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Sir, Sir, 'me GAT doesn't work Sir!

The problem of course is the fact that following teh the carefully constructed URD and the very detailed SRD produced by small groups of determined weapon trained Staff Officers and their trusty Civvy sidekicks down the old 'Bois, down selection of solutions concentrates not on capability but the cheapest 80% solution.    
 
Couple of things for woopert:
1. No system is 100% reliable - it ain't possible. Even clever little asians can't achieve 100% reliability.
2.Just because highly trained and disciplined soldiers find problems when operating equipment, it doesn't mean the kit is faulty, it is possible for people to shortcut correct procedures, no matter how good they think they are.  If they were perfect, they wouldn't be human.
 
Chalky663 is on the nail!  If you look after kit as you are trained,  it will work for you.  This means cleaning the weapon as regularly as you can when in dry dusty conditions.  Strangely enough if you don't look after the M16 or the HK M36 they too will jam and will not work.  In case you have forgotten its called basic field craft and you were beasted for it in training for a reason!

As to buying a new weapon like the M16 or the HKM36 - why would you want a less accurate and less reliable weapon on operations where accuracy at long range and reliability in harsh conditions are the key elements?

Use a bit of grey matter and stop firing from the hip!  Strangely enough the M16 went through all these problems when it first came in to service.  The battle environment is tough; no equipment has a 100% reliability, but by using BFA (Basic F*****g Admin) you can improve the performance of any peice of kit.


Their IS a problem with the fundamental design of the SA80. The govt has even admitted as such before doing their usual turnaround and blaming our guys. Yes, when the M16 first came into service it had problems but this was mostly due the cheap rounds they procured at the time. They are now moving on to the M4 design. Not because there were massive problems with the old but they wanted to ensure a longer shelf life and it now has the ability that all yanks love of being able to add more bolt on goodies. The G36 is a very accurate and robust wpn. In testing we found it just as accurate and WAY more robust than the SA80, which was designed more from a marksman viewpoint by paper punchers than from a combat perspective.
  I agree completey that basic fieldcraft goes a long way to avoiding problems but you can't afford to clean your weapon out of potatoes every 2 seconds, due to it's wonderful meccano design. Yes, in theory on a nice Bisley range the SA80 will perform nicely, but if I clean and service a Porsche every two minutes as soon as I drive it into a field it will still stop working properly.
    The Lee-Enfield was accurate and robust but I still don't want one.
 
Verdi, the basic design flaw you are talking about is what the A2 upgrade is sorting, it's all to do with feed angles of the round.
H&K did a lot of work on this hence the modification to the barrel extension.
 
Seen! But they've also been having a number of other problems that still ensure decent stoppages at certain moments, i.e, when attempting to fire more than half a mag at anything higher than room temp in dusty conditions. (yeah, I know I'm exaggerating). This is why HK have flown out a 12 man team to Afghanistan. They still haven't finished there findings but the Govt have already come to the conclusion they wanted. I think they've released it earlier than expected. Or was it another Byers program of press release coinciding with other news such as Deepcut and the mystery of the 5 rd burst suicide.
 
Interesting.  

So the much touted 25,000 mean rounds between failure achievement of the rifle is an average, whereas these figures identify that the rifle is 400% more likely to fail in desert conditions than temperate (MRBF of 7,875 in Kuwait versus 31,500 in Blighty).

So...

Our tanks aren't desert ruggedised, AS90 bursts into flames if you drive it in the desert during the day, our desert boots melt and the best possible situation with the rifle is that even if we do find out that the Royal Marines have been cleaning it by stuffing cat-litter into the working parts and it actually it works perfectly, it is still 1/4 as effective in the desert as it is at Bisley.  Where it doesn't work very well.

Iraq in before Christmas anyone?
 
1.        The Rifle 5.56mm is as lethal as any combat rifle in the right (or wrong) hands.  I have first hand experience.  Msg me if you want to discuss this.

2.        The UK arms industry has always attempted to follow the same basic tennets as the Army itself (i.e. independence from current machinery of Govt policy creation and impartiality in the face of the task).  It will always fail as will all profit driven sectors.

3.        Regardless of any of the failings (or not) in the procurement of this weapon system, it is all we have.  in order to replace it, we are faced with seveal years of research, testing, training, procedural change, extreme funding issues etc (even if we accepted the M16 COTS solution).  If you don't believe this then you either have not attended Staff College or never will.

4.        I still can't work out that bloody sling thing...
 
1.  I agree, absolutely nothing wrong with the round, and the rifle is extremely accurate.....when the sight is not misted up and as long as you are not trying to fire left around cover - exposing your whole body to enemy fire tends to make the firer inaccurate even if the rifle is Bisley perfect. :mad:

2.  True. ;D

3.  I'm supposed to be happy about this am I?  I'm well aware we won't get a new rifle this side of 2020, but I'm sickened by the waste and stupidity of the whole sorry saga, particularly when I remember that the British Army was the first one to adopt the M16 (AR15) and we never had any problems with it (not by SA80 standards anyway). :eek:

4.  Slings make lazy soldiers. ;D ;D ;D ;D
 
Paoli,
Show me something that doesn't fail more often in the desert than in Europe???
Re: AS90 bursting into flames - a 'source' tells me that the one lost in Oman was due to mechanical failure, (Siezed bearing) which a certain BK - against ES advice - decided to ignore. The bearing heated up and the sorry saga ended with a 3 day Barbecue inside the AS90 (Darned bag charges!!!)
This is only allegedly though, I believe a BOI is on now.
Wholehearted agreement on the boots and CR2 - LAND need a good sheing for that farce!
 
Nige,
Fair one, I was just having a rant - and I was a bit surprised to see that the desert degrades performance by 75% (mind you, MRBF of 7,875 is almost the working "life" of the gat, so is still good, if you trust the official figures which I'm afraid I don't any more).

I feel let down by the fact that when the A2 stats first came out (in ADTN or BAR) I was impressed enough to start telling people don't worry the A2 will be the best (as long as you don't get rain on the sight or want to return fire from the left hand side of the street).  It does seem like my faith was misplaced.  Sob, sob. :'(

Still, glad to hear the AS90 incident has been exaggerated - AS90 has always been one of the few successful bits of major equipment procurement in the last 15 years as far as I'm concerned.

It's all arrse anyway.  We'll go to war with crap kit; we always do. :D
 
RIGHT hand side of the bloody street!  Why do you only notice these things when you've already hit "post"?

You know what I mean.
 
Who cares what the booties say or the MOD says. We will all get a chance to see for our selves soon enough if the bloody thing fails before it MTBF!
 
Well, I've just got back from field firing the SA 80 A1. Between myself and others of our happy breed, we successfully turned the best part of 400,000 live into brass.

SB was a Range Officer, so she can tell better than me, but, stoppages were the order of the day. The guys absolutely cleaned the weapons, to an extrememly high standard. The SF guys were firing all day and all night, with no real problems, but at section, platoon and company level, more than once, the rifle guys were firing bursts, while the LSW gunners were sorting out stoppages, misfeeds etc etc etc and vice versa

I have never seen a weapon overheat so fast. On one section in Defence shoot, I cabbed about 150 rounds, and had to go straight into overheating drills.

Sorry, but when I have the arabic hordes screaming straight towards me, the last thing I want, is gunjams, mag misfeeds or the weapon so hot I risk a cook-off.

So just how good are the A2 mods?

Or can we at least get a heavier barrel mod with cooling gills, or whatever it is they do to stop the thing getting too hot to hold comfortably?
 
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