Thread: Swfa optics

While they are probably decent scopes for the price, I personally don't like their marketing in particular their desire to affiliate their current scopes with the military, grasping onto the fact that one of them has, or at one point had, an almost meaningless "NSN" number.

If you read their "history" they focus on the fact that one of their scopes was given an NSN (nato stock number).
All this means is it was given a part number in the NATO system, so if a [purchasing person orders part number (insert NSN) then they can be sure they will get an item that meets the specifications set out in the NSN.
All manor of stuff have NSN's, glow sticks, nuts & bolts, shackles, pulleys, even shower curtains with dolphins on them..it means nothing other than a defense purchasing person codified an item in the system at some point in time for ease of ordering.

When the code is created a whole lot of detailed specifications need to be entered against it.
eg NSN xxxxxx might be a socket head cap screw, that's grade 10.8, m14x1 thread, 55mm long, and black in colour.
NSN xxxxx might be a shower curtain, 200cm high x 150wide, made of nylon, with 10 eyelets, with dolphin imagery on them.
In order to supply parts under that NSN to defense, it needs to match the specification that are loaded against that NSN, otherwise you need permission to supply it under that NSN as it does not meet the specifications of the part#.

In order to supply an item under a given NSN number is needs to meet the specifications that are put against the NSN. They do not need to ask permission to make any changes to their product, however they could not supply it under the given NSN number if the specifications had changed, eg the NSN says the scope is 200mm long, 40mm objective, 10x zoom, waterproof to 10m etc etc. If a revision of the scope made it only 195mm long it no longer meets the specs of the NSN so could not be supplied under that NSN, as the specifications don't match.
Just because an item has an NSN does not mean its in any kind of widespread use, or use at all.
Im not saying its not in use anywhere - just that having an NSN means very little. It does not mean its "adopted". Literally a purchasing person just entered the details into the system in order to create a code, so someone at some point in time could order it easier.

I used to work in defense procurement and supplied literally thousands of various widgets under "NSN" numbers.
"BuT iT HaS An NsN nUmBeR" doesn't mean anything.

Anyway, rant over.