L129A1 British Sharpshooter Rifle

welcome to small armor solutions today we have a real treat we have a rifle that is on loan to me briefly just for this project here and I'm gonna be able to bring this to you what we have today is the British L 129 a 1 sharpshooter rifle now what we have here is not a copy of it or a commercial version of it this is the actual British L 129 a 1 sharpshooter rifle manufactured by Lewis machining tool and this is the case that it comes with and all the accessories that you see with it are in here you have 3 6 7 8 magazines when the l1 point personal in this service it utilized the Knight's armament steel magazine but at that same time this was all going on the UK held new trials for a magazine for there will say less than less than the military grade saat rifles at that time i switched over from me HK high reliability magazines to the Magpul emag and so at that same time they switched over to the the PMAG for the 308 or the l 129 now going back a little bit of the history is what happened here around the mid 2000 or so the UK found in Afghanistan that the SAEs the range was insufficient for what they were encountering in combat the 5.56 millimeter was not able to reach out far enough where you were encountering Taliban with 760 954 our caliber Mosin Nagant those heavy belt-fed and the PKM machine guns and whatnot unlike iraq where most of the fighting was within a city where you know an assault rifle or I didn't mean caliber rifle was perfectly suitable that's what they were designed for Afghanistan offered a much more longer range if you prefer breeding back to half mile and they required a 308 rifle that would be able to be only used in that environment so they wanted to some item attic sniper system before if you want to say as a system which we've used in other programs but they wanted a semi my neck rifle in 7.62 millimeter they will be able to embed in these units to engage these targets at longer range they held a trial probably around the 2009 time period we're LMT submitted what you see here the companies that competed for this to this particular contract was the sabre XR ten of the hk417 the Knight's armament sr-25 as well as the FN SCAR 17 and in the end they switched over to the LM team which you see here now this rifle was in development you may know it as the LM t 300 MW s however this was in development before the m WS was released to the public so the this was the program for the British as well as a 308 4 LM t we're sort of going on simultaneously the way this rifles around nine point eight pounds are probably even closer to ten or twelve pounds when you have it loaded in you have all the optics and everything on it now it's relatively heavy compared to like say the FN SCAR 17 however that was one of the issues that the that came up that the British preferred the heavier rifle with a lighter rifle because when he would fire the heavier rifle would stay on target where the lighter rifle he would have issues with muzzle coming up and coming back down requiring the target so ended up being a ended up being a blessing for this rifle to be as heavy as it was now when you compare this to the guns that it competed against this was truly a next-generation rifle because none of the other rifles allowed you the same abilities for a quick-change barrel now I know you FN SCAR guys you just said well you can change the barrel of an FN SCAR well yeah you can but you have to remove several screws several schools of screws have to be torqued it's not an easy situation here where with the LM t as you know you remove the front screw you loosen the rear in the barrel slides right out this can be done on the user level within five minutes it's very very quick to be done so much learning this rifle even to this day for an AR platform is still the next generation the ability to change out barrel lengths change out calibers the barrel in here is a stainless steel 16 inch barrel with a one in eleven point two five inch barrel now normally you'll see a one in ten I'm most of the seven six 2's however unlike the United States with the m110 the m110 in the original mark Elevens was designed around the m11 8lr and one one eight cartridges working at 168th and looking at 175 very open tip match with a particular og item of the projectile now the way the Chamber's were set up on these they were designed for those particular projectiles so when they were chambered the projectiles would sit right at the lands and grooves and you wouldn't have that bullet jump that goes from the cartridge case into the into the lands and grooves so it would be for increase in accuracy well the British did not want to do that they want this rifle to be able to shoot their 155 grain ammunition which is a match round and he wanted it to be able to take em a ball or 7.62 NATO cartridges right off of a belt from the machine gun put it in the rifle and be able to shoot accurately so they didn't want a special chamber like it was required for the m110 yes our 25 or the mark 11 they wanted a rifle they will be able to take the lighter 155 grain match and the 147 grain ball and the this this twist here was a little bit more conducive to the most lighter projectiles than the 110 so with the issue rifle you're not really gonna want to put the m11 8lr of a 175 or here once thing with the 168 and below but again this is a stainless steel barrel this is not chrome plated now LMT doesn't make chrome plated barrels for the rest of their models but that was not what was wanted by the by the British if you notice the flash suppressor on here this is actually for the Surefire sound suppressor you know there's a there's four prongs on this flash suppressor Oh interesting Lee enough this is only available for military sales there's they're not sold on the commercial and the main reason being is the four prong gives you sort of a tuning fork type sound when this name of the boat closes on this thing the three prong sort of eliminates that so if you were to purchase one of these today you will be getting a three down to four so that's one of the things that's already unique about this rifle now looking at the front sight you can see this is the Knight's armament folding front sight the one-piece upper receiver is acquired mil standard 1913 rail it 12 3 9 and 12 o'clock it does come with two these 10 real protectors now your most of the furniture I'm mrs. tan you have a tan socket and pistol grip and you have a and ten repels that was sort of a requirement that was put out by the UK was for this to be a tan now looking towards the rear the scope that was chosen by the UK was the Trijicon ta 6 for 8 TR D which is a 308 it's a six power scope fibre optic and also you have a tricia con lamp in the inside we also have a trigger kinda our mo on the top now the reason for this there's a couple reasons one is it can get you on target relatively quickly with the higher power scope or two people will claim that it's for target that comes up a little bit closer than you want to use a six power I'm more of a close quarter type option but the other here nor there it does have the ability to use both of those different capabilities this scope is manufactured from me aluminum forging 7075 t6 aircraft aluminum and anodized the same way that the receivers are the scope costs about as much as a rifle does this particular scope was the one that was chosen now there's two different versions of this rifle you had any marksmanship rifle and the DMR the marksmanship rifle if I recall is one uses asha mitten bender a higher powered scope and then the other one utilizes this optic right here now looking at the receivers you can clearly see right here or the NS n most British rifles do require to have the msn place on the receivers in the United States that we don't do that we generally will just put the the model we don't usually put the MSS but the British do you want pretty much everything there are no one one nines acceptable use they have it's just common and le I is law enforcement international that is the distributor who brought these into the UK from the US so again this is a real l 129 this is not a commercial version that we're showing you this is the actual one they did require the ambidextrous safety and this is the LM t ergo grip and you also do have a a receiver in plate which is ambidextrous so you can put a hook type sling on it we have a LM t sopmod in stock we have the receiver extension which has the dry film Lube on it with the dry fill bloob does is it takes up some of the slack so you don't have a rattle omni stock looking at the magazine while you can see we have LMT we have the calibre and we have l 129 a one on the lower receiver doesn't getting its model you know we're gonna take a look at some of the inside one of the things I want to bring out to you that this rifle was a very early model of the LM 308 NWS this is not the configuration that you're buying today what you're buying today has a lot of improvements over it we're gonna go over some of those improvements however when you ever use some a gun to the military you have a specific way or our technical data package type way that it has to come once it's adopted in a certain configuration you can't go ahead and change bolts change carriers or change any and those kind of components without getting approval from the customer so the way that the rifle is now is still the same way that it's it's applied to his over to on the improvements that you're going to see I'm the current LM t products so we're gonna open it up and want to take a look at some of those we open the rifle up we see we do have a two-stage trigger and now the two-stage trigger that you're seeing in this one is one of the earlier triggers LMT now manufactures these triggers in-house they have wire EDM capability so they're able to manufacture them themselves now the part that we really do want to show you is the bolt carrier the bolt carrier that you see here is actually a knight's armament bolt carrier and this is the same one it was used in the earlier sr-25 or early m1 tents layer one tents have some modifications to them specifically on the carrier with some of the same grooves and whatnot the bolt itself is Knight's armament as well you will see we do have an MP mark on there for the military protocol and proof testing which basically means that the bolt was tested with a proof cartridge which is 70 percent higher than the standard now and then it's been a particle inspected to look for stress fractures and you'll also notice there is only one ejector on this one and I'm with any of you guys are familiar with the later LMT bolts or the current ones you see two on there which we're gonna talk a little bit about the difference in a minute but the bolt carrier is a standard knight's sr-25 now when LMT went to design this rifle they decide to go with a str 25 lower receiver so they basically got licensing rights from the Knights to utilize it it made much more sense than knowing that route than developing their own rather than have that proprietary lower receiver that nothing else can be used I'm by going with this lower receiver you could put and sr25 up around here you can put this upper receiver on and sr-25 lower you just kept that compatibility the look of it's a little bit different like the sr-25 you do have the ambidextrous magazine release so you do have some of the similar characteristics but the sculpture of it is quite different and what I want to do also to show you the charging handle the charging handle also is a little different too you have a combination of the the bottom here you see how that hangs open so hang over the lower receiver this is more of a gas gas mustard type because we need to put some pressures on these things they do blow gas back into your face so this is something that does take care of that respire suppressor usage I'm not aware of these things being suppressed I have never seen it that does not saying that they don't what that saying is I have not seen these in use with with the sound suppressors on them they are set up for it but I have not actually seen that the rear sight here is the low profile nice armament as well as you can see how it folds down flat it's out of the way so you can put the scope over it another piece of equipment that you'd normally see on this is going to be your bipod this bipod has a as a hair spy pod with an arms mount on it so this is this is your basic l1 29 rifle I'm going to show you guys how this barrel comes off the early LMT rifles came in the torque wrench rather than a this thermal limiter this is more of over the last couple of years you started seeing this one come out the other one it was a preset torque wrench so all we have to do to change this barrel was lock the bolt to the rear the back when all we had to do is loosen it the front one we're actually gonna have to remove now as you see this is done on the user level this is does not have to be done on an armor level like if you were to look at any other rifles I don't think you're gonna see too many guys who are on the user level changing out of barrel and that's our twenty five especially but definitely on the scar I would imagine that would be too much usual level either but it should be now we just pop the barrel right down here you have it so GC is a 16 inch barrel these barrels are also Bank protocol and proof tested LMT does that on everything all their barrels all their bolts that's something that any military contractor would do a lot of your commercial manufacturers do not do that they feel that the cost doesn't warrant the the results the fact I know several companies in fact a friend of mine mark westrom and Armalite I had asked him when I was doing black rifle choices do you guys make a particle of the protester your barrels he goes no you go statistically the numbers are so low of what we get out of it that it's not worth us spending that money on every rifle if there's a problem that would come in to us because it's just so rare so they felt that it was a financial you know reason not to do it however you know a true military contractor this is a milspec you know if you were to manufacture any firearm for the US military it has to be whether it's a pistol where there's a rifle whether it's a machine gun it doesn't matter what it is it's a it's a safeguard that has to be done so to reassemble so now we're going to go the opposite way right to here click do the same at the back there we go I want to do now is I want to show you the differences between the l1 29 and the current LMT rifles particular one is uh was my first rifle the most important thing we want to take a look at is the bolt carrier groups that's what's majorly changed so an run about what I'm telling you guys is the bolt carriers you're getting now are vastly superior to the ones that went out in these military rifles earlier on now the current status with the L 129 they're being sold to Britain I'm not sure if LM T has gone ahead and gotten approval to make these changes but so far as I know is are right now they're not so looking on the top here we have the current production and the bottom we have the L 129 first of all if you won't look at the carrier itself you see a change in the exhaust port on the front which increases reliability as well by letting the gas out much quicker that's not needed the bolt is where the big difference is you look on the right-hand side you will see one ejector current production LMT you see two ejectors during the further development of the US weapons system element ii have found with these shorter barrels that due to the way the pressures worked in it the we're having some failures to inject with the shorter barrels basically the cartridge case didn't have enough time to get out of the ejection port before the bull closed so LMT included a second ejector which made sure got in there much quicker of course if you're shooting it you're gonna notice your brass is gonna fly about 15 feet away from you compared to the original bolt but it was an enhancement that not necessarily needed for the 16 18 inch barrels but you know LMT is about quality so if they can make an improvement they're going to do it so they went ahead they made that change on all the bolts giving you the two ejectors you also look at the difference in the geometry of the locking lugs that which is a much more of an enhancement over the the original the material is different as well and this is a proprietary nickel finish that is used by LMT as well and you'll also notice there's a support on the front of the bolt carrier and the new we're aware versus the other one which is uh this is a this is a benefit for over the beach conditions or a fighting with water in the barrel it's just a it's a mint it's more durable more strong now you can see the finishes are different now when you look at the finishes on chrome it all depends on the way the the steel was prepped if you had a more polished you're gonna see more more polished steel before you chrome bit you're gonna get this more shiny or shiny chrome if it's more flat you're gonna get this both of these are chrome plated just that the bolt carriers were prepared a little bit different which is why we weren't shinier than the other looking on the bottom you see these flares that are cut here this is the original light or the original 129 this is the current mws what this does here is if you have a 20 round magazine it's full particularly if you were to have the steel magazines and you were to insert a 20 round magazine on a closed bolt on this one you may have a little bit of a struggle to do it because this is sitting on top of the the cartridges and if those cartridge don't want to move it's it's a lot more pressure to try to insert a 20 round magazine that's loaded however with this one you see how that these these spaces are here this goes in between the top two rounds so it gives you additional room in there to be able to insert that magazine without having to force it so what this does is it increases your ability to it to easily insert Elounda magazine on a closed bolt a fully loaded magazine and a closed bolt no she did have some material that's removed from the back here that wasn't necessary so these are the easier of the differences this is a much more improved bull care group over the original one so you guys for buying these now you're getting the the more enhanced ones this one here again it's just like for instance the m4 the way that it's done in the TDP is a way that it has to be sent to the government unless they approve those changes it's not going to happen shown here this is my personal rifle you'll see it right here I made some changes on it to myself from this original configuration I decided to go with 18 and a half inch barrel and I put a vortex on there I think the vortex is the pioneer suppressor in the world the 18 inch barrel of my opinion is the ideal barrel length for a 308 with modern propellants modern ammunition your propellant will burn completely within 18 inches so once your propellant is burned by having a longer barrel you're not gaining anything basically you're gonna have the motor start to slow down once that happens so with a 16 inch barrel you're still gonna have some unburned propellant if the 18 inches is ideal and I don't think you see much of an accuracy difference between 18 and 20 inches anyways the upper receiver is the exact same low receiver is the exact same this one also does have the same night sights on it however the sights that are utilized on your current production LMT rifles are teasingly produced holding back up sights your so you're seeing those on a lot of guns now pretty much over the last several months with LMT having the New Zealand contract you haven't always seen any of rifles leaving with the LMT sights because they were all going to that contract I think once you see some blood up on LMT sparked with new zealand contractor you see a lot more of the LMT folding sights becoming available again LMT is going on to have the LME which is the lightweight lightweight upper receiver which has removable rail panels instead of the 1913 rails but one thing it's very important to notice is this was a very big significant sail to to England Allen has traditionally not like whatsoever to buy yank guns for the most part all British norms are manufactured in-house at Enfield in the UK and fill his shut down so they don't have the ability to manufacture firearms in the UK anymore for the military so to have them pick a quote yank gun was really a big deal man was really Greg Felton who was able to get that in there and to push that you know prior to this rifle being adopted the SAS or British earned the very Special Forces you used a Canadian rifles they used the die MACO c7 c8 c SF w's various versions for they for the SAS which those guns work much better than the saes that they had and the Special Forces were you know why did something was much more modular but those are made in Canada not neo not in the US so it was a big deal getting a u.s. gun into there the L 129 was LM T's probably first really really prestigious contract it was a to sell to a foreign military of that stature and have their rifle meet the quality and beat that of the other knights which is basically you know scale it's one of the biggest contracts in the United States for Sharpshooter rifles our long-range rifles you know the m110 they beat them hk417 which you see just adopted by our SOCOM this beat that the FN SCAR which is used by our SOCOM miss Meade that you know to have a small company like that come in and take on the best in the industry and beat them they went on to sell this is a more a similar rifle to New Zealand for a sharpshooter role as well the more interesting thing about that New Zealand rifle was was it was a selective fire the New Zealanders one to have the ability to use this rifle as a light support weapon if need be now with with the massive heavy barrel that you have on one of these and you have another selective fire it makes an excellent light support weapon however when you're trying to get precision firing a lot of follow-through and precision barrel your precision accuracy does not last very long but I guess the theory are being if you have to put it on full auto you know your butts on the line so you need it so would they really care about that and change out the barrel as long as you make it out of there so they went with the point with the 20 inch barrel also many of the rifles I seen for the New Zealand contract also had a 20 inch barrel so you know military's always have different configurations they all have different needs you know so I wanted the shorter the shorter barrel someone the longer barrel select-fire nine select-fire but this rifle was adapted around 2010 and it was initially for three thousand and I know LMT is gone significantly over that with its use it's been very successful in Afghanistan it's done exactly what it was supposed to do both versions the Sharpshooter and the DMR rifle you guys the only difference being the optics themselves and you know you can't have a rifle very similar to this L&T does have what they call a sharp to your rifle which is the exact same rifle - the optic of course and it has the Sharpshooter logo on the side it just does not have the British markings so they can't sell the guns with their British marks on it but it's the exact same rifle it you can have it comes with the same case the same accessories that's available also this referee will not be shooting this is not a rifle that you know this is a rifle tell them to use it strictly for Bernadette for tradeshows and showing what their product is so I did not want to fire this we've shot a lot of Belle MT rifles on my channel so we're not gonna be shooting this one I just wanted to bring to you and show you an actual hell 129 rifle I want to thank Melissa machine until for giving us this opportunity to see this incredible rifle if you guys have any questions please leave me a comment I'll try and get back to you if you enjoyed this please click like please subscribe even better share

Channel: SmallArmsSolutions

Views: 52,532

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Id: u6-BYbDixik

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 02 2018