in Columbia, South Carolina. Later sniper rifle barrels are said to be made from hammer-forged blanks exclusively intended for FN Special Purpose Rifle production.

Service

As the name of the sniper rifle would suggest, the FN SPR is intended for use exclusively by law enforcement agencies, and was selected as one of two rifles (along with one from H-S Precision) approved with great recommendations in 2004 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for use of by their elite SWAT teams. This FBI variant has the official model name FNH SPR-USG (USG – US Government). This model used by the FBI is also referred to as the A3G by FN.