SA80 Rifle Gets An Upgrade

The basic "design" of SA80 is quite sound if it was executed properly. That is why HK was able to save it from a disaster to a useable system.

The problems with SA80 were related to poor materials, poor workmanship, poor QC and fine tuning of the design.

If I have to pick a bullpup, I will pick a SA80A3 if a IWI X95 is not available.
 
The first time I handled an SA80 I knew instantly why the British troopers carrying them despised the weapon with a degree of hate normally reserved for senior officers and shi##y Cooks. Flash forward a couple of years to Bosnia 97 and I had the opportunity to fire the SA80 pretty much all I wanted in the gravel pit at Coralici. Heaven for a gunnut, no? Well, not quite. You see, the SA80 was such an utter POS that it was actually very little fun to fire, even with the fun-switch. The action springs were extremely weak, resulting in difficulty stripping cartridges from a full magazine and resulting in an accelerating rate of automatic fire as the magazine emptied. As has been noted, the entire firearm flexed, it had uncomfortsble protrusions, it was possible to reassemble the gas system incorrecctly, the magazine had a tendency to eject at the mostp innopportune times, and so forth.

The SA80A2 has a large, stylized HK logo engraved on the Action Cover, instantly indicating whether or not a rifle has been through the German-engineered rebuild programme. This was the first thing I noticed when a Royal Marine handed me his weapon to check out in the PX lineup at Bagram Airbase in early 2002. We were staging forward for our combart air assault into Tora Bora, but I digress. The SA80A2 didn't look much different than the first iteration, but the small improvements were noticeable like a fence around the magazine release button! Of more importance were the noticeably stronger operating springs; the action now snapped forward with authority the way it ought to. Talking with the Marines, they were happier with the HK-reworked rifles and Light Support Weapons, but not yet totally trusting nor satisfied. They were very envious of our pencil-barrel Diemaco C8 carbines.

Flash forward another 16 years and here we are with a paint job and a Keymod Rail as the next life-cycle upgrade for the SA80. Makes you wonder if the 'A3 is anything more than lipstick on the pig that is (and has always been), the SA80 weapon system. The British Army is notoriously cheap, even by Canadian Army standards. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the quality of their rations, both fresh and packaged. This SA80 upgrade appears to be largely "smoke and mirrors" - cosmetic improvements for the most part. Although I did notice that the Elcan OS4 is now in service, which does represent a significant optical upgrade as compared to the former British SA80 SUSAT Sight. A little piece of Canadian excellence on every British service rifle and LMG. No doubt a healthy contract for Atlantic Ordnance / Elcan and a "win-win" for all concerned.

Just my observations, FWIW. More grist for the SA80 mill....
 
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Sooner or later the Brits will dump the SA80 system - seeing as how it never should've been introduced in the first place.

Pieces that fell off, protrusions to catch on the gear, unreliable, many Brit troops I talked to thought that the Soviets actually designed the damned thing to eff up the British Army! Most of them wanted their L1A1 FAL's back!

I get that domestic politics mandate locally-produced gear in the UK (when possible - there are exceptions) but a reliable infantry rifle is the most basic thing a soldier or Marine needs (next is ammo and food).

Oh well, I gotta give the Brits points for trying.........:)
 
That will be 2025 as said by the MOD. We should be seeing in more concert terms what the Brits will be looking for in a year or two.

shredder said:
Sooner or later the Brits will dump the SA80 system - seeing as how it never should've been introduced in the first place.

Pieces that fell off, protrusions to catch on the gear, unreliable, many Brit troops I talked to thought that the Soviets actually designed the damned thing to eff up the British Army! Most of them wanted their L1A1 FAL's back!

I get that domestic politics mandate locally-produced gear in the UK (when possible - there are exceptions) but a reliable infantry rifle is the most basic thing a soldier or Marine needs (next is ammo and food).

Oh well, I gotta give the Brits points for trying.........:)
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Interesting.....from what I understood the SA80, while obviously having pretty terrible teething problems, has actually evolved into quite an effective and reliable weapon system.

I feel like they, like some other rifles/companies *cough* get alot of hate because of PAST issues that people refuse to let go of.

Now having said that I've never fired one. Past, or present.
 
I carried the Sa80A1 for couple years 2004,2005. I remember it having lots of feed issues and stoppages caused by gas problems unless the bolt carrier assembly was drowning in oil. Once they gave us the A2 it was a complete turn around, I enjoyed shooting it but didn’t have a lot to compare it too. I found the Susat pretty solid sights too. The A2 always fires no matter what.
In 2008 whilst In Afghan I got chance to fire a danish army guys standard issue rifle which is actually same as Canada c7.
It felt really light and plasticky compared to Sa80 but probably a great rifle, I didn’t care for the red dot optics which he had on it.

I honestly don’t remember having a single stoppage with the A2 after thousands and thousands of rounds, the gas parts were way easier to clean too as for most part the carbon wiped off.

The A1 Gas parts were brutal for caking up with carbon even after like 30 rounds.
I agree it probably would of been cheaper to adopt an original HK (maybe g36k)weapon rather than pay them crazy amounts to fix ours.
One thing I will add about the A2 platform was that it was super accurate, I even hit figure 11 targets at 400 yds in a shooting competition once. Not bad for 5.56.
During my last year in the Army they were phasing out susats and replacing them with Elcans for non infantry.
My first A1 issued to me had iron sites and a ugly clumsy green plastic hand guard and when I left the army in 2014 they all had susats/elcans and acogs for infantry and were equipped with quad rails. Underslung grenade launchers and tactical light modules were also common.
As for why I don’t think they went down the m4 route, I don’t think you get same accuracy from a 16” barrel of say for example the m4, that Bullpup design whilst different to get used to benefits the user with a compact rifle with a long 20”barrel.

Thanks to the OP for posting the article regarding A3
 
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Don't hate on it.
I used one a couple years ago, was doing life fire section attacks with the L85A2 while on an ex in England.
In it's current form, it's an excellent rifle. The short stroke gas system is really clean, barely any carbon gets into the receiver & bolt assembly.
Accuracy is great, I'd say it's easily a 2MOA gun. With the new free floated barrel on the A3, 1MOA.
I fired hundreds of rounds through it, neither me nor did anyone else in my section have a single stoppage the whole week we were there.
The rifle balances well, it's easy to hold and aim.
Build quality is nice. The receiver is stamped metal, but despite that it doesn't feel cheap. It really is a solid rifle.
The Daniel defence rail is also pretty awesome, so is the Elcan OS4 and the Shield mini RDS on top.

Only complaints: it's kind of heavy. When compared to a C7A2, the difference is noticable. Over long distances of travel this can be a pain.
The magazines are HK high reliability mags, they're made out of steel. They're extremely tough and could probably survive anything, they're tougher than AK mags. The down side is they're extremy heavy. An empty HK mag weighs as much as an American/Canadian GI mag completely loaded with blanks. I'm not exaggerating.
Also, the pistol grip is the same that the A1 had. Smooth plastic, and not too ergonomic.
That's all I've got off the top of my head for the good & bad, I may remember more later.

I'd still prefer a conventional rifle like the C7, although a shorter and more modern version. CCs MRR with a 16" barrel would be perfect.
 
cyclone said:
Does the British "upgrade" say anything about the future of Keymod, perhaps over MLOK?


:yingyang:
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HK has its own Hkey for the A3.

M-Lok standard is a scheme for Magpul to dominate the commercial/civilian accessories market. The US civilian market is many times bigger than a lot of militaries.

In the military world, it doesn't matter. As long as the weapon manufacturer makes a NATO rail that can attach to its own weapon, that's all it matters. The NATO rail itself is the standard interface, not the attachment of the rail to the weapon.

As long as the manufacturer provides the standard NATO rails that can be attached to its own host weapons, that's all it matters to the end users.
 
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fraserdw said:
Commandos and SAS steer way clear of them operationally.
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Bingo. The boys who have more freedom chose something else... that speaks volumes on this weapon. As for the a3. Cool? But the keymod is odd choice when everyone else is going mlok(shouldn't say that the germans will probably go hkey)

Free floated. Good call but i still don't see it being that amazing. Shooting this for a leftie still sucks.
 
Only the rail is NATO. The attachment of the rail to the hand guard is not, and seriously there isn't a need to be. As long as the manufacturer provides NATO rails that can attach to their weapons, it makes sense.

It is actually odd for any "big boys" in the arms business that doesn't cater to the US commercial market to follow a magpul standard. It makes perfect financial sense for any manufacturers to use their own way of attaching rails to their hand guards. It is not like their military clients will go out to buy odd pieces like hand stop and sling swivel that absolutely need to be attached directly without using rail for their issue rifles, especially M-Lok, keymod or HKey are not designed for attaching devices that may need QD capability. They are really just a way to bolt on rails or other items that doesn't need to hold zero.
 
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