The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Hmmm... interesting.

I would've though the SA80/L85 has reached that level of "lovable bast**d" now. We spent so much money and time on it and now that it actually work, would we dump it?

HM's Armed Forces do like to keep things. The Brown Bess* lasted for 150 years and the Lee Metford/Enfield were around for about 70 years. Granted the L1A1/SLR was a relative flash in the pan, but that was mainly due to the US' change in cartridge that we "must" adopt 'cos 'Merica said so.

I can see the L85A6 arming troops well into 2062.

*Brown Bess: Like an SA80, but generally considered more robust and accurate.

As I understand it, the SA80 is a good rifle now. It wasn't when it first arrived, but you could say the same about any high performance military equipment, it needs bedding in, proper field testing and refining.

The thing with the extended life of the Bess, Enfield Rifles is that we continue to manufacture them/spare parts throughout there existence. There are no more L85s, the stamping process (as far as I understand) means that it is unlikely to be produced again. Eventually the spares are going to dry up once the LSWs and Cadet rifles have all been pilfered for parts.

Hence the need for a new rifle in a comparatively short time, even the the L85 has been in service for 30 years now and 35 by 2020. Roughly the same amount of time as the L1A1. Personally I see us possibly doing something with the French who are also beginning the process of replacing the FAMAS (after a similar service life to the L85). With the reinvigorated Entente between the UK and France maybe we will share the cost on a new bullpup.

HALODIN wrote:As I understand it, the SA80 is a good rifle now. It wasn't when it first arrived, but you could say the same about any high performance military equipment, it needs bedding in, proper field testing and refining.

If only it was a simple matter of tweaking mate.....the A1 had many very serous failings, a mate of mine who was in the RM back in the early 90's remembers taking them to Norway for the first time....in the field they turned into straight pull single shot rifles...might as well have issued L98's


Great on the range, but jam in Sand, snow and in the jungle.....cracking stuff, best hope the Russians only invade Bisley then!

The A2 is merely HK taking the crap apart and rebuilding it with new and adjusted original parts to make it work as advertised.

The A1 had some really bloody silly faults that should have been picked up before it ever went into mass production, like the ejection port being slightly too small and causing stoppages....not rocket science by any means, just p*** poor shoddy engineering, management and execution, by government, industry and the military establishment.

dave_303 wrote:The thing with the extended life of the Bess, Enfield Rifles is that we continue to manufacture them/spare parts throughout there existence. There are no more L85s, the stamping process (as far as I understand) means that it is unlikely to be produced again. Eventually the spares are going to dry up once the LSWs and Cadet rifles have all been pilfered for parts.

Hence the need for a new rifle in a comparatively short time, even the the L85 has been in service for 30 years now and 35 by 2020. Roughly the same amount of time as the L1A1. Personally I see us possibly doing something with the French who are also beginning the process of replacing the FAMAS (after a similar service life to the L85). With the reinvigorated Entente between the UK and France maybe we will share the cost on a new bullpup.

Ah a good point there. It didn't occur to me that we weren't making spare parts anymore. I knew we were not making rifles, but not making spare parts seems daft.

Great on the range, but jam in Sand, snow and in the jungle.....cracking stuff, best hope the Russians only invade Bisley then! [huntervixen]

Somebody on the forum mentioned Steve Raw's book, The Last Enfield, the long, sad and expensive disaster lifestory of the SA80 design.

One of the points the author makes is that every time the rumbles of discontent from serving soldiers and marines via their MPs and the press saw the appropriate Commons select committee get interested, the MoD press machine would arrange to take committee members to Bisley and let them shoot carefully zeroed weapons there. With a pleasant day out, nice lunch on top, these days were always a great success and the MPs went back to Westminster convinced our forces had the finest smallarms in the world. Throw in ice, snow, sand and dust (the combination of helicopter transport / supply and Middle East deployments throw up just a tad of the last two I'm told), it's been a different story.

the sa80 wasn't even a British design , it was a poor copy of the ARMALITE AR18 / STIRLING AR180 .Except in the original Armalite form they WORKED WELL. The numb nuts at Enfield took a perfectly good design and buggered it up. Gone the lightwieght high tensile steel body , gone the firing pin made fron EN19 or equivalent , oh no , to save money heavy pressed steel of lower quality was used bumping up weight and the firing pin was made from maraging steel , probably because they thought it exotic . Martensitic aging steel gets harder when you hit it, oops isn't that what happens when you pull the trigger . Even with perfect heat treatment it's unsuited and led to many broken firing pins.
The list goes on.
The next service rifle should come from a source where MOD boffins have NO SAY in the building of it.

Laurie wrote:

Great on the range, but jam in Sand, snow and in the jungle.....cracking stuff, best hope the Russians only invade Bisley then! [huntervixen]

Somebody on the forum mentioned Steve Raw's book, The Last Enfield, the long, sad and expensive disaster lifestory of the SA80 design.

One of the points the author makes is that every time the rumbles of discontent from serving soldiers and marines via their MPs and the press saw the appropriate Commons select committee get interested, the MoD press machine would arrange to take committee members to Bisley and let them shoot carefully zeroed weapons there. With a pleasant day out, nice lunch on top, these days were always a great success and the MPs went back to Westminster convinced our forces had the finest smallarms in the world. Throw in ice, snow, sand and dust (the combination of helicopter transport / supply and Middle East deployments throw up just a tad of the last two I'm told), it's been a different story.

It might have been me that mentioned it. If you remember me mentioning it being cheaper an Abebooks (nearly £50 cheaper, my god). Then it was me. The thing my dad took away from the book was some of the engineers hadn't designed a gun in their lives and some of the people working in the factory had just been pulled off the dole. And the MOD doing that sounds about right.

waterford103 wrote:the sa80 wasn't even a British design , it was a poor copy of the ARMALITE AR18 / STIRLING AR180 .Except in the original Armalite form they WORKED WELL. The numb nuts at Enfield took a perfectly good design and buggered it up. Gone the lightwieght high tensile steel body , gone the firing pin made fron EN19 or equivalent , oh no , to save money heavy pressed steel of lower quality was used bumping up weight and the firing pin was made from maraging steel , probably because they thought it exotic . Martensitic aging steel gets harder when you hit it, oops isn't that what happens when you pull the trigger . Even with perfect heat treatment it's unsuited and led to many broken firing pins.
The list goes on.
The next service rifle should come from a source where MOD boffins have NO SAY in the building of it.

I'd even take the process out of the MOD's hands. They are not to be trusted. I seem to recall the last Enfield mentions either the Callaghan or Maggie Gov wanted the rifle to be made at $250 when comparable rifles like the M16, Aug, Famas were $500 a unit.

I see us possibly doing something with the French who are also beginning the process of replacing the FAMAS

It simply can not happen & quite frankly there should be little need to replace the Famas if not for our own stupidity.

The initial Famas was very accurate & in the hands of good soldiers was working fine all over the world, including Africa, with its barrel designed for the French ammo it was intended to fire. The only major weak point was the mag. It was fairly poor become it was initially designed to be disposable. In practice it was not for budget reasons, ending-up causing 99% of malfunctions.

So the Famas Gen2 version was produced accepting better Nato mags and sorted the problems. By then the nato ammo standard was adopted and rifling was also changed to accommodate it. Unfortunatly, at that stage, France had closed its ammo factory & ended out-sourcing ammo procurement, first to Israel & then Saudi . Ammo was now no good for the weapon that required French steel cases and new problems re-started. Users started to hate a previously well liked weapon.

Today this "globalisation" has gone one step further and we even closed our light armements production capability so for the 1st time in our history, France will have to buy a foreign rifle to equip its troops (*) ... Top candidates are probably the HK 416, FN Scar, SIG 5something, but also the Croatian VHS and the AXR160 (built in partnership with the French Humbert) .

It would be quite funny if one of the "major" army ended-up relying on a 2 millions tiny country to arms its troops because it can not do it itself because of the terrible short-sightedness of its leaders who all claim the heritage of Gen De Gaulle who put National independence above all ...


(*) we did buy a small batch of SIG for the UN contingent in Lebanon in the late 70's .