If engaging the FWL any time through the 3030's, you might have PILES of AC/5's saved up.
Remanufacture 100 of those AC/5's to Light AC/5's, or possibly even UAC's, and re-sell 'em.
The downside to fabrication, is the amount of effort needed to improve/modify equipment, compared to their end resale value.
Difference in cost:
AC/5 = 125k
Light AC/5 = 150k
UAC/5 = 200k
Fabrication (SO p179) states the cost to fabricate hardware [bold]from scratch[/bold] would be 10x the time and cost:
fabrication will take 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours
. While some components of the standard AC/5 could be re-used, the over-all time & cost of fabricating could be assumed to be less than that of one from scratch.
An advantage here to refitting / remanufacturing a stockpile, is a function of labor-costs.. time spent for an Engineering or Technician team to design an upgrade that could be reproduced, would off-set the costs... IE, 10x 200k = 2mil Cbills & "30hrs" of time to reverse engineer a UAC/5. Production of "a different loading mechanism" could be easily offset by the time-cost-quality trifecta, and production-cost-factored into a price-each formula.
Off the top of my head, I'd guess rebuilding 100 AC/5's into UAC's (with sufficient technology and equipment and after developing the process procedure & upgrade parts), could run less than 1/8*200,000*10 in cost each, and an amount of time (labor) to fabricate....
Selling 100 AC/5's as salvage might net 6,250,000 Cbills at an average C-rating; but if spending 2mil (designing) + 1,250,000 (fabrication costs) + 18,000 (13 units/week/tech-team labor), selling those 100 units as fabricated UAC/5s at half-value (100k each, unless vetted, tested, and commercialized) would yield 10mil-(3.250mil+18k) = 6,732mil, or for a bit under 500k Cbills potential profit over the straight sale of weapons...