Should British Army upgrade?

[Tom]

After many years of using the "trusty" SA80 (including two variations that the government has spent £395million upgrading), is it time to move on to something bigger and better?

In my opinion, yes. It is becoming alarming, the amount of malfunctions and non-reliability issues that soldiers are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Please provide your sources for alarming malfunctions and non-reliability
First models of the SA80 were unreliable in desert envrionments for a reason - they were not designed for that region of the world. They were designed for Western Europe and the Russia hordes on the other side of the West/East German border.

Another reason to upgrade-calibre. The 5.56 NATO isn't putting people down. It's OK in CQB where the shots are close up and regardless of calibre, the guy is going to go down. However, when it gets to 100, or 200meters, it becomes an issue. Soldiers are having to double tap-one to put them down and one to make them stay down (and if they're all messed up on drugs-probably a couple more).

There are two reasons 5.56 works the way it does. Armys do not want to 'put them down and keep them down', and soldiers have to carry ammunition

A modern army wants to injure more casualties then kill.
It a conventional environment it puts a strain on resources in the battlefield directly with the buddies of the injured party, and indirectly with medevac etc. On a longer term it puts into place political and social pressures when a countries young people return home with injuries.
In a non conventional environment injured people can be captured and identified, especially in 'police actions'.

I think we should move to a gun like the HK 416 or 417. Or perhaps the FN SCAR-H or Magpul ACR (Before you say its the same calibre-no it's not there's a 6.8mm version).

The British Army have brought in the L129A1, which is 7.62 calibre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_equipment_of_the_British_Army#Sharpshooter_rifle_.28L129A1.29

Look through that page and you will find the variety of weapons in use, which also includes alleged use of the HK417 by UKSF.
The official lists are:
http://army.mod.uk/equipment/support-weapons/1457.aspx
http://army.mod.uk/equipment/support-weapons/1460.aspx



If you want a proper rifle then....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLR_rifle

 

[Tom]

well we shouldn't go colt, the yanks will never let us hear the end of it, i think we should either go with HK or FN, the good thing with HK is that our forces would look so agg, see what i did there?

Forget 'agg' the British Army have been doing 'ally' for decades, if not centuries

http://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Allyness

Probably 0% allyness in the offical rules, but I don't care - my dads in it, and going through his old papers after he died I found his letter of thanks from the admiral for his Falklands services (without having left the UK) and the records regarding his serving in Special Forces (But not what we would call UKSF these days)

 

[slam]

No there is no need to upgraded, A2 is a reliable rifle and as mentioned 5.56 is the NATO standard round, so why change it. Sharp shooter rifle, gpmg and sniper rifle take care of the larger calibre rounds. The biggest issue soldiers have now is having to carry excessive weight so why add to it?

 

[desponge]

as an ex soldier (10+ years ago), i was unfortunate to use on a daily basis the 'sa80' before the said upgrades and it was unreliable, stoppages were a constant nuisance, heavy and bulky and not very nice.......i have not yet had the chance to use the modern upgraded version so cant comment on it.

like was said above, 5.56 mm is used, not for stopping power, but for taking out several combatants, the one that was shot and his 'friends' to help him plus it has a massive effect on troop morale which would go down if they were losing men to rifle shot injuries and hearing them moaning and screaming in pain......(sadistic but effective)

mainly what its down to is weight, cost and ease of use...............

 

[slam]

A2 has solved all the reliability issues, ok so it is still the same size, however the new mags have helped with the weight and the new sights have improved the all round shooting experience. So I stand by what i said no need to upgrade.

 

[digitalman]

As for the SLR being the real deal, they were heavy and being 3rd in line for anything good the ones I got to shoot were no better than single shot Lee Enfields. They were so knackered that even with the regulators fully adjusted you were lucky to get more than 2 shots before you had to manually recock. Give me the SA80 anyday,

 

[chuckwood]

The SLR when maintained correctly was an excellent piece of kit. The 56er is designed to tumble and incapacitate an enemy and works very well in a M4 or Steyr also. All armies complain about their rifles but if you look after it it generally does the job.

 

[chuckwood]

posts went crazy..edit

 

[Missy-Q]

The Colt is hands-down the most reliable and easy to use AR, and the sensible option to choose, yank or not. I think our guys should go to M4 Carbines. A great all-round weapon with minimal recoil. The 556 will be what's used as that's the Nato round. You can hit what you';re aiming at with a 556 though, the 7.62 round has way too much recoil to get a second shot on target, and forget FA fire.

 

[Chiped117]

Slowly and i mean very slowly we will start getting the damarco phased in. Currently using the SA80A2 in Afghan now and no problems with reliability but as a main weapon, i'm using it as a minority in my job as the section carries a gpmg (7.62), lmg (5.56), sharp shooter (7.62) and sniper (338). only 2 of us have the SA80A2 and one is for the UGL that's attatched to it. They're not massively accurate at a range of over 600m really.