I've gotten the impression that after a rather painful and prolonged teething period, the SA80 has matured into a fairly reliable system. Never had the chance to work with one first hand, however.
There's another one that covers this, albeit not in nearly teh same depth that Stevens did in his series. It also covers a lot more, well outside the scope of just this one little debacle, going all the way back to our revolutionary period. It's called Misfire, and is written by a fellow named Hallahan, as I recall. [KevinThomas]
Kevin,
thanks for the tip on
Misfire. I hadn't heard of that one, but have tracked down an ex-library copy somewhere in deepest USA at a price I can afford (c. $100 wanted for some copies via Amazon) so I should have it in 30-42 days time, actually probably less as surface mail USA to UK is fairly fast at the moment.
On the SA80, there were three levels of problems with the basic L85A1 rifle, as I underdstand it Kevin.
1. There were things that broke / fell off like plastic handguards, mags that dropped out, poor quality magazines (squaddies likley to see action bought Colt AR-15 mags out of their own modest pay), safety lever problems etc etc. Bearing in mind the enormous gestation period and the huge development costs, these relatively minor faults were scandalous, but were sorted fairly quickly after introduction.
2. There were basic functioning failings that led to jams, trigger assemblies not resetting, and everything apparently working but no round in the chamber and the dreaded 'dead man's click' instead of 'Bang!' when the trigger was pressed. Heckler & Koch sorted these out at
very considerable cost in 2000 (£400, or around $600 US each), some 200,000 of the total of 350,000 rifles manufactured upgraded to A2 form.
3. Then there are the built in material and design failings. The biggest especially where the British Forces are currently engaged and the widespread use of those funny aircraft with rotors on top that create their own private sandstorms whenever they land or take off, is an even greater propensity to let dust and grit into the works than the M16 family. As a result, the SA80 user carries certain indispensable bits of support kit, again bought privately - rolls of decorator's masking tape to cover every one of the many openings on the beast and then rip them off if one needs to fire it .... plus a set of paintbrushes, especially a fine half-inch model, to brush dust and muck out of the receiver, carrier assembly etc. According to Steve Raw, retired head Armourer of the Royal Marines and familiar with the design from its prototype days, troops in the Middle East strip the weapons at every opportunity several times a day to use the paintbrush on their innards before repeating the King Tutankhamun mummy bit with the masking tape.
In hot, humid climates like the British South American Protectorate of Belize where UK troops undergo jungle warfare training, they also strip their L85s several times per day, but now because everything rusts if they're not constantly scrubbed and oiled.
Then there is a final real doozey for a combat weapon as opposed to a treasured and cosseted civilian match shooting pole. The 4X SUSAT sight is mounted on a flimsy stamping and the rifle is notorious for losing its zero if dropped or has a hard landing when the user takes to Mother Earth in a hurry to avoid unfriendly incoming fire.
The great redeeming feature of the L85A2 is that it makes a lovely range rifle. Every time the House of Commons Defence Select Committee members have been recipients of the numerous complaints and grumbles and investigate, the MoD takes them on a trip to Bisley and lets the MPs shoot them in nice easy settled conditions, and they (rightly) go away impressed. Sadly, shooting paper targets at Bisley with selected, prepared, pre-tested and carefully zeroed rifles is rather different from using it in a proper environment - shades of the dreaded Ross rifle of WW1 era that I can personally confirm makes a wonderful service-match rifle, but acquired a dire reputation amongst its Canadian users on the Western Front before its withdrawal and replacement by SMLEs in 1917.
As for the L86A1 LSW (Light Support Weapon) variant, let's not even go there - it only entered service because the proving trial results were 'fiddled' in various ways to massage really poor reliability levels including frequent serious failures that saw breech explosions destroy bolts. (This event was reclassified from a 'major failure' to an 'intermediate' level by inventing a fiction that all L86A1 users would carry a spare carrier and bolt in the weapon's toolkit, so it would be a strip / replacement job in the field to get it back into service!) In practice, two to three magazines worth of sustained full-auto fire would usually see the weapon jam badly and only work again after complete strip-down and major cleaning / defouling work on the carrier, bolt and gas assemblies. However, the zero would 'wander' so badly with a few magazines worth of full auto fire due to barrel heating and distortion, that the hapless user would be lucky to hit anything smaller than a barn door anyway.
To save face the MoD would never admit to its serious failings and withdraw the weapons, and even tried to withdraw the 7.62mm L7A1 GPMG instead on the basis the infantry now had the L86 for automatic fire support, but facts eventually had to be faced and full-auto fire was in effect banned except in emergencies, this 'machine-rifle' reclassified as a semi-automatic long-range squad rifle and the support role taken over by hurriedly purchased SAW FN Minimi LMGs for Gulf War 2 - and the 7.62mm L7A1 belt-fed gun is still in service too as well as .50-Cal M2s despite their being officially redundant many years back and due to go into store. Evewn the L86's 'long-range' sharpshooter role seems to have gone downriver too now with the purchase of 440 Lewis Tool & Machinery Co. 7.62mm semi-auto L129A1 'Sharpshooter' rifles, some years after your miloitary recognised the need for the M110 Knight's Armaments Co job. What the Mod did succeed in doing was to strip the Royal Marines of their beloved 7.62mm BREN guns, a proper box magazine-fed squad light machinegun, these rebuilt WW2 manufactured converted .303s being wonderfully accurate and reliable with the essential spare QD barrel. I'd bet some of the older Marines would happily wrap an L86's barrel around the neck of whichever MoD civil servant or senior officer instigated the BREN's replacement by the appalling SA80 based mostrosity!
Not a happy tale!
There is one other country that uses an SA-80 variant, the Jamaica Defense Force uses them as well.
Kenny - I stand corrected. Bearing in mind the Belize problems, I wonder how they do in the Carribean climate?
PS there is an inherent problem with the 'bullpup' layout that affects both EM-2 and SA80 (but not the similar layout Steyr AUG that can be reconfigured quicjkly and easily) - the rifle has to be fired from the right shoulder as the (fixed) ejection port and cocking lever are adjacent to the firer's left ear if mounted Southpaw fashion. So, the 10% or so of the population who are left-handed just have to unlearn 18 or 20 years' of living and use their right arm, hand and eye! Also, in a CQB street-battle environment, the user has to unmask his entire body when going around the corner of a building on his right side on a street junction to bring the rifle into use, unlike conventional layout rifles like the M16 and AK series which can be mounted on the left temporarily if clumsily by right-handed users. The British Army was still fighting Provisional IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland's streets when the L85 was introduced and it was soon noticed that patrol leaders somehow chose routes that saw them invariably take left turns at road junctions!
