Contractor Who Delivered Faulty Weapon Sights Pays $25M

An Ann Arbor, Mich.-based weapons contractor agreed to pay the government $25 million last month for having knowingly delivered flawed holographic rifle sights to the FBI and the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

EOTech, according to the government’s complaint released Monday by the Defense Department inspector general, knew during seven years of sales that there were deficiencies in its weapon sights -- designed to allow users to find a target and return fire -- in environments with extreme heat or cold.

The subsidiary of L3 Communications Corp. has long manufactured and sold “combat optical sights” that can be mounted on weapons used by special operations forces, primarily at the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind.

Company president Paul Mangano and others “became aware that design defects in EOTech's sights caused them to fail in cold temperature and in humid environments,” said the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Yet the manufacturer was required to alert the government of “any and all performance related data that would positively and negatively impact the reliability, maintainability, availability and/or supportability” of the device.

The problems were not caught until the FBI did tests in May 2015.

(Image via  Efetova Anna / Shutterstock.com)