"British army SA80 - should we have gone with the M16?" Topic

How about….making a 5.56mm SLR? Might that have been a better option?

How about….making a 5.56mm SLR?

…Brazil's current service weapon, the MD-2 assulat rifle, is a development of the FAL in 5.56×45mm.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMBEL_MD2

This looks to be a better solution, and in existence from the mid 80s too.

Thanks for the link GeoffQRF.

Speaking of stopping power, I remember being at the range doing some foreign weapons training. We took two ammo cans, filled them with water, and placed them out at 100 meters. One was targetted by an M-16 round and the other was shot by an AKM. The AKM round punched a nice neat hole right through, the exit hole being slightly bigger than the entry hole. The M-16 round punched a small hole into the ammo can, and blew the entire back of the ammo can out. I had always thought the 5.56 round was weak sauce and had heard stories of it being next to worthless compared to larger 7.62 rounds but what I saw that day changed my perception of the effectiveness of that round.
I can't really say much about the SA-80, having never had the opportunity to send any rounds downrange but I imagine it must be a decent weapon to still be in service after almost 30 years. As for its initial problems, what weapon system doesn't have teething problems?

The AKM round punched a nice neat hole right through, the exit hole being slightly bigger than the entry hole. The M-16 round punched a small hole into the ammo can, and blew the entire back of the ammo can out.

For the opposite effect on cinder blocks, see:
YouTube link

5:53-6:06 for the small neat hole by the 5.56mm M16 round.
6:33-6:39 for the cinder block destroyed by the 7.62mm AKM round.

Alas Wikipedia is incorrect in this instance. Brazil never adopted the MD-2 in any significant numbers, the weapon had some significant reliability issues. The army's current standard service rifle remains the FAL in various versions. It is about to be replaced with a new weapon,the IA2, currently finishing acceptance trials.

link

link
The Brazilian marines, adopted the M16 many years ago.

I know someone shot by an AK, from the scar tissue, he lost a lot of muscle in his lower leg. No neat hole, nasty. One of my assistants teachers had his elbow blown off by an AK round that travelled down the bone and one of my students fathers had some pretty horrible tales of AK rounds. So, nice neat holes in water jugs do not, perhaps, translate into neat holes when fired into humans.

Apparently that is a function of the range at which you are hit by the 7.62 X39 round. After a certain distance, I forget what, the round yaws significantly and will tumble on impact.

IIRC, I think most were close range, certainly know the teacher was in an ambush in Rhodesia and one of the Afghan stories was close range, compound clearing. I did know a Georgian student who'd been shot by bandits, robbing his car, and he did have a roundish hole, so perhaps it's random? Still would not like to be shot by any bullet, I fired full bore handguns and .22 or 45 if you take one to the head you're out, take 3-4 of any calibre, in the central mass and I don't fancy your chances much.

For a really sarcastic thought: The US Marines recently bought an IAR, Individual Automatic Rifle. It's the HK416, which is the conventional-layout version of the SA80A2. It is considered to be an unfair advantage in the annual weapons qualifications, to the point that a Marine issued the IAR (along with the SAW) will have to use his loader's M16 to shoot rifle scores for the record!

I think the bigger question is why both the US and UK aren't using the HK G36.

If there is one thing that Modern Warfare has taught me it's that it's not those who have access to the best weapons but those who have the best broadband access that will prosper… ;-)

I think the bigger question is why both the US and UK aren't using the HK G36.

Coz if you think that the British government operates a 'not made here' policy with its military purchases, the US government leaves them in the weeds!

I cannot imagine the US miitary going anywhere near a war zone with a rifle that wasn't designed and built in the US.

And, to be honest, why should it? The US is lucky enough (sensible enough?) to still actually have and arms industry so they might as well utilise it.

John T

Twenty years ago I think I would have agreed. The US, along with much of the West, currently uses a Belgian SAW/ light machinegun. The USMC has just adopted a German designed rifle to replace it. The US Army seriously considered another Belgian made rifle, the SCAR and trialed it with the Rangers. The current principal squad anti-armour weapon, the AT-4 is Swedish, the current sidearm Italian. The 120mm mortar is French/Israeli, the 81mm version, British. The US is currently replacing US designed 155mm howitzers with British designed ones. The list goes on…..

Of course there are examples of this that stretch back a lot further.

In the early fifties the US seriously attempted to just copy the MG-42 for its GPMG requirements, screwed the engineering and came up with a weapon that borrowed it's better design features from the MG-42 and the FG-42.

In the Spanish American War the US regulars fielded Krag- Jorgensen rifles, in the Great War the vast bulk of US troops were issued British designed Enfields.

Heck, in WW2 the US attempted to reverse-engineer an MG42 to replace the Browning .30cals. Some draftsman made a boo-boo, and the resulting MG didn't work worth anything.

With a sufficiently better design, NIH doesn't apply.

@Carne68: too expensive. H&K weapons are about twice the cost of anyone else's, for complex internals. That is NOT an improvement over the M16 or SA80. An AK has a total of 12 parts that need extremely precise machining, 14 if you count the barrel and the front trunnion that the barrel is pressed into. An AR15 has something like 20 precision machined parts. The G36 has about 40 precision machined parts. All that machining costs money, and all that complexity means more parts that could break and render the weapon inoperable (usually at the worst possible time).