HK to upgrade British SA80 rifles - again.

[SteyrAUG]

AFAIK, the manufacturer (RSAF-Enfield) of the SA80 is out of business, which is why the UK had to get H&K to do the A2 upgrades in the first place. So the life of the SA80 is finite at this point, anyway.

At the time RSAF actually owned HK during the A2 upgrade. HK had recently been sold mostly because of the failure of the G11 to be adopted after German reunification created many financial hardships for the country. Other projects such as the OICW that involved heavy R&D costs and were ultimately not adopted also led to the sale of H&K.

[boltcatch]

Technically, so was Glock. And Glocks are awesome.

Yeah but the Glock wasn't designed by a British ground forces committee, which, as far as I know, have a pretty long history of goofy stuff.

[MountainRaven]

At the time RSAF actually owned HK during the A2 upgrade. HK had recently been sold mostly because of the failure of the G11 to be adopted after German reunification created many financial hardships for the country. Other projects such as the OICW that involved heavy R&D costs and were ultimately not adopted also led to the sale of H&K.

I believe it was BAE that owned H&K at the time of the A2 program: That BAE was awarded the A2 contract because they're British and BAE basically bought H&K just for the A2 upgrade program.

Yeah but the Glock wasn't designed by a British ground forces committee, which, as far as I know, have a pretty long history of goofy stuff.

In point of fact, I believe that Gaston Glock (and his engineers) went to and spoke with as many small arms experts as they could find while developing their pistol, and they studied existing pistol designs.

Moreover, the Glock pistol is engineered to be simple and easy to manufacture using (then) modern manufacturing techniques, everything else is secondary to that mechanical simplicity. It's sort of like the AK or the AR-15, in that the design has an overarching requirement and everything else flows naturally from that one point.

The SA80 did not have an overarching requirement beyond, "bullpup AR-18 (without paying Sterling or ArmaLite any licensing fees)". In fact, Sterling was so put off by the SA80's development, that they literally made a bullpup conversion AR-18... which was reputed to have worked better than the RSAF SA80.

ETA: I believe Ian McCollum did a video on the Sterling AR-18 bullpup, but I'm not finding it.

[SteyrAUG]

I believe it was BAE that owned H&K at the time of the A2 program: That BAE was awarded the A2 contract because they're British and BAE basically bought H&K just for the A2 upgrade program.

I think you might be right about BAE, but there was a reason HK was even for sale. I think the other potential buyer was GIAT. And yeah, the A2 upgrade was the biggest reason for them buying HK.

[Jellybean]

Well, the only good thing about this weapon is that the Brits were never able to inflict it on the rest of the world.
People make a big deal out of the US forcing .308 on NATO, but at least some decent weapons came out of that deal....

[SteyrAUG]

Well, the only good thing about this weapon is that the Brits were never able to inflict it on the rest of the world.
People make a big deal out of the US forcing .308 on NATO, but at least some decent weapons came out of that deal....

Hard to say if the EM2 would have developed into a viable weapon or not. Certainly the L1A1 served the UK well but I think that was a big part of going to a compact weapon system like the L85A1 / SA80, people were tired of lugging that big boat of a rifle around so I can see where everybody that "anything else" might be an improvement.

It's also ironic that the FAMAS seemed to have been mostly successful even though features and ergonomics would tend to favor the SA80. Obviously a big part of the problem is cost cutting a complex weapon design. Even the Aussies managed to fuxor a proven system by trying to produce a cost effective AUG.

And along those lines, we've all seen crap grade ARs so you can literally screw up any weapon system design. I bet if HK or Steyr built an SA80 type weapon from the ground up it would run like a clock.