When St Etienne developed the FR-F1 sniper rifle, all the branches of the French military were given the opportunity to purchase them - and the Army, Navy, and Gendarmerie did. The Air Force, decided that it didn't need any, though. Until about 20 years later, when they decided that they did, in fact, want some precision rifles. By that time the FR-F production lines were all shut down, and so the Air Force had to find an alternative solution.

That solution was to simply build a very similar precision rifle on a standard MAS 36 receiver. They did so in the 1990s, and the result was the FR-G series. The G1 pattern used the FR-F1 style of bipod and the G2 pattern used the FR-F2 type of bipod. Only about 600 were made in total, and they were replaced starting in 2013 with the H&K 417.