@kalashio

10 months ago

Most of us Brits don’t really know much about guns. And will cling to the SA80 for any hope that we have a good rifle. But you know what. Lee Enfield No.4 Mk.1 still best bolt action (maybe in some cases beaten by the Japanese Type 99 Arisaka or its Carbine variants) but obviously usage and doctrine of the user plays a big role in how “good” something is The SA80 series are a decent all rounder once we were past the hellspawn that was the A1 series. For the most part the rifle works and has upgrades to modernise it (sometimes called the A3 Variant but that isn’t official). But you also have to consider that we haven’t had much service of the SA80 Series. Like the Gulf war they performed pretty bad due to their many errors. But most other wars were kinda just mid. Not really amazing but also not that bad. The longer barrel length can help with a bit of a range factor, velocity and a slight increase of accuracy (especially at that extended range) but in most cases this isn’t actually all that useful. A more useful feature of the longer barrel may be it’s point blank range (The distance the gun can shoot without having to adjust for elevation. Not just being next to something) Of course bullpups can have.. weird. Control schemes and often bad trigger pulls because of flex in the trigger linkage bar (And just having one in the first place over a direct connection to the sear piece). But when you consider that the only people in the British military to not really use the SA80 platform are our heavier machine gun users, who use the L7A1 (It’s an FN MAG. Which most people know as an M240 because of US Adoption). Also any actually dedicated ranged shooters won’t use it. And of course the Royal Marines have just adopted an AR-15 Platform by Knights Armament. The Armed police have G36C’s (Or maybe K’s Im not the best with the G36!) but they are restricted to Semi-Auto only. (But some firearms officers may actually get a “section 5” gun license and just buy there own stuff like AR-15’s or whatever they prefer as their duty weapons. I’m going to be honest. I feel like the MOD is going to watch how the AR-15 Platform performs with the Royal Marines and from their maybe make a decision wether or not to adopt a similar gun (but much cheaper maybe) for the British Armed forces as a whole. As I’ve said the longer barrel really doesn’t do all that much and the SA80 isn’t really the best. But when you consider the combat that the British Military was fighting in before the SA80 anything that required room clearing was a nightmare as you either had an SLR (A semi auto FAL at full length), A Bren Gun (A WW2 Light machine gun that is just as big) or maybe if you were lucky something like a Sterling Sub gun (Just imagine the STEN but a more ergonomic, folding stock, actually curved mag (considered one of if not the best SMG mag ever designed). It’s easy to see why the British MOD Wanted something smaller. And as the US was still using the M16 with the 20inch barrel at the time of design for the SA80 it’s easy to think why we chose a bullpup with a 20inch. To be compact compared to almost everything in our current arsenal and a thing of “Well. the Americans have been doing fine with this barrel length so why change it?” (Also it being our first 5.56x45mm NATO gun and some of the original issues just being down to Manufacturing issues with workers, polymer types used, and even some of the same stuff the OG AR-15 design’s suffered from like exposed Mag release) Not a bad gun. But there are certainly better. I still want one but I live in the UK soooo. No time soon. Airsoft maybe? Alrighty thanks to anyone that read this lmao Ima go make another cup of tea cause I drank it all writing this!

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