hello fellow spare parts army <3 ! I'm your host Chris Cappy
and it's this channel's mission and goal to bring you some insight into how the military
operates. In today's episode we're gonna go over the British main battle rifle the sa-80 family of
weapons. So I have a ton of respect for our mates across the pond, the british armed forces...for
the last four decades the UK infantry has used the bullpup design for their main battle rifle.
It's so bad that us americans decided we wouldn't rip it off and turn it into an emmy award-winning
rifle (bad joke about the office) I know there's a ton of distrust out there within the weapons
community when it comes to bullpup designs compared to conventional firearms my guess is a
lot of this actually comes directly from british soldiers not so great experience on the ground
with this rifle I want to get to the bottom of if the incredible amount of hate for this weapon
is justified or not in order to do that we'll have to get into british army doctrine with the
bullpup rifle the main benefit of this design is having a more compact weapon and that's useful
when you're trying to cram a bunch of soldiers in the back of a small armored vehicle the term
bullpup actually comes from the term english bulldog which means an ugly small aggressive
and powerful dog just like the rifle i can only imagine what a chihuahua rifle or a poodle pistol
would be the equivalent of the original l85 a1 version of the rifle has a long-standing
the l85a3 has a rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute and a muzzle velocity of 940 meters per
second the effective firing range is 400 meters the british army makes great use of optics by
mounting a four time scope on top of almost every single infantryman's rifle here is the
interesting part to note though the barrel length is 20.4 inches for comparison the m4 even though
it's longer overall in length only has a barrel length of 14.5 inches this also has the positive
side effect of making the weapon more accurate some people look at the bullpup design choice
and find it disgusting they want to take a tactical chunder right there that's an actual
slang term from britain that i found and i strongly encourage you to look it up and use it
in casual conversation the rifle weighs 11 pounds when fully loaded with an optic by comparison the
m4 weighs nine pounds in the same configuration notice how i'm using pounds to describe a british
weapon here just to trigger all my british comrades we fought a whole war of independence
for the right to be wrong about how we measure hey there mate you talking smack about my rifle
it's my british soldier friend oliver oscar no i was just saying how i think the weapon is better
than the usm4 in many ways maybe you can tell us how you feel about your l85 do you like it or no
well at first it was complete rubbish now they've gone and fixed all those initial problems and now
it works bloody great i'm glad to hear it you are in no way a offensive stereotypical portrayal of
a british soldier i have an idea there mate why don't you bug her off cappy roger that
the doctrine used with the l85 bullpup rifle comes from many hard learned lessons i'm told
the assumption is the mother of all screw-ups and when the british fought in argentina in the
80s they made the mistake of assuming they were carrying enough 762 on them
they were using their old main battle rifle at the time the fnfal rifle at one point they resorted
to picking up ammo off their enemy and using that they realized they needed to carry a lot more ammo
and that that ammo and weapon had to be lighter to do that and that's where the idea for the l85
came from a big difference between the us forces and the british army is they have the ability to
put their rifle on fully automatic the british army has been training with using and perfecting
the use of the bullpup for decades it wouldn't be worth retooling their entire game plan after
only using the rifle for 40 years am i poking fun at the british too much i hope not because they
really are my favorite ally i feel like a reverse john oliver going over there and making fun of
stuff i really don't know about i'm kidding i love john oliver i actually interned for him years ago
did you know if you forget the milk in his coffee he'll spill it right on you
so the l85 has a development story that's kind of similar to what we've heard about the us forces m4
rifle when they first introduced it everyone hated it for a lot of the same reasons that the m4 was
hated they're both accused of being crafted from flimsy pieces of plastic and both weapons were
originally accused of jamming all the time but i'll go a step further here to say the l85 was
initially received even worse than the m4 the original magazine had weak springs which could
only handle 26 rounds instead of the 30 rounds it was meant to hold those aluminum magazines
deformed if you held it too tightly because as we all know everyone grips their magazines gently
during combat the real question is does the l85 have a british accent when you fire it bang bang
pew pew cherry things are very different in britain the l85 was originally supposed to
fire the british engineered 485 millimeter rifle round you've probably never heard of the 485
and that's because nato crushed the 45's dreams of ever flying through the air into an enemy soldier
the idea behind this cartridge was to fire a heavy bullet at a high velocity while being
lighter than the 5.56 this rifle round would have had better performance than the 5.56 but
for economic practical and political reasons the british had to design and re-chamber their l85 in
a 5-5-6 version this re-chamber caused problems though because it resulted in a lower rate of
fire when the british forces first deployed with the rifle they complained about the design flaws
and not the usual amount of british tea time complaining i'm talking these troops even
nicknamed the l85 the civil servant because it never worked and can't be fired by the time the
second episode of iraq came out in 2003 they had fixed most of these problems the l85 a2 new and
improved version had dozens of changes including a more durable firing pin and a heavier hammer
this helped to prevent all those misfires the bolt release catch was strengthened a recoil spring was
with higher compression was installed to even out the firing rate all these changes were done to
make the weapon more reliable they made it so that the magazine would stop falling out on its own
and i don't have a lot of deal breakers in my relationships with firearms but the magazine
falling out on its own is definitely one of them it originally had the magazine release button
in a terrible location that was prone to you accidentally hitting it while you're out on patrol
in 2018 the british army began rolling out the latest and greatest update they poured 95 million
into creating the l85a3 just like how the us forces have the future warrior program
and russia has ratnik the british have a program called fist which stands for future integrated
soldier technology the fist program focused on improving the infantry's combat effectiveness
like the other programs the goal is to improve situational awareness communications weapons
and optics the old aging susset four-time scope will be replaced with the acog with an option
to add a shield close quarter reflex battle site heckler and coke will be in charge of making these
upgrades from the a2 to the a3 version and it's expected to increase the service life of the sa-80
past 2025. the a3 variant fixes an issue with an over rotating selector level it adds a new
upper receiver and a new paint coat that will be able to minimize the weapon's visibility to
infrared sensors this is an incredibly important factor because in future near pier wars as sensor
detection becomes more prevalent than ever before we see the russians doing the same thing with
their camo in their ratnik program is it just me or does ratnik program sound like some kind of
bad russian hairdo so as the bayonet becomes less important in american training it has remained a
tradition to the british each soldier is issued a bayonet for their rifle they still train with
these knives and when i was in boot camp we never even saw a bayonet the l85 knife attachment
features a bottle opener which you can use to open your craft beer that you begged your family
to secretly mail you because you're not allowed to drink on deployment there are several stories
of a british infantry regiment actually using the bayonet on their l85 including once in 2004 at the
battle of al amaria in iraq many countries use a bullpup rifle including china and the australians
the disadvantages of a bullpup is the slightly awkward reload especially when you're lying prone
and having the ejection port right next to your face can be worrisome to some on the other hand
the pros are increased maneuverability slightly faster reaction times on your ready-up drills the
l85 first prototype was created back in 1976 so it's about one decade younger than the m16 family
and has quickly gone from initially being hated by british troops to today not really even being
hated anymore at the end of the day i think the l85 a3 version has finally brought the bullpup
out of the mud that it was born in and that's all i've got on the british main battle rifle
let me know what you think of the l85 it doesn't deserve all the hate that it gets
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consider joining our discord channel i'm your host chris cappy and now for your moment of hua
tea time hey there mate you talking hey there everest well