British SA80 Rifle - Why The Hate?

[Music] [Music] hello there guys it's madness here with you today thank you so much for joining me I really do appreciate it so the l85 rifle let's be honest here guys it's one of those rifles in the world of firearms that for some reason gets some awful stereotype and I can tell you exactly the reasons why I'll tell you a little bit later on but personally I find it highly frustrating listening to people [ __ ] and complain about a rifle that they really have little to no experience with the l85 has gone through many transitions and today it is still going through a transitional stage the rifle itself to me personally is fantastic and if someone was to ask me what rifle would you take to you in combat I would take this rifle the l85a2 hands-down has served me very very well and has served the British army very very well now this is my own personal opinion on the rifle and it's subjective to whoever operates at the time they may have their own kind of experiences with it I'm tired of listening to people telling me how awful something is that they have no idea what they're talking about so what we're going to do in this video today guys is discuss the rifle in all its glory from the start of its creation to where it is today to try and get rid of the myth that this is one of the most difficult rifles to work with one of the worst rifles to work with and one of the most unreliable rifles to work with it's time to tell you the truth about the l85 rifle as mentioned before this rifle has been through many transitions in its history so let's start off to how it came to be after the end of World War two Enfield had designed two new rifles for the British government the em1 otherwise known as the experimental model one and e m2 both of these guns were abbreviated bullpup designs that place the action of the rifle inside the buttstock and behind the trigger group these guns were very well laid out revolutionary in their design and fired an intermediate round about the same size as the Soviet 7.62 by 39 millimeter ake a round and were as British as they could be however due to a combination of political reasons to controverted to revisit right now these guns were never adopted an instant IDI field was told in 1954 to start making the beautiful and well-respected and renowned l1a1 so it's only natural when the government came back to them in the late 1970s and started asking about new rifle designs and field started talking about Bullpups this project led to the l85 SAT rifle that we know today like the a kay and many other modern assault rifles the l85 rifle was designed to be built with the receiver made from sheet of stamp reinforced steel with welded inserts it was to be gas operated with a short-stroke gas piston and the inner workings of the gun resembled the 1960s era ar-18 rifle a seven leg rotating bolt a machine carrier group led to what should have been reliable feeding and extracting instead of the semi-auto loading l1a1 this new rifle would be able to select fire capable of 650 rounds per minute a 5.56 millimeter nato round as long as the 30 round STANAG magazine would hold out for us British were always fans of supplying the common soldier with optics so the l85 came equipped with the SU shot sight unit small arms tri locks now I'm not going to talk about the suits out too much because that's not the focus I really want stay on to today but it was quite a rugged full time scope had an illuminated aiming reticle and believe it or not was quite fooled for its day back in 1985 what really set apart this rifle it's compact nature of design a twenty point five inch barrel with a one and seven twist slid into a weapon that was really only thirty point eight inches overall in length keep in mind though geyser that's roughly the same length as a fourteen inch barrel m4 carbine that we know and love today but with the carbine stock totally collapsed to make things even shorter a carbine variant chopped into another three inches off the total length was produced to go bigger and replace the World War - IRRI Bren gun in UK service the le6 variant had a twenty five point four inch heavy barrel folding bipod and rear grip so it could fire a four 775 rounds per minute and for more sustained periods as a type of squad automatic weapon a lot like the u.s. saw or Soviet RPK so with all this being said then what's really not to like I mean what's wrong with this rifle everything I've been telling you so far seems to be pretty legit seems to be working quite nicely unfortunately guys when this rifle was first produced there were many problems the gun was adopted in 1987 to replace the l1a1 and by 1994 some 350,000 had come off the lines being the last real EM field rifles ever made as a small arms factory or the RSAF Enfield and it was shut down soon after it's quite a sad legacy to see that indisputable giant in the firearms world and Industry and that was their final gun and potentially it was a lemon when this futuristic rifle finally came to the field the Wills fell off faster than you could say the Rolling Stones ejected casings flew right back into the vault carry itself which is not very good for staying free of stoppages the link on the trigger group worked fine in semi-automatic but became the cause of nearly all stoppages and jams when firing in fully automatic it was right hand ejection only and could not be converted which was a real pain in the ass for those who were left-handed shooters shockingly the most common mechanical failure was the tip breaking off the firing pin which had no quick and easy field repair the whole package was surprisingly heavier than the reliable and longer range l1a1 it replaced at 10.5 pounds versus 9.5 this led to the gun being derided by both British soldiers and others around the world which is my point exactly here guys the sad part is it's always the dirty dark nasty side of something that people hear about the most not the good things and things may have changed people change rifle exchange and this rifle most certainly has changed so guys this is where the horrible stigma has been placed on this rifle for evermore and it's mainly from people who have read an account from the 90s about this rifle and forever more of Judge jet as being this awful awful firearm now let's be honest here guys the details I just gave you gave you every indication to tell you this rifle back in the day was off it was not good it failed miserably it did not perform well it also fared very miserly in dusty conditions the magazines that were issued to the rifles were also very very poor they did not work correctly in many conditions and overall the rifle was not reliable and if anything that is one of the most important parts of any rifle aspect is to have a rifle that when you squeeze that trigger it does what you tell it to do accuracy light weight and all that robustness etc can come later if you squeeze the trigger and a bullet doesn't come out the barrel we have a problem and unfortunately this rifle had some serious problems British Army back in those days really were not too happy with it and the government tried their best to respond as quickly as possible in 2000 a redesigned charging handle bolt and extractor were produced for the gun and once installed on some 200,000 of the already produced l85 rifles became the l85a2 now as most of you are already well aware this was because they gave it to pepper and [ __ ] and said hey guys we have a piece-of-shit rifle that we've really screwed up on we need you to fix it up which is kind of ironic that the British are telling other companies worldwide to fix up their rifles but to be honest when it comes to the safety of troops it's more apparent to just get it done and save lives and save the taxpayer - because a rifle like that that isn't operating very well is just a complete waste of money a fixed any rail was added as well as a few other minor changes and once this was accomplished the gun obtained a much better reputation for reliability in field conditions especially in desert conditions considering this rifles history going up into the future was going to be in Afghanistan and Iraq and such the fact that this work was done by BAE with HK looking over the shoulder did not escape the eyes of many HK fans though in many cases the legacy suit at site had been replaced with the lighter and more modern ACOG and now is also being replaced with the Elkin sight today the l85a2 and l86a2 are still the standard for the British Army and Royal Marines and seems to be holding pretty well with the original design in such places of Afghanistan there's still a lot of talk publicly of scrapping this gun for something else it's very curious to me as to what rifle they want to replace this with I'm curious as where they're going to go with it honestly I really do wish the British Army would stick to their bullpup design I love Bullpups it's very handy for us we like to operate in armored fighting vehicles for the most part whether it be the warrior and soon-to-be Ajax and such so it's nice to have that rifle and utilizing sort of mechanized and motorized into companies and such and honestly I think the British Army has never really had too much of an issue with the bullpup design look at Australia with their ballpark I mean it works quite well for them is they seem to be enjoying the rifle quite nicely this is the thing guys in this footage here's what makes me really really smile because it's nice to see other countries utilising the firearm actually having in the hand and doing training with it to try and make their own judgments and call on this rifle itself the rifle today has many different upgrades that have been placed on it whether it be a different hand rail guard to a foregrip to the different sighting system to the different magazines whether it repiy mags and search plastic magazines many different upgrades and it's nice to see because it's time it needed it I mean for instance the plastic for grip was not a good time after so many rounds it got so hot it could actually potentially melt the plastic now they've designed a better system which allows you to actually put your attachments onto the end of the rifle as you can see by the soldiers GoPro that he's placed on here he can place attachment he wishes on the site there which was an urgent operational requirement for Afghanistan that was a number one thing they said coming out of the Iraq at 2003 campaign they said we need better ability to customize our firearms we can't be utilizing these green stocks anymore it's just not working and I just find it really really cool to see these US Marines training with the British with the rifle that we use to see if they have their own judgment on it and I can almost guarantee you'd speak to these Marines and they may have a bit of a negative impact on it because you know they may be a little bit biased towards the AR platforms I totally get that but at least they can make their own judgment on this rifle and not have to listen to the constant stereotype and stigma that comes from this rifle back in its early developmental stages now it is interesting to see what people discuss about this rifle nowadays because it's gone through the transition to make it better and now people are talking about having it replaced however the British Army is still trying to make their main goal of keeping it around for a little bit longer despite all the shortcomings of the l85 original design the British forces are still trying their best upgrade this weapon for instance another modification package is coming out for this rifle the l85 a3 and it is in stages right now as of pretty much a prototype interestingly enough they're not massive changes the real changes we're looking at here are modifications to the upper receiver and the handguard the handguard and combined full-length rail system probably have the largest changes with the finish being changed to kind of a coyote tan color instead of the standard black matte and it's going to be a little bit slimmer with a more modular quad rail design system and it also will include the keymod system which is different to the Picatinny rail system that we used to seeing with the full-length rail system it's going to be really easy to be able to put on different attachments and such and then there are some internal changes to the design but being that it's a prototype they're not fully released we just kind of have pictures as of right now bear in mind that all these upgrades are part of the midlife improvement program so this doesn't even mean the mo Dee will be getting a new rifle it just means they be updating the rifles they have now to the a3 versions in additions these are pretty much just prototypes that the final changes might not have anything to actually do with what we see in these pics you're looking at right now so there you have a guys there's my overview and opinion on a rifle which I feel has been given such a stigma and such bad rap that I really feel it doesn't deserve it in nowadays military environment the British Army is happily serving with this rifle whether or not that is a high percentage or low percentage it seems to be doing the job quite nicely and it's nice to see that other nations are starting to train with our forces and actually experiencing their rifles for themselves let me know what you think about this rifle guys have you ever served with it do you think it's good do you think it's bad give me your reasons as to why if you have ever fallen into the stigma of this rifle and listened to input that's been given about it let me know what sort of things you were told about it and where you got your information your sources from always curious to listen to where people hear their facts and figures on about this rifle I've talked to a couple of people in the past you have operated this firearm from different countries and different nations and most the complaints they give are the difference between the normal a our platform and the bullpup design which I can completely appreciate but you cannot really knock the rifle for its general usage and its actual combat effectiveness just because it is a different design let's look at the travel for example an absolutely fantastic firearm one of which I owned myself which sadly I did need to sell because I need to pay for my house but a fantastic firearm and something that I will put on par with the l85a2 thing the table although is it is actually ambidextrous which is a massive floor for the l85a2 which was something everybody used to mention what again being a huge con let me know what you think guys I really want to hear as much feedback as possible from you about this rifle because it is very close to my heart and dear to me and maybe I do have a bit of British bias but that's okay because I've served this rifle and I'm going to be proud of it and stand up for it and that's basically what this video is for try and stand up for something that I believe in and this rifle I feel like as being underestimated and given such bad rep it does not deserve it anyway guys thank you so much for joining me today on this video I really do appreciate it I would love to hear your comments let me know what you think please if you are new to my channel feel free to subscribe and please hit that like button to let me know what you think I'd love to hear some constructive feedback and I hope you all have a absolutely wonderful day all the best and bye bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 949,867

Rating: 4.6058908 out of 5

Keywords: British SA80 Rifle, L85 rifle, L85 IW Rifle, L86A1 LSW, SA80, SA80 rifle, british SA80, British L85A2, L85A1, British Armed Forces, L85 SA80, SA80A2, Heckler & Koch, British army SA80, 5.56×45mm NATO, L85A3 Rifle, Light support weapon, L85A2 Rifle, L123A2 Grenade launcher, L22 Carbine, Infantry Weapon, SUSAT scope, SA80 why the hate, matsimus gaming, SA80 assault rifle, british soldier rifle, SA80A3, Armalite AR-18, British L85 Rifle, new rifle for british army

Id: Ln0pe7xmcIY

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2017