The SA80 designed by committee, doomed by politics, hated by squadies. Yet somehow after more than 40 years, the bloody thing still refuses to die. By the late60s, Britain had a problem. The L1A1 self-loading rifle, our version of the Belgian FN FAL, was widely regarded as being extremely reliable, rugged, and highly dependable.
So, obviously, it had to go. But in all seriousness, the SLR was an aging post-war design. It’s long, heavy, and it 7.62 mm round wasn’t exactly an obedient puppy to control under recoil. Sure, we had the Sterling submachine gun to make up for some of the SLR’s size problems in close quarters and give full auto fire capability, but training, equipping, and supplying two different systems on two different cartridges was never exactly an elegant solution.
The answer seemed so simple, a bullpup rifle, as short as an SMG, the barrel length of a rifle, easily controllable intermediate cartridge, all in a lightweight package with a modern optic. The Bullpup can do it all. Everyone’s happy. At least on paper. In fact, so enamored were the MOD bigwigs with the whole bullpup concept that right back in 1951, even before the SLR, the EM2, along with its own cartridge, the 280, had been developed and very nearly saw widespread adoption.
It’s hard to overstate just how ahead of its time this thing was in 1951. But sadly, NATO standardization of the 7.62 millimeter cartridge saw the EM2 abandoned before it ever really got a chance. Fast forward to the 60s and the US had abandoned full power cartridges and moved on to the 5.56 mm round in the M16. So with standardization seemingly broken, Royal Enfield began developing another British bullpup design, the L64/65, chambered in another new cartridge, the 4.85 mm.
This time the rifle’s internals were based around the Armalite AR-18. But history repeated itself once again. NATO standardization would rear its ugly head with the 5.56 mm being adopted, forcing Royal Enfield back to the drawing board. Now, here’s where things get embarrassing. Turning the L64 into a 5.56 mm system seemed so simple in theory.
Just swap out the bolt and the barrel. Easy done. In fact, the 4.85 mm round had even been derived from the 5.56. But theory and reality are two very different things. Pressure, dwell time, loading variability, thermal expansion, gas tap sizes. Designing a rifle may not be brain surgery, but it’s almost rocket science. The 5.
56 mm version of the rifle was redesigned far too quickly by a committee making ridiculous change after change to small unimportant details. It got rushed through development and thanks to political and financial pressures was adopted long before all of the kinks had been worked out. So production began at Enfield in 1985 then got transferred in 1988 to a shiny new facility in Nottingham.
New facility, new machinery, lovely, except for one tiny problem. Most of the workers had bugger all experience actually making firearms. And the quality control, I don’t believe there was any. Springs were too weak, bad heat treatment of parts, stampings were being rejected due to loose tolerances.
I could go on and on. Then trials flagged up some serious issues. Plastic components weren’t strong enough and would break easily. Metal components weren’t strong enough and would break easily. Magazines would drop out. Magazines would distort. The top cover would like to flip open without warning. And the springs and the round guide inside the magazine were so badly designed that you could only put 26 to 28 rounds in a 30 round magazine.
But here’s the real scandal. Most of these problems were known long before the rifle actually got issued to troops. But at least the military finally got the short, lightweight bullpup rifle it had wanted for decades. Well, it was a bullpup. It’s short. As for lightweight, well, somehow the new intermediate cartridge rifle firing a much smaller round.
Somehow this rifle ended up weighing more or less the same as the full power 7.62 battle rifle that it was meant to replace. Mission accomplished. And yet somehow with all of these glaring issues, it somehow passed its trials and got accepted. How? Well, standards used to test a rifle got adjusted and set absurdly low.
A Battlefield mission was defined as firing just 120 rounds in 24 hours. So that’s only half a combat load out with a full day to take your time over it. Plus, any stoppage that a soldier could clear themselves didn’t count as a failure. I’ll say that again. Just because you could clear a jam yourself without stripping the whole rifle apart, it didn’t count as a failure.
That’s like saying if you managed to bump start your car, it didn’t count as breaking down. It’s absurd. So, the specs. First up, just to clarify, the name of the weapon family is SA80 or small arms for the 80s. while the MOD designation code is L85 for the rifle and L86 for the LSW or light support weapon. All use exactly the same select fire shortstroke gas operation firing from a closed bolt.
The differences between the rifle or individual weapon and the LSW are actually quite small, just a longer, heavier barrel with a bipod, a smaller handguard, a monopod at the rear, and a shoulder support. Everything internally is completely interchangeable. So whilst the LSW was meant to be a squad level light support weapon without a belt feed or quick change barrel, it offered very little over the rifle, though it was accurate.
So with far too little trials and testing, the L85, SA80, and L86 LSW entered service in 1985. So rather unsurprisingly when British troops got deployed to the Gulf in 1991 carrying their shiny new SA80s, well the problems became impossible to hide. The Gulf War was short, brutal, and fought in extreme desert conditions. The 80 hated it, and troops hated the 80.
The rifle needed to be kept immaculately clean to function properly. But in sandy conditions, that was impossible. It also needed to be well lubricated or the mechanism would seize up. But in the desert, lubrication just attracts sand straight into all the moving parts. So you were stuck between a rifle that seized up from under lubrication or jammed up from sand getting stuck in it.
You genuinely can’t make this stuff up. I don’t like sand. The plastic furniture was prone to cracking and falling apart. Full auto fire would snap a firing pin. Magazines would fall out mid patrol because the release catch was completely exposed. I’m not exaggerating. Even on this replica, that’s all it takes to drop the magazine.
And that’s the side of the rifle that presses against your body. So comically bad was the reliability that even the handling drills had to be altered with the Ford assist tap being drilled into every poor SA80 user for about a decade. And I don’t mean as a stoppage drill. The practice was to full assist every single time the bolt was released just to be sure.
In you go little one. After the war, the Ministry of Defense commissioned the Lancet report to investigate the rifle’s performance. The report unsurprisingly was damning. Neither the rifle or the LSW had been suitable for use in the Gulf with all that sand. Both jammed up constantly, and the report openly criticized the decision to even accept the weapon into service in the first place.
It became a national scandal which wouldn’t go away, much to the MOD’s dismay. By 1997, the government could ignore it no longer. Replacing the rifle entirely would have been the smart move, but it was deemed too expensive and probably too embarrassing. So, Heckler and [ __ ] got hired to fix the rifle. At the time, HK was owned by British Aerospace.
So, while they were a German company, they weren’t actually Germanowned. A technicality that softened the blow of having to hire the Germans to fix a British rifle. Listen, don’t mention the L85. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it. All right. Right. So, HK went to work fixing the rifle. Between 2000 and 2006, they rebuilt around 200,000 of the original 350,000 rifles at a cost of roughly £92 million.
The list of A2 changes wasn’t too extensive. Just a new cocking handle, new bolt, new extractor, new ejector, new firing pin, new hammer assembly, new springs, new magazine, improved gas system, opened up the ejection port, new trigger, and a new barrel and some other things. In total, 19 major components were replaced or redesigned.
HK basically just kept the TMH and the body and threw everything else in the bin. The result was the L85 A2 or SA80 A2 and it worked. Reliability improved dramatically. The rifle finally performed to acceptable military standards, beyond them, in fact, with some reports putting it above the M16 for reliability.
HK had fixed the SA80 and LSW’s reliability problems. It couldn’t fix the ballpub layout, the dumb ergonomic decisions, or the outdated design. And to this day, nothing can be done to fix the rifle’s reputation. As with basically all Bullpup designs, the rifle’s rear heavy, and the weight sits back near your shoulder, making it a little bit awkward to balance and aim until you get used to it.
Though, it does come up to the eye very quickly. Magazine changes are clumsy. Control access is unintuitive, while the trigger pull is long and spongy because of the connecting bar running almost the whole length of the TMH. But more uniquely SA80 is the bizarre control layout choices like the separated safety and fire select levers which are literally over a foot apart.
Cuz nobody’s ever wanted to take a rifle off safe and choose which mode of fire they go to at the same moment, have they? It’s like the designers had never actually fired a rifle before. But the worst part that just won’t go away is the fact that it’s right-handed only. Try and fire it left-handed and you’ll be making a trip to the nearest emergency dentist.
Bizarrely though, the sling mount is ambidextrous. You can undo one screw and switch it to the other side. So, you can set the rifle up to carry left-handed, but for the love of God, don’t fire it left-handed unless you really are not that attached to your teeth. There were some left-handed versions developed, but of course they never got adopted.
Sorry, lefties. As for the site, the SUSAT sights unit smallarms triilux. To its credit, it’s a pretty clear four time scope with a self-illuminating reticle, which was pretty cutting edge back in 1985 and a big step up from iron sights. But time’s not been too kind to the poor old SUSA. It’s heavy.
The eye relief is laughably short, hard to zero. You got to use tools. It fogs up in extreme conditions. The sighting post is plain odd. And the Triilux light sources all went dark decades ago. So unsurprisingly, over the years, the MOD has swapped them out for newer alternatives from the likers of Trigicon and Elcan.
The latest of which are ironically worth considerably more than the rifle they’re getting mounted to. So despite the A2 redesign working wonders to transform the reliability of the rifle, the inbuilt design issues and peculiarities just had to remain. Like many of its Cold War siblings, one lasting issue of the SA80 was the lack of compatibility with modern accessories like the Susat mount, which looks like a standard rail, but is actually completely proprietary and won’t fit anything else.
Also, the handguard lacks any mounting points at all. That was until 2007 when an urgent operational requirement saw a new Daniel Defense handguard appear, finally giving the weapon standard Pikatini rail attachment points. In 2018, the L85 A3 upgrade was adopted. With a goal to modernize the rifle and keep it relevant for a bit longer, a number of significant changes were made.
There was another new handguard, this time with M-LOK attachment points, which together with the new upper receiver formed a fulllength rail system. Internally, the A3 bulk carrier rails are beefed up. The old ones now looking rather worse for wear on well-used A2s. There was a few other changes, and it was all finished off with a new flat, darker finish. It’s reliable.
It’s no longer embarrassing, but it’s still heavy at around 4.98 kilos fully loaded. It still has its bullpup limitations and it will still smash Lefty’s teeth. In 2019, the LSW was finally retired. It had long since ceased to really serve its original purpose of being a support weapon with beltfed options like the FN Mini being far more suitable for sustained fire.
The LSW was briefly treated as a bit of a DMR rifle by some units owing to its good accuracy and stable bipod platform, but the adoption of the L129A1 sharpshooter rifle made even that role redundant. Okay, in its favor, the SA80 has some positive traits that are well worth mentioning. It does really. First up, it is certainly compact.
just under 31 in long with a 20-in barrel. An M16 with the same barrel length ends up at least 8 in longer. And if even this is too big for you, there are some tiny carbine versions that we’ll cover in another episode along with the original Cadet GP DP and the revised semi-auto cadet GP. Accuracy is decent.
The three-point sling works all right, even if it does lay across not one, not two, not three, but four of the weapon’s major controls. What? Anyway, as a three-point sling, it works really well. The rifle’s considerable heft does mean that felt recoil is low, and as mentioned after the A2 and A3 updates, reliability was really decent.
Oh yeah, and subjectively it does look kind of cool. Beautiful. Beautiful. [laughter] The SA80 A3 is expected to serve until 2030, a 45 year service life, which is astounding considering the rifle’s awful beginnings and reputation. But a replacement isn’t just being discussed now, it’s actively happening. Project Rayburn is the MOD’s effort to procure 150 to 180,000 new rifles.
Assessment begins in 2026 with various calibers being considered. 5.56 65 Creedmore, maybe even the 6.8 mm Sig Fury round. Everything’s on the table, but elite units have already moved on. In September 2023, the Ranger Regiment and Royal Marines adopted the Knights Armament KS1 as the L43 A1. Then in March 2025, the Royal Marines adopted the SIG MCX under Project Hay, and the SAS never accepted the SA80 in the first place.
So, elite forces have abandoned the SA80 for modern AR pattern rifles completely. I think the message is crystal clear. But with the US Army’s adoption of the radical XM7 coming under criticism right now, will the MOD follow the US’s lead with an increased round size and a heavier rifle, or take the safe route and stick with 5.
56, or will it go its own way once again? The original L85 A1 earned its terrible reputation. It wasn’t just bad, it was a weapon that failed soldiers when they needed it most. It jammed in the desert. It would break in the cold. Heck, it would jam up here in the UK under perfect conditions. It would injure left-handed shooters.
It required constant maintenance, and it just couldn’t be trusted. Later versions are competent. The A2 is reliable. The A3 is modern and up to-date. But the original certainly was not, and that stain has never washed off. Hey, if you enjoyed this video, I’d love it if you’d hit like, subscribe, and check out this video here for more great military content.
