Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, I'm here today at the National Firearms Centre at the Royal Armouries in Leeds,
England. And I'm here courtesy of ARES, Armament Research Services. Today we're taking a look at the final,
so far, final iteration in the British SA80 weapons system. And that is the HK A2 modification and upgrade.
So in 1998 HK received a contract from the British government to retrofit and improve and upgrade 200 L85A1 rifles.
And they did that, and the rifles were received and tested, and proved to be quite effective and reliable.
And in 2000 the primary contract was given to HK to fix another 200,000 rifles.
In total ... they would do about half of the number of guns that were originally purchased,
so not every L85A1 was upgraded, but quite a lot of them.
HK's improvements ... were systemic and involved almost every part in the firearm.
And so what we have today to take a look at is an L85A1 and an L85A2.
Now there are a couple other features that I want to talk about briefly with these two guns.
This A1 has a Maglite bolted to the bottom of the handguard. And that was actually a formal
issue system that was devised in the 1990s.
Just kind of an interesting early version of a weapon light. It's also currently fitted with a blank-firing adaptor,
which isn't relevant one way or another to our purposes, but it was on the rifle.
You'll note we have definitive proof that this is a legitimate A1 rifle, because the butt plate has broken off.
Now this rifle is an HK upgraded L85A2. And in addition to that it has this rail forend,
which was designed and built and contracted for by Daniel Defense.
And it was purchased as emergency necessary equipment around 2008 for the war in Afghanistan.
They needed a way to attach other accessories to the guns,
Daniel Defense came up with the solution, and so this is also
a proper military configuration rifle, dating from about 2008.
Now this one has all of the A2 upgrades, this one does not,
so let's pull these rifles apart and take a look at what HK did to improve the L85.
So HK actually had two separate issues that they had to address simultaneously.
One was making the gun work better, and the second was making sure that their replacement parts
were actually distinguishable from the original parts so that people wouldn't put old parts back in new guns.
Now there are also a series of modifications that were made to the A1 while it was still the A1 in service.
So a few of those involve, for example, the trigger.
The early pattern of trigger actually had a flat rear surface to it. And it was found that, particularly in cold arctic conditions,
snow could get packed into the back of the trigger guard right here,
and it would actually pack up densely enough that you couldn't pull the trigger and fire the weapon.
So while this was still an A1 configuration gun, they retrofitted the trigger to make the back of it pointed,
like this, so that it could actually to some extent cut through packed snow, or potentially mud, and allow you to fire.
Externally the most obvious difference between the A1 and the A2 is going to be in the charging handle.
The A1 had, among its many other problems, rather erratic ejection,
and so HK redesigned the charging handle to also act as a brass deflector.
So it would hit brass on its forward stroke as brass was being ejected,
and deflect it away from the shooter more effectively.
That charging handle is pretty distinctive from the outside of the gun.
Most of the rest of these modifications we're going to have to see from the inside,
so let me go ahead and pull these two rifles apart.
So HK modified a lot of parts. We've got both the rifles torn down here, and we'll take a look at each in turn.
But the highlights that we're going to do are the rear trunnion, the magazines, the bolts, the gas systems,
we kind of looked at the charging handles already, and the firing pins.
And the fire control group.
So that's all, just those parts. Everything else on the gun was pretty good to go,
except the upper receiver which they would deal with in the A3 which we'll touch on next.
The original SA80 mags were manufactured by Radway Green, they have that RG
in the floorplate disassembly button there.
They were aluminium, ... the quality control left something to be desired, and they were a bit flimsy.
Reportedly if you grip them quite tightly you could actually stop the flow of cartridges going up.
And this was not an insignificant cause of problems with the rifle.
So HK redesigned the magazine, they made it out of steel. They have a follower which is an anti-tilt type of follower.
On the Radway magazines, if you push the nose down
you can jam it in place like this. And that's primarily a problem on full-auto, but not helpful anywhere.
Interestingly you'll note that on the HK magazines, the magazine lock cutout doesn't go all the way through the magazine.
This is not that different than the standard M16 magazine, but not quite made as well.
The HK design was substantially better. It's ... steel, so it's stronger,
and then it has a more secure floor plate, a better follower, pretty much all the components improved.
A lot of the problem with some of these parts was largely one of fit and finish.
So for example, when HK redesigned the gas system parts,
this is the gas tube and then this is the head of the gas piston,
they would make them with a better final polish, and they would make them out of more appropriate materials,
so that they weren't liable to wear over time and change shape as the gun was fired extensively.
Now in addition, HK made sure to clearly mark all of their parts. You'll notice in this case the original,
the A1 gas piston, is nice and shiny. The A2 is black coated to make it visually distinctive.
If we look at these, you can see that the parts here that are supposed to be
finely polished are, and the rest is not.
There's not a lot of visually identifiable change in the gas system, but better fit and finish, better material selection
made a big difference on those parts.
Again, in addition to better material and better heat treat, the HK A2 firing pin is actually noticeably
larger diameter up at the front. The A1 firing pins had a tendency to break, in particular the tips to break off.
So this firing pin was substantially strengthened, solving that problem.
The A2 bolt is changed in largely the same sorts of ways, the material selection is better, the heat treat is much better.
And then there were some subtle changes made to the design.
Obviously you can see that the extractor is completely reprofiled here.
And a better extractor design. One of the issues that was changed during the A1 designation
was to chamfer the hole around the plunger ... ejector.
They had some trouble with the ejector sticking in its hole in the bolt,
and so they fixed that by chamfering around the edge.
But then HK went and, in addition to redesigning the bolt, they improved the extractor and ejector springs.
You'll notice that the bolt body is slightly relieved back here to reduce friction in the bolt carrier.
And of course HK's part is clearly marked A2.
Looking at the fire control housings here, you can see that the hammer has been changed substantially.
The HK hammer is heavier, it has more mass.
The springs were also changed. And when HK changed the springs, all of their new springs are colour coded.
So you can see red springs in here, that indicates that it's the new improved version.
Which in this case just means, you know, it's a spring, they didn't change much of the spec except to make it stronger and more reliable.
One of the more visible changes that was made, which is rather interesting, is to the front trunnion.
This is a normal A1 front trunnion, and ... all the locking lugs are symmetrical and the same.
On the A2 this area here on the right side, the ejection side of the gun, the locking lug recesses were substantially expanded
so that the case actually had more space to pull out around the locking lugs during the extraction process.
That is ... very much a non-trivial change. That's a pretty substantive change actually.
In addition the ejection port on the A2 down here was expanded, not a lot,
but it was made slightly larger. And a little bit can really go a long way in a fix like that.
Overall the improvements that HK made to the L85 rifle were the sort of relatively small and subtle changes,
they're sorts of things that would be done by a group of engineers who had substantial experience in firearms design.
Which is specifically what the original Enfield design team lacked. They may have been great engineers and draftsman,
but they didn't have any real experience designing guns.
And as a result they missed some of the kind of the fundamental elements
of firearms design as distinct from other engineering work.
So a lot of the small lessons that are learned over a lifetime of a gun design, Enfield just didn't have.
And that's why HK, with a team of experienced gun designers,
was able to take this rifle that the British had been struggling with for literally a couple of decades,
and fix it in a matter of literally months actually.
And they were able to do quite a good job of fixing it.
Now there's one other element here that I want to touch on, and that is the L85A3.
Contrary to some of the media out there, there is in fact not an A3 rifle. There is a
potential marketed plan for a mid-life service upgrade to the L85A2 to extend its service life.
By the original plan the L85 was going to be out of service and replaced in 2015.
Which obviously didn't happen. And ... it shouldn't be surprising, ...
this sort of thing pretty much always happens.
The planners figure that, you know, the new weapon will have this discreet service life,
but when they get to the end of that life pretty much everyone goes,
"Whoa, whoa, we don't have the money just lying around to replace all the guns with new ones.
Let's see what we can do to tweak them and keep them in service."
And so that is the potential opportunity with the A2s.
And HK is doing some rather clever marketing stuff along these lines,
the first major component of a potential upgrade is replacing the body units of the rifles.
What we would call the upper receiver.
And ... HK has a new and improved, and it is in fact substantially better, upper receiver unit.
Which they have marked as A3 in the exact same place that the rifles are marked A2.
And this leads to an ... assumption that this is the A3 pattern rifle, when in fact, it's actually not.
So here we have our A3 upper receiver marking.
So you can see why people would assume that there is now an HK A3 version of the L85,
the marking is in exactly the same place as the A2.
But it's not, it's actually just a single replacement part.
In British service the upper receiver here is considered a replacement part and is issued on that basis.
The improvements to the A3 are ... again a little bit subtle, but
a change to deep penetrating welding, a different type of welding and a more more reliable welding on this.
The problem was on the A2s and the A1s (because the upper body assembly was not changed on the A2 rifles),
so when they built the A1s you have these guide rails on the inside that are spot welded to the receiver.
And when those those bits were welded, if they weren't done just right, they had a tendency to warp the receiver
because it is thin sheet metal. Same for the welds here on the trunnion.
... The new welding process on the A3 upper receiver eliminates that problem.
And in fact on a lot of these guns, even A2s, if you look down the length of the rod, you can see that it's bent.
Alright, if we look down the length there you can see, it's a little subtle,
but that guide rail on the right side is in fact slightly warped.
The A3 receiver here does not have that style of warping.
The other area that ... is being really improved on the A3 upper is the attachment
of the SUSAT mounting rail, the optics rail.
This is not a standard Picatinny rail by the way, it's specifically made to fit the SUSAT British optic.
And it's attached by a spot weld in each of these locating holes.
And while this isn't a widely publicised issue, there is actually a substantial number of problems with those rails coming loose.
It is possible to warp the upper receiver if you put much force on it, and when that happens these can come loose.
You can have ones where you can actually see daylight between the rail and the receiver, and that is obviously a problem.
With the A3 the method of attachment has been changed.
You can see that ... the inside of this is hollowed out,
there are a pair of locating tabs that are pressed into the main body, the main upper receiver,
And then it's welded along the side here. It's also made longer.
In theory, and these are still somewhat prototype,
but in theory this could be replaced with a Picatinny rail for mounting an ACOG or any other optic.
Or you could have a longer or shorter rail for any sort of application that you wanted to do.
But the change in welding style here and the change in the attachment style of the rail are the two substantive changes to the A3 upper.
So presumably we will probably see these entering British service,
I would expect as part of a midlife upgrade to extend the service ... lifetime of the L85.
Rather than have to invest more money in adopting a new rifle,
now that a substantial sum has been invested in fixing and upgrading the L85s that are currently in service.
Well, thanks to the Defence Academy, the UK Defence Academy at Shrivenham,
we have a chance to actually try out a handful of British small arms like the L85A2.
This is currently outfitted the ... way that the British service rifles in Afghanistan are, or were,
with the Daniel Defence railed front end, the front grip bipod there.
And we're going to go ahead and put a few rounds through it.
Now doctrine with this is in fact to charge it with your left hand. The idea is you turn the gun over,
grab the charging handle, and then you are visually watching the chamber as you're charging it.
So this is for loading and unloading.
Good to go. I am on repetition, semi-auto, and fire.
Alright, I've got three rounds left in the magazine, I'm going to go ahead and drop those full-auto.
So we have our selector switch here on the back of the gun, we'll drop it down from semi to full.
And on fire, and we're ready to go.
Well as you would expect for a relatively heavy 5.56, recoil is minimal on this.
In full-auto I was bracing myself into it just to make sure I kept it well under control,
and in fact it is quite easy to keep under control. Especially with the optic, or optics, mounted.
I should actually mention that. There are two optics on these as per standard British issue.
There is an ELCAN Specter which is a 4x power optic right here.
They do also make a 1x and 4x switchable version. The British military decided to go with the 4x power standalone.
And then on top of that they've mounted an RMR, a little red dot. So you have this very chin high
position like this, which allows you to use this red dot on top for very close range shooting.
And then for actual targeted shooting you've got this, which is a really nice optic.
We have a very short range here and I was barely hitting the target anyway, but that's just me.
This looks like an extremely capable optic. So, go ahead and set this down.
Thank you guys for watching. I got a lot of questions about what was the work that HK did to these rifles?
So hopefully you've learned something today about exactly what upgrades they did and
what, if anything, was left unchanged on the guns.
If you enjoyed this, make sure to check out the ARES blog post that accompanies this video.
It has high resolution pictures of these rifles and their components.
And of course, if you're interested in doing small arms research on the L85 series, or other firearms,
get in touch with the National Firearms Centre.
It is not open to the general public, but the collection is available by appointment.
Thanks for watching.