Gun Porn!

Screw you, Firearm Blog, it is the SA 80 A 2 that the British army still has to put up with. It was only those seeking to curry favour with the brass that ever called what I've dubbed the Abomination anything different than that.

The words "lipstick" and "pig" spring to mind as do "gold plating" and "turd".

Gotta lol at the comments from some of the other Brits on that article. Obviously never used a proper rifle, or indeed THE Rifle.

As standard, without any fancy new handguards, keymod rails, picatinny rails, Elcan sights(WHY?), or ACO Gs, or fancy over-priced HK grenade launchers, the SA 80 A 2 still weighs the same as the average dwarf star. Putting all that stuff on it just makes it even heavier, and the sling design still sucks.

Still, gotta throw more money at HK as they seem to be shit out of luck in being the Bundeswehr's next rifle supplier. I would wet myself if they got the SCAR instead.

Appreciate the Brits got into the Falklands using the L 1 A 1, imagine if the SA 80 A 1 got into service when the Argies invaded.

^ Las Malvinas would be a prosperous if backwater Argentine territory.

Actually, the SA 80 (or at least a pre-adoption trials version) may have made it down south in '82, with elements of 22 SAS Regiment, and the tale I was told as to how it performed there could be part of the explanation as to why they DON'T use the rifle outside of Selection.

Have a look at this picture on the IMFDB page on the British t.v series, "The Professionals", and you'll see something really familiar.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Professionals_(TV_Series),_The#Enfield_XL64E5

The rifles used in that episode, as the blurb says, were experimental ones on loan to the production company, and since the SAS gets early access to all the Gucci kit that the British armed forces use, it's not too much of a stretch to say that they were the ones experimenting with the new rifle.

It's ugly

^^ That gun sucks ass in Call of Duty: Black Ops. The only reason you use it in the campaign is because it's the only weapon for that level that has an IR Scope so you can see through the gas.

Don't suppose you folks are interested in the story I was told about why the SAS don't use the SA 80?

I could use a refresher. I recall it was something about non-central nervous system organ damage, and how adrenaline can sometimes keep someone functional after suffering a fatal injury just long enough for a Mutual Kill?

I wonder if 7mm or 4.85mm would have made a difference there.

edited 13th Sep '16 10:06:36 AM by Krieger22

Preamble -: Well, it was the 4.85mm version, as they only put the 5.56mm version into production after the last minute, after yet another American tantrum about standardization of bullet sizes in NATO, similar to the one that led to .308 Winchester being made the NATO standard back in the Fifties, only to be replaced by 5.56mm NATO mark 1 a few years later after the second tantrum about NATO ammunition size standardization. (If you're interested, the total of tantrums about standardized bullet sizes in NATO are at last count four, three from the Americans and one from the Germans. Garcon could probably explain that German one better.)

Story I heard -: Anyway, from what I was told, a four-man team from one of the SAS sabre squadrons tasked with going South for the winter, was in an OP on one of the hills down there when they got sprung by a team from their semi-equivalents on the Argentinian side, the Buzo Tactico, leading to the BT team charging up the hill towards them.

One of the SAS troopers got a bead on one of the opposition and shot him square in the chest. BT guy keeps on going up the hill, rather pissed off and gets shot yet again. Same result. Gets shot yet again but by this time he's got the SAS trooper in his sights and blasts him with a burst from his FN FAL. SAS trooper goes down, dead.

The rest of his mates blast the hell out of the BT guy (I heard with headshots) and finally take him down, and after the shootings over and the rest of the Buzo Tactico guys get the hell out of Dodge, they recover their mate's body and the one of the dead BT guy, and the latter gets an autopsy carried out on him.

Results were that every bullet he got hit with by the first trooper were centre of mass kill shots. Lungs, heart, liver, all gone. (I guess they did ballistic examinations as well, and matched rifling marks on the recovered bullets found in the Argentinian soldier with the rifling in the dead trooper's rifle) But thanks to as you said adrenaline/combat high, and possibly speed, though that's another guess on my part, (albeit one with lots of historical precedent given how amphetamines were first used by ze Germans) they weren't enough to kill him instantly.

I'm not a hundred percent sure about this but it wouldn't surprise me that this story came to the attention of the Americans, and this could be one of the reasons why they adopted the Belgian version of the 5.56mm round, the SS 109 cartridge, as the replacement for the M193 version of the 5.56mm. There were trials held as well comparing the various bullets, rifling rates and muzzle velocities, but empirical evidence from combat is also useful in this kind of thing.

And that's why I heard the SAS don't use the SA 80 outside of training or ceremonial duties, even with the rechambering to 5.56mm NATO. I apologize for the length of the post but context is sometimes useful.

edited 13th Sep '16 10:50:40 AM by TamH70

I've heard somewhat the opposite regarding the 5.56mm — that NATO standardized on the Belgian SS 109 (which became the M855) because the US M193 was "inhumane." The M193's 55 grain boattail FMJ would yaw and tumble as it penetrated soft tissue, while the 62 grain penetrator of the SS 109/M855 would just drill a straight through-and-through wound channel.

But then, all anecdotes of this kind should be filed under "Dubious — Citation Needed."

Yeah, the stories I've come across involve the standard-issue Soviet helmet and discussions of what kind of bullet would be needed to perforate it.

edited 13th Sep '16 1:17:36 PM by SabresEdge

As far as I have found the M855 was picked for two things. First as noted was the ability to penetrate Soviet made steel combat helmet at a certain range and second because it could defeat the lighter weight Soviet body armor.

That's what the 4.85mm bullet did - just cut straight through the human body and out the other side. It's slightly bigger than the classic .177 air rifle round but it battered down the barrel at over 3115 feet per second, which is a tad faster than the 5.56mm NATO round achieved going down the throat of the later marks of the SA 80, and as it's also longer than the 5.56mm NATO bullet by about 4mm, it's like getting hit with a very high velocity knitting needle.

I've been trying to get hold of the LANDSET report that was carried out after the 1991 iteration of the Gulf War, which basically called the A1 version everything but a child of god, but it's proving difficult as heck to track down. It's one of those things that the Tory government of both then and now would dearly like to keep as obscure as possible, though it could be available through a Freedom of Information Act request.

As for the original story, I can't name my source, as I've forgotten his name, but he was on the trials team that got my regiment ready to use the SA 80 A1 when we transitioned from the SLR, and I had no reason then or now to doubt the tale. Of course, it could be dubious but I've heard odder things in my time in uniform that turned out to be true - usually by meeting the person involved at a later date.

I've heard similar stories from American soldiers about how the 5.56 rounds would be deflected by dense foliage, making it difficult to shoot enemies fighting from concealed positions.

Of course, in that case, it's also quite likely that the American soldiers in question simply weren't aiming at the right spot, what with the baddies being fighting from concealed positions, which would make it hard to accurately target them (that being the point).

For what it's worth, modern American body armor supposedly turns US soldiers into Terminators with bad knees and back problems, with folks shrugging off multiple rifle hits and surviving explosions. So maybe 5.56 and 7.62 just exist right in that grey area between soft targets and hard targets in terms of penetration.

Tam: Is it the 4.85×49mm by Royal Small Arms Factory? The one made for the Individual Weapons Project that oddly lead to the SA-80?

From what I've heard, the decision to use SS 109/M855 ammo was all of the above. Some Belgian idiot thought the close range effectiveness of M193 was inhumane, another Belgian idiot wanted 5.56mm ammunition to penetrate steel helmets (Soviet or otherwise) at 500 meters nevermind that most 5.56mm weapons have difficulty even reaching that far accurately enough to penetrate helmets. And then the heavier ammo was because of US incidences and reports where M193 would deflect off foliage or be stopped by really thin or otherwise light stuff that would be concealment to an M-14 or FAL but serves as cover against an M16A1.

And now rejoice! We have the M 855 A 1 and the SOST!

Tam: For the US there is at least one other reason. The original 5.56mm Ball round did not work in the then new M-249 LMG because it used a different twist rate in its barrel. Supposedly it worked better with the different twist rate for one reason or another but I think they were looking to change the twist rate to begin with.

The original Fairchild/Armalite AR-15 used a 1-in-14 twist, which was enough to stabilize the 40-grain and 50-grain bullets available in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but military trials demanded something more. Sierra came out with the 55-grain boat-tail FMJ, which met the ballistic requirements, but needed a 1-in-12 twist to stabilize it.

Over the years, 5.56mm bullets got progressively heavier, necessitating faster twists to stabilize them. Current military barrels use a 1-in-7 twist, needed to stabilize 68-grain tracer ammo in sub-zero temperatures. Most commercial AR-15 barrels use a 1-in-9 twist, which works equally well with surplus M193 and M855 ammo.

And there we have it. pwiegle saving me a lot of time digging it up.

Yep. The XL 64 E5 was the first iteration of the Individual Weapon, which was what the brass wanted us to call the SA 80 when that terrible beast slouched its way way past Bethlehem to be born. It had as its calibre that 4.85mm round which I earlier described as a high velocity knitting needle, (and it was to give its full title 4.85mmX49).

Of course we'd probably had been better off if we'd went with the 7mm version of the EM 2 back in the Fifties, but we couldn't have that because of the first American tantrum about bullet standardization in NATO, so we ended up with the SLR instead. By the end of that rifle's time in service it was basically in bits as far as the barrels and bolts go, so a heavy refurbishment programme or a straight replacement was going to happen anyway.

edit

Managed to find this again. It basically covers the whole story of how the SA 80 came into service, and excoriates the various personnel and groups responsible:

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_SA80.html

This one's a bit older but it serves as a good contemporary source:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/oct/10/military.jamesmeek

edited 14th Sep '16 2:42:10 AM by TamH70

Relevant.

The .280 wouldn't have changed anything. More recoil than 7.62 Soviet, less ballistic performance than 7.62 NATO, heavier cartridge than 5.56mm with no real ballistic advantage over it, among other things.

Just imagine how much trouble you guys could have avoided if you'd just adopted the M-16.

runs in a serpentine fashion

If they had taken on the A2 it would have been better then the SA-80. Then Tam could bitch about the common issues instead of "The abominations" litany of horrifying sins.

A vid showing the Barret being fired with a focus at the end on the Mk-211 being fired at several targets. Damn nasty round.

edited 14th Sep '16 8:40:48 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Speaking of large-caliber weapons, a friend pointed me to an...interesting...court decision by the Florida courts.

The claimant was not joking. Nor did he, according to the court, have any kind of license for that .50cal machine gun.

Court still found in his favor because of one of the oddest interpretations of "state boundaries" that I have ever seen used in a legal context. Because Florida.