British SA-80 Assault Rifle:

This British 'Enfield' designed Bullpup weapon was politically and fiscally handicapped right from it's origins in the late 1940's as a replacement for the .303" "smellies" .. Short Magazine Lee-Enfields

 .. but in 1954 the bigger L1A1 SLR's in 7.62x51 mm  (.308" as required by USA) were introduced and served well for years before - these small caliber 'ENFIELD' SA-80s came in to use the new NATO 5.56x45 mm standard caliber ammunition.

- But it is now reasonable to state that in it's current much modified and re-designed iteration it does at last work .. for right-handed shooters.

But from it's early 'Mark 1' issue it gained a terrible reputation - one of it's pet UK titles was "THE CIVIL SERVANT .. because it NEVER works and can't be fired". 

It seems that during this rifle's first 18 years of use it experienced some 83 major modifications to malfunctioning components - that included weak firing pins that broke and safeties that jammed - all this BEFORE a 80 Million Pound contract in the year 2,000 was handed to Heckler & Koch in Germany to redesign it so that it might work. - That is not quite as bad as it sounds .. because at that time H&K were actually owned by BAe.

The Thatcher Conservative Government commercialized-privatized the Royal Enfield armory makers in 1984 and then sold it to BAe in 1987..

 - British Aerospace Industries promptly announced that they would shut-down Enfield with 1,200 job losses - to shift production to Nottingham .. leaving these dismissed workers to sort-out the urgent production & development issues on the SA-80 while waiting for their final pays. - That'll work eh.

"Thanks to privatization, the atmosphere in the factory was a poisonous mix of bitterness, anger and apathy. Workers who thought that they had a job for life felt betrayed by a government which, many had believed, was both patriotic and pro-military.

 An officer who visited Enfield at the time says morale was so low in the final days there that 9,000 of the last 10,000 rifles made there had their receivers, the metal core of the gun to which other parts were fitted, squeezed in a vice to make them fit. "Everybody knew they'd got the sack, and the only thing they wanted to do was get the damn thing out the door."

In 1985 engineers at H&K pointed out to the BAe. makers that if you dropped the rifle it fired.

 - Even years later - after Heckler & Koch had redesigned the later version of the gun and it's magazines into a functioning, reliable, & usable arm - it remains a complicated design that still cannot be converted to fire from the left shoulder.

Link to The Guardian's version of this story:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/oct/10/military.jamesmeek

The L85-A3 version SA-80 is the current hammer-fired, gas operated rotating bolt UK service rifle in 5.56x45 mm NATO caliber.

_________________________

Both 'British' Australia & New Zealand stayed away from the SA-80 and instead bought the Steyr AUG Bullpup rifle system in 1987 - but New Zealand have in 2015 purchased the CQB16 version of the AR-15 rifle from Lewis Machine & Tool USA to replace the aged AUGs

... in September 2018 it was reported that some of these New Zealand AR-15 rifles had experienced breakages, including 130 with cracks around the bolt, and that all 9,040 rifles had had their firing pins replaced under warranty.

- Meanwhile the Russian Military are happily updating their older AK-47, AK-74 weapons to the AK-12 and AK-15 versions.

Marty K.