I think that two other advantages of 5.56 over 7.62 were that you could carry more ammunition (as an infanteer 4 mags of 30 plus a couple of bandoleers). They also didn't want the stopping power of 7.62mm, a hit with a 5.56m round was designed to maim therefore taking the wounded soldier and at least 2/4 soldiers to administer first aid and carry the casualty out of the battle. The accuracy of the SA80 is unquestionable 300m as a single rifleman but 500m as a section, I shot for my battalion shooting team in the NI shoot in about 1999 would have got top marks on one of the shoots....if I had shot my target and not the guy's in the next lane!!!
the trouble i remember with the old lee enfield is that being bolt action it was to noisy in a lot of situations, the slr was the perfect weapon in my mind, you could hit a bloke at 200 yds in the shoulder & take his arm off i was in when we went over to the new sa80 in 86 & i hated it, its main drawback to me was that it could'nt be fired left handed which i am, no doubt it has had a lot of modifications since then but give me the slr any day
There are (somewhere) some pictures of the 'first' SA80 on the net somewhere from the 1950's. It always striked me as looking quite weird with wooden furniture. I first saw it about 10 years ago in a Soldier Magazine. Here it is: Yep, that's the EM2, which only took about 40 years to develop into a useable item! Length - 889-mm Weight - 3.42 Kg Barrel - 623-mm MV - 772 mps RoF - 450 rpm Mag - 20 round box Has been described as 'NATO's lost chance', given the WarPac adoption of the AK47 with its 7.62mm x 39-mm intermediate round, borrowing even more heavily from the Stg44. Daresay that the EM2 looked too futuristic for those brought up on the bolt action rifles of the previous fifty years, even with the wood finish!
If you were used to firing the slr left handed then it would be a major issue having to change, I am left handed but only learnt right from the start to fire right handed so it wasn't a problem me, did lead to confusing when firing pistols though
I think it was during the early 50's in his second stint as PM that Churchill and a General were discussing a new assault rifle - the EM2? - when the subject of NATO standardisation and production cropped up... General: 'well I suppose we could make a bastard rifle, half British and half American?' Churchill: 'kindly moderate your language - I am half British and half American'
There are (somewhere) some pictures of the 'first' SA80 on the net somewhere from the 1950's. It always striked me as looking quite weird with wooden furniture. I first saw it about 10 years ago in a Soldier Magazine. Here it is: That's the EM2. THere was also an EM1 which appears to have had more metal/plastic than wood, but I'm not too clear on that. I have also seen reference to the EM2 being modified to .300" calibre - a US bullet in the EM2's 0.280" case. I imagine this was a doomed compromise to keep them interested. Re: the dum-dum thread, stopping power is not just a factor of calibre so there is the alternative of modifying the ammunition rather than the rifle. Wasn't the SS109 chosen as the NATO standard instead of the US M193 (?) because of its better performance, even though the rounds were the same calibre? [Edit] There's a photo in an Jane's Infantry Weapons of a sectioned AK74 5.45 bullet. Interested to note that the inside the point of the jacket is hollow (forgive the verbal gymnastics but I did not want to say hollow point). The filling, base to tip is (or was, this is the 83/84 edition) roughly 2/3 steel, 1/6 lead, 1/3 air. It's also a long bullet so it has been designed to deform at the tip and tumble - ouch (but nothing we haven't done before). I confess I have nothing on the innards of 5.56 but would I be right in suspecting that we have a 'nicer' less-efficient design? And to what extent are NATO rounds designed to defeat body armour to the detriment of defeating the body?
If you were used to firing the slr left handed then it would be a major issue having to change, I am left handed but only learnt right from the start to fire right handed so it wasn't a problem me, did lead to confusing when firing pistols though hi dave yes it was a major problem with pistols aswell, in the end i got better with a pistol but as the sa80 was bought in so suddenly i hated it
Yep again..I did mean to mention the standard NATO round. Even the Russians use a NATO round in some of their Assault Rifles. Note that those are export versions... The Russian military itself doesn't use them.
Couldn't The British armed forces just use a licenced built AK47 ? thered be no R+D expence and it could be giving work to UK factories .
Given that the americans are heading for the SCAR over the L129A1; won't SCAR systems end up having all the money pushed at them? And won't NATO be SCAR focused? (i understand there is a 7.62 version of the SCAR but lets face it the americans will be using the 5.56). This new rifle had better be up to competing with other systems or else in a few years a new british government will be pushing for an americans model and the whole circle will start again.
See the 280 up against the Garand & Lee Enfield here. British Pathe - NEW RIFLE TEST FOR EXPERTS Great find Owen... Quite sad really when you think GB had that tech. and train of thought nearly 60 years ago and it took until 2002/3 for it to be 'perfected' (If there is such a thing). I wonder how much that MG had to do with the GPMG. I thought they looked rather similiar in the SF role.
It looks like a GPMG front with a Vickers rear: Some Heavy reading: ASSAULT RIFLES AND THEIR AMMUNITION: And a more basic guide to the Taden MG: Taden gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not having read all the posts in here but, when 'I were a lad' in the 1st Royal Tank Regiment I was issued with the Sterling Machine Gun which was ok at close quarters but over distance became very iffy. When we did our Ireland tours we had the Belgian SLR 7.62mm which had a bit of a kick but could be used over great distance quite effectively. In the late 80s I was issued with the SA80, a toy gun by comparison. Again, range was reduced from the SLR and ammo much smaller but, on a range of 500m, on an electronic target, I simply could not miss. I never tried it on any longer range. The SA80 was not universally loved and probably cost the government x10 the original estimates due to problems with the weapon. I hated it, harder to strip and clean that the SMG or the SLR. If the army had asked soldiers first, the SA80 would never have been born. I fired an LMG too, also couldn't miss.
I don't think the SA80 should be considered as a 'perfected' EM2. The mechanisms were different and only fault they shared was their inability to be fired from the left shoulder. There's a page here with a bit more detail and a useful comparative table of round performance at the bottom, getting us back to where the thread started. The question I have is why did we go to the trouble of reinventing the wheel with the SA80 if EM2 had already been perfected? My guess is that the weaker 5.56 round offered the possibility of an even lighter weapon or, looking at it the other way, the round was too feeble to work the parts of EM2.
The right-handedness of the bullpups always seems to be overstated, it's not like Lee-Enfields, Brens or much else were particularly kind to left-handers.
PP had some interesting opinions on weapons that can only fire from one shoulder in this post: Present... Arms! Thread.
