Hey what is it with British Military and Bullpup rifles?? Are they going to replace the SA80 with another bullpup??
I don't know why we have a boner for bullpup rifles, but I think there is a measure of old fashioned stubbornness there somewhere! Just after WW2 when everyone was looking around for new weapons, a bloke called Stephan Jannsen created a wierd looking 'bullpup' rifle called the EM2 in 7mm Short. It had the same barrel length as the .303 Lee Enfield in a package no longer than an M1 carbine. It looked odd but was actually really good; Jannsen used to fire it one handed to demonstrate the balance, etc.
Parliament got hold of it and got excited, because it was a really good design and they wanted to get NATO to adopt it. Of course every country in NATO wanted every other country to adopt their rifle, but the US was holding an 'ace' up their sleeve - 'we're the biggest member country'. True, no one could deny it, but they did not have the moritorium on good design. After some too-ing and fro-ing the EM2 was shelved, mainly because NATO had decided to adopt the 7.62mm round as standard and we Brits went with the FN FAL as our rifle of choice. Interestingly if you read 'The great rifle controversy' - a book all about the US choice of rifle from pre-WW2 to now - the author makes a compelling arguement that the FN was better than the M14; but politics being politics meant the M14 was adopted.
Spin forward to the early 1970s and the US had gone with a 5.56mm round during their Vietnam campaign and chose, afterward, to replace their NATO committed troops' M14s with the M16A1. NATO, therefore, had no choice but to order a review of weapons and ammo.
We Brits dusted off the EM2 idea and replaced wood with plastic; bent some recycled baked bean tins around it and called it the 'Individual Weapon'. It fired a 4.85mm round that was reputed to be very effective, but anyone with some history knew that the US would want its way and we changed over to a 5.56mm round in the XM70E1. This was a political rifle from the outset and in the late seventies it was handed over to the Army to trial. I saw one arrive on the range in a black plastic case, taken out and fired then put back away - it was treated like a precision piece of equipment. The very first time soldiers got hold of it things began to break off - hey, they still do!
So unfortunately we adopted the thing and it didn't work very well; exponents of it will always say that 'it's very accurate' - and it is. As a platform for getting a bullet from A to B it is fantastic, but as a combat tool it is a disaster! After Gulf War 1 it was so heavily criticsed that change was initiated and Heckler & Koch took on the job of sorting it out; which took them a few years and it was released as the SA80A2. Better but we didn't adopt every modification that HK recommended and we got what we got!
The Army wanted the G36. During our protracted operations in Bosnia with UNPROFOR [1991-1995] on Op Grapple, we were working alongside other european armies and we took a long hard look at the G36. An impromptu trial in some of the severest conditions imaginable resulted in many senior officers giving it their rubber stamp of approval - unfortunately it was a German rifle and not British. That HK was owned by British Aerospace is immaterial!
So we are stuck with SA80 until something 'buck rogers' appears like the offensive rifle [OHWS] with laser guided hot dogs and side mounted expresso machine.
Sorry if I drone on - but I'm passionate in my dislike of the SA80 and bullpup rifles in general. The AUG is crap, ask any Austrailian soldier, and the FAMAS is rock bottom!
