Desert Tech is a hunting and archery brand headquartered in West Valley City, Utah. It was founded in 2007.
One weekend a building across the street from Desert Tech's plant in West Valley City caught fire. Firefighting burst a water main under the shop floor, and part of the floor collapsed. Desert Tech used the shutdown to give its bolt guns and its MDR rifle separate production lines. The MDR had languished since its SHOT Show debut in 2014, and it took a flood to get it a line of its own.
Nicholas Young started the company in 2007 as Desert Tactical Arms and renamed it in 2013. He studied business, not engineering. With a three-person team he designed small, light rifles, all of them bullpups. That layout puts the grip in front of the breech, so the rifle gets shorter while the barrel doesn't.
In 2014 about half the parts were made in-house. A local range let the company test-fire finished rifles on the days it was closed, usually 20 to 50 at a time. Desert Tech is privately held, and Young is still its CEO. The goal was to ship within 30 days of an order, and demand had stretched that to 11 months, long enough to reopen the caliber debate with yourself.
The shortest version of Desert Tech's MDR carries a 16-inch barrel and measures 26.02 inches from end to end, according to American Rifleman.
