Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum and we are here today taking a look at
the current British Army standard sniper rifle.
This is the L115A3, and it is chambered for the
.338 Lapua Magnum, a really huge cartridge.
Now the roots of this rifle
in British service go back to the early to mid 1990s.
Accuracy International had developed their Arctic Warfare rifle,
which, by the way, had its origins in the original British L96 sniper,
then the British L118 sniper used in limited numbers by
Special Forces, and then for the international market they developed this rifle.
They basically scaled up the Arctic Warfare .308 to .338 Lapua Magnum to give
extended range extended ballistic capability.
And this wasn't specifically for the British military, it was on a commercial, international basis.
And when people started taking an interest in it, the British military was there at the same time.
British Special Forces specifically, thinking, "You know, this is an interesting development
and we should get some of these and we should try them out."
Originally, this was purchased as the L115A1 in the '90s and probably saw some service in the invasion of Iraq.
Where you're in a desert environment there are potentially very long-range target engagements to be made.
So British Special Forces had a small number of these, ... the A1s, which by the way are
distinct for a couple of reasons. They would have had fixed stocks not folding stocks.
They would have had Parker-Hale bipods, the same as were used on the L118,
and they would have had a smaller 3 to 12 power scope on them.
Anyway, they were using these and liked them. It's a fantastic rifle, it's an extremely effective rifle.
And the A2 version was developed over the coming years, and the A2 saw plenty of service
in Afghanistan with British Special Forces.
The A2 pattern, they replaced the Parker-Hale bipods with basically the same sort of bipod as had been on the L96 rifle.
Came up with a little adapter to mount the original L96 type bipod onto a Parker-Hale plug mount, used that.
... It was at that point that they got the folding stocks, and a lot of the A1s were upgraded
into A2 pattern guns as part of that process.
By 2008, well 2007 to 2008, though the British Army decided, the whole field army,
that it needed to really kind of overhaul its sniping program. And they weren't just looking at the rifle,
they were looking at ... all of the equipment associated with sniping. So
they took a lot of the lessons learned by the Special Forces and
applied them in areas with things like adapting night vision and
thermal optical sights to sniper rifles, which we see here,
we'll talk about that in a moment. And then ancillary gear like laser rangefinders, wind meters,
good spotting scopes, everything, the whole sniping package.
The program was called SSIP, the Sniper System Improvement Program, and it resulted
in the general adoption of the L115A3, which is this rifle, by the British military,
including a number of updates at that point. So the rifle went from the A2 to the A3 pattern.
They upgraded the bipods, they got rid of the old L96 type bipods and went with a Harris bipod.
They increased the size and magnification of the scope, they went to a Schmidt & Bender ... 5 to 25 power scope.
Integrated in mounts for thermal and for image intensification (night-vision) scopes into it.
And really came up with a fantastic complete package for very long range heavy sniper rifles.
With the adoption of the .338 Lapua Magnum, the British really kind of took a step up in power that was not
typical at the time. Generally everyone else had been, and to a large extent still is,
quite happy with something in the .308 7.62 NATO range,
or failing that, often people are interested, militaries even are interested, in
cartridges that ... have the same basic power level, but are perhaps a bit more
aerodynamically capable. So 6.5mm type cartridges. Going up to .338 Magnum
is, well, it was done largely because of the combat in Afghanistan.
Just for comparison's sake, here's a 7.62 NATO snap cap compared to a .338 Lapua Magnum.
So really this is, I mean, this is like the same sort of increase as you might see from 5.56 to 7.62 NATO.
It's a really big cartridge.
And in Afghanistan and the Middle East the British have been putting this to very good use.
Fairly regularly using these rifles effectively out to 2,000 metres and beyond.
For a while the the longest sniper engagement record was ... just over 2,400 metres,
which was done with one of these rifles. I believe that's been surpassed by the Canadians,
but that doesn't take anything away from the capabilities of the L115.
If we look at the specific features we've got here, most of them are
basically the same as the previous Arctic Warfare rifles, just slightly larger in scale.
So the folding stock here is basically identical, open up right there.
We have the interchangeable spacers in the butt-plate. We have the rear monopod wheel
There we go.
Come out all the way down to there.
We have the same three position safety selector, fire,
the centre position here locks the trigger but leaves the bolt free to operate,
and the rear position locks the bolt and the trigger.
We have our cocked indicator, firing pin indicator out the back,
the continuing legacy of that very early problem with the L96.
If you haven't seen the video on the L96, I think it's definitely worthwhile to put this rifle in context.
So that'll be in a link at the very end of this one, and I highly recommend taking a look at it.
The magazine on the L115 is a single stack, 5 round magazine, that is a decrease
(marked .338 there), that is a decrease from the .308 rifles, but that makes sense with a cartridge this large.
A 10 round magazine would be kind of awkwardly big.
As I mentioned earlier, the A3 model of this rifle standardised on a Harris bipod.
The previous Parker-Hale style of bipods had simply been a little too high and just generally not well liked.
Of course it also has an adjustable cheek rest. So you can loosen those two screws up
and adjust the cheek rest to whatever height is convenient for your optic
and your own facial structure.
What was a single port muzzle brake on the .308 rifles is a 2 port brake on the .338 rifles.
This also has a threaded muzzle for use with a suppressor, which was issued with the rifle.
You will notice that it has a front sight block just like the L118.
This is normally where you would attach backup iron sights.
However, the British military never actually issued those iron sights with this rifle.
They didn't procure them or issue them.
And that's for a couple reasons, first off the extreme range capability of these guns
can't be duplicated with iron sights. Your iron sight effective range was considered to be about 600 metres,
and you know, that's a third or so the effective range of this rifle with an optic. So
if your optic breaks, you can't replace it with iron sights anyway.
Secondly, the British logistical and procurement system has significantly improved and you don't really have
to worry about dealing with a broken optic for very long at all before you can get a replacement.
And perhaps most interestingly of all, this rifle was fielded as part of a two-man sniper team,
of course, and the secondary, ... the spotter in the team carried a Sniper Support Weapon,
which is the L129, which was the LMT, it's basically a .308 calibre AR-15.
And that rifle was equipped with the 3 to 12 power, ... with the sniper teams
(standard on that was a 6 power ACOG), but they often set them up with the 3 to 12 power Schmidt & Bender
which could be pulled off of that rifle and dropped right onto this rifle.
And the LMT .308 has a very nice set of iron sights on it.
So in the event that your optic went down on one of these,
... the most effective thing you could do would be to take the optic off of your spotters rifle,
spotter goes to iron sights, and the sniper now has not quite as good of a scope,
you know, a substantially less powerful scope, but still a very high-quality scope.
We have our serial number here on the side. The first two digits as usual are the production year.
So this is a 2016 production gun, which is a commercial production gun. This one isn't actually army issue.
All of the military issue rifles were produced in 2008. There will be a total of 582 of them.
So serial number prefix and and date there.
However, this rifle has been marked in the pattern of a standard military rifle. So that was actually done
custom by Accuracy International for this rifle's owner. And so as a result we can see what the official military markings are.
And no longer metric, of course, because it's 0.338 inch L115A3.
And then we have Accuracy International. "Accuracy" is kind of hidden behind
the cosine indicator here, tells you what angle you're pointing the rifle at.
The barrel that the British Army ... specifically wanted, on the L115 is a ... heavy fluted barrel.
Interestingly, Accuracy International does not offer this fluted barrel on any of their other production,
either military or civilian, because they have found there to be potential accuracy issues
as a result of using a fluted barrel. They are willing to do it for the British military, but
because they thought there might potentially be issues with fluting and accuracy,
they opted to not offer them on any of their other production.
So ... if you see a fluted barrel on one of these rifles, it is only possible for it to be a British military rifle.
Taking off the rear scope cover there, you can see the markings on the scope.
This is a Schmidt & Bender 5 to 25 by 56.
So a larger scope both in bell diameter and also in magnification than the previous L118 and L96 scopes.
You have your magnification adjustment here. You have an illuminated reticle here.
You have your focus there from very close ranges all the way out to, well, all the way up to infinite,
which is just over 1,000, which is half the effective range of this thing.
The elevation dial for this optic is a bit different than the previous ones.
Commercially Schmidt & Bender calls this a dual turn
scope, where the elevation turret actually has two full rotations of adjustment to it.
So your bottom numbers (all of these are milliradians), and you have these little windows up at the top
and when you rotate this all the way through to ... the end of its first rotation,
those windows will turn yellow and that will tell you that you're at the top end of your elevation adjustment.
And these are your mil markings.
Previously the top set of numbers would be a BDC. There is no BDC on this particular rifle.
Same thing, we have tenth of a mil clicks for windage.
The reticle in the L24 5 to 25 scope is very similar to that in the earlier L17A1 scope.
Your centre cross hair has mil dots in it, and then you have a range finding system at the bottom.
That is 400, 600, 800 and 1,000 metres, and that is the waist of a man to the top of the head.
Really the only difference between this and the earlier reticle is that this is a little bit finer.
One major part of the 2008 British sniper improvement program was the implementation of a system
for night vision and thermal scopes. And this is the mounting bracket for the night vision scope.
I don't have one to show you, but if you take a look at a previous video on the L118,
you'll see the smaller version of it. Basically the night vision scope mounted up here and
dropped down in front of your scope, so that you actually continue to look through the scope as normal,
and the image intensifier took light in here, and then has a big tube up on top that does its intensification
and then it displays the result back down here so you can see it through your scope.
Interestingly, this mount is actually a separate part of the whole scope mount system.
So you can take this mount off and you're left with the same scope ring that you have in the back.
The second part of that system was this rail on the side of the rifle. This mounts into this
front bipod block, and this is for holding the STICS, which is the the thermal scope element of the system.
So this block is removable, you can see the screws there, but typically ... it was just left installed on the rifle.
Honestly, this thing weighs so much as it is, that the addition of a little extra chunk
of aluminium on the front isn't that big of a deal in comparison.
One interesting element to note is these rear monopod feet, which are standard on the military versions of
all of the Arctic Warfare rifles that the British have used, are a military only option
and not available on the standard civilian production guns. So
... Accuracy International makes only one pattern of the mould for this, you know, the rear stock here.
And you'll notice that this one has been clearly cut by hand to give space for this rear monopod.
Normally, this is a little loop for your hand to support the back of the rifle, and for the military pattern stocks
they actually have to be cut out by hand as you can see this one has been.
Interestingly, in lieu of even trying to use a BDC, the British Army has made some
impressive advances in general sniper training programs.
They actually currently now have what they called ASATS, which is the
Advanced Small Arms Targeting System, which is a computerised ... basically set of
ballistic data sheets where you chronograph the rifle, and then based on
muzzle velocity you select a series of holdovers dependent on bullet BC and temperature.
So, you know, hot, temperate, arctic, and that gives you all of your holdover data out to 2,000 metres.
... This doesn't serve as a complete substitute for properly zeroing the rifle, obviously,
And it's the sort of data you would, with practice, want to confirm.
But rather it's a huge step forward from just having a really sort of autonomous BDC number,
you know, scribed onto a scope that may or may not work for whatever environment you have to be in.
They're really making strides forward in making military snipers much more effective shooters.
It's interesting to note, you can see the the Afghan influence, the desert warfare influence, on this rifle
just in the outside of the stocks as much as anything else, where it's no longer the Green Meanie of the L96,
it's now a kind of a desert coyote brown.
These continue to serve with the British military today, they're quite well liked.
The Special Forces have actually moved kind of one step beyond,
and where this rifle was designed specifically for .338 Lapua Magnum using a 250 grain projectile
(by the way has 2,900 to 3,000 feet per second muzzle velocity, it's really a pretty hefty cartridge),
Special Forces has found that they really actually can get about another 100 metres of effective range
with a 300 grain bullet. The problem is the magazine and the receiver on these rifles isn't quite long enough
to accept a 300 grain projectile. The overall length of the cartridge just gets just a hair too long.
So for a while British Special Forces were actually just single loading 300 grain rounds into these rifles.
What they have come up with is the A4 pattern of the rifle, which has a lengthened magazine
and magazine well to accept a 300 grain bullet. And British Special Forces are currently using
that, the L115A4, and there is a program in place to upgrade all of the Army's existing
A3 rifles to the A4 spec. For a while that was kind of a priority, it appears now
it's become less of a priority and will probably not happen until, like, 2030. So
at this point, as of late 2018, the projected plan is for the L115A3, this guy,
to remain the standard British service rifle for another 10 to probably, maybe 15 years.
By which point I'm sure they will be ready to adapt it, develop it into something new,
or at least replace the rifles because they'll be getting a bit old at that point.
Anyway, a big thanks to Steve Houghton for allowing us to take a look at this L115A3.
As you might imagine, these are not particularly common
rifles to find these days, being a current military issue item.
He has written a book on the whole history of British sniper rifles, focusing in particular on the
rifles and their accessories and ancillary equipment. It's called "The British Sniper a Century of Evolution",
and if you're interested in this, you should definitely check out the description text below.
I have a link in there where you can pick up a copy of his book, which has quite a bit more information on
this rifle, as well as all of its predecessors and a lot of its ancillary equipment.
Thanks for watching.