But surely the line saying they have small arms is redundant if they have a FF stat?

Edit to clarify - if they have a FF stat, they clearly have small arms without the need for that to be stated separately.

of course a unit might have FF but no small arms...

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[url=http://tinyurl.com/bott2015][img]http://i62.tinypic.com/205fcow.jpg[/img][/url]

It's just reference material to me, allowing me to compare the weapon load of one unit to another.  Without it, however, I would see a lot of people scrambling to pull fluff from the forums to help create new lists.  

It is like an appendix in your body: You think it is useless until you lose your spleen.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

IIRC In the early testing phases lot of players wanted to have lasguns/bolters/shurikens etc. represented in some way and this does it great.

Isn't there also a section covering and explaining this in the designer notes at the back of the rulebook or am I confusing that with a discussion on an old forum.

Page 25 has a design note for small arms - I think that's the one you're thinking of

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[url=http://tinyurl.com/bott2015][img]http://i62.tinypic.com/205fcow.jpg[/img][/url]

Page 25 has a little box explaining what the Firefight/Close Combat stats represent, namely Small Arms and Assault Weapons, namely Boltguns/Lasguns/etc and Chainswords/Power Fists/etc.
The actual stat is abstract but keeping the individual Small Arms/Assault Weapons in a units stats allows players to have a 'concrete' understanding of where and why that unit has that particular Firefight/Close Combat value.

Then you come to Tau Fire Warriors with arguably the best Small Arms in the 40k universe and their abysmal Firefight value...

Hehe: Didn't spot Alansa's post. It's also explained again in answer to a Question at the back of the book asking for the AP/AT values of Bolters.

One of my complaints about the system is the generic view of the units, so I guess anything that helps break that up is a good thing.  Even if it doesn't add anything to the mechanics of the game.