Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we have a really cool rifle to take a look at.
This is a British L119A1.
This is the rifle that was adopted in 2000 as the British Special Forces standard rifle.
For fairly obvious reasons British Special Forces (UKSF we'll say), wasn't a big fan of the L85.
And so circa 1999 they put out a tender to get a new rifle.
Up to that point ... UK Special Forces had been very much counter-terrorism centric.
And so their armaments were not so much that of infantry,
as we would kind of see them today, but more counter-terrorism.
So a lot of MP5s, and then for larger rifles they had things like L1A1s,
and a variety of other guns. They used a lot of HKs at that point, HK33s and HK G3s.
But they wanted something that was a little more modern, standardised, 5.56 rifle.
So, the contract went out in '99, it was awarded in 2000.
There was some competition here, but kind of not much.
It was pretty well known going in that this contract was going to go to Colt Canada.
Just a brief digression: Colt Canada originates in 1983 when the Canadian government,
having done all of the winter trials for NATO's new cartridge adoption
(which would be the SS109, the 62 grain 5.56 out of Belgium).
The Canadians do all the winter trials and they used that opportunity to get a look at
what all these different new rifles are, and the cartridges,
and they decide that the 5.56 is a really good idea.
And they decide that the M16 is the best rifle for them to go with.
So in 1983 the Canadian government gives a contract to Diemaco
to manufacture essentially the M16.
And at the same time they also purchased a licence from Colt in the United States
to manufacture the M16 in Canada.
So Colt sends the entire M16 technical data package out to Diemaco,
Diemaco stands up production of what would become originally the ... Diemaco C7 and C8 rifles.
The C7 is essentially the M16A2 without all the stupid stuff.
So a better barrel profile, doesn't have a 3-round burst, has A1-style rear sights.
The C8 is essentially the Canadian version of would become the M4 carbine, the short version.
Now, this would become Colt Canada a number of years later,
actually in the middle of the L119A1/A2 story it becomes Colt Canada.
But Diemaco also developed a number of other iterations of the C7 rifle,
including what they called the Special Forces Weapon, the SFW.
And this is essentially a Colt Canada (or Diemaco) SFW.
That's what they proposed to the British trials, and it was awarded to them
with a few modifications, which we'll take a look at in a moment.
Anyway, getting back to our story,
... interestingly, the British government spends more money
on their L119A1 trails than they do on the actual procurement of the guns at this time.
And at first blush that kind of sounds like stupid government tricks,
like what a complete waste of money.
In reality though, I thinks that's probably the smartest possible way to do something like this.
This is going to be a relatively small procurement of guns
for a very high level group of operators.
And ... like you really don't want to screw it up,
you want to make sure that you get that right the first time.
And so spending a tremendous amount of money making sure that it's right,
actually I think that makes a lot of sense.
So they did trials in a number of different environments,
they sent the guns to Alaska for arctic trials,
they sent them to Kuwait for desert trials, they sent them to Brunei for jungle trials.
And then they did a more sort of less formal testing,
they left some of them with jungle warfare instructors in Malaysia to try out.
And essentially everything came back that, "Yeah, these rifles are really good."
They made some modifications to the original SFW.
And this was adopted in 2000 as the L119A1.
So let's take a closer look at this.
I will point out first off, there were two patterns of this, two models of it.
What we have here is the 10 inch barrelled version.
And it's actually a strict, legit, 10 inch barrel, not 10.3 or 10.5.
It's a little bit unclear as to exactly why they chose that length.
But there was also then a 15.7 inch barrelled version, ... 15.7 because that's 400mm.
And the short version has become the significantly
more common pattern, that's the one we have here.
But, worth pointing out there was also a long barrelled gun.
So, with that aside, let's take a look at all of the features on this
because there's a lot that's unique to these rifles.
So one of the first things I know people are going to ask is,
"How on earth did you get your hands on an L119A1?"
And the answer is: well I sort of didn't.
So as regarding the upper, ... all of the unique specialty parts
in the 119 uppers have actually been sold at various times.
And so this has been assembled from all correct parts,
but it wasn't actually an original issued 119A1 upper.
The lower is slightly less real, the lower is actually a semi-auto only.
You'll notice there is no third pinhole in it.
A clone, essentially, that has been marked to match the original L119A1 markings.
So that's what we are looking at here, so a semi-auto, essentially a clone
made largely with the correct original parts.
Now looking at the markings that we do have here.
This is the Diemaco logo, it's a stylised D.
And of course these are marked L119A1, and the calibre is 5.56.
The owner has requested that I blur out the serial number on this example.
On the original ones, Colt Canada (or Diemaco) made these guns for a variety of different countries.
And you can identify what country they were made for by the last
two digits of the serial number, which are letters, and they are country codes.
So Norwegian ones have an NK suffix,
the L119A1s for UK Special Forces have a GB suffix for Great Britain.
We have selector marking that are Colt Canada style,
so safe, repetition for semi-auto, and automatic.
Worth pointing out that for Canadian purposes these are also correct abbreviations in French.
So "sûr" instead of safe, "répétition" instead of repetition, and "automatique" instead of automatic.
Not a thing for the British, but worth pointing out.
Then we have ... Diemaco ... marking here, these were made under licence from Colt.
And then there is an NSN number for specifically the L119A1 short pattern.
And no markings at all on the right side.
Now let's start at the back end of the rifle and work our way forward
and look at all the unique funny bits.
So, in the stock assembly we have a buffer tube here that is stepped.
And that's unique to Colt Canada.
We have a three position collapsing stock, so that's fully extended,
there's an intermediate position here, and a fully closed position.
They have actually textured the cheek rest area of the stock, which is also unique to Colt Canada.
There is a rubber butt plate on these with some serrations to give you a little bit of texturing.
And this butt plate is actually not removable, this is essentially permanently mounted.
It's heated up and mounted on the guns, so it doesn't come off.
The castle nut is another unique Colt Canada feature there,
not quite the standard wrench mounting points on it.
For the L119A1s the British went with this sling plate in the back,
which is really not that great of an idea
because it has a tendency to hit on ones fingers when you try to charge the rifle.
Which of course brings me to the charging handle, which is super-funky looking.
This was their way to have an ambidextrous one-handed charging handle.
So the idea would be if you are opening it from this side, you grab and squeeze
and that opens the lever and allows you to cycle it.
And if you are grabbing it from this side, you are pulling this large extended lever.
And that allows you to open it.
Now the problem is these things ... stab you when the rifle is slung,
and they can get caught up in MOLLE webbing and open the rifle up unintentionally.
This bit in particular, especially for right handers where
when you are slinging this rifle across your chest, this is poking right into your sternum.
So we have another example here, this is an original one,
that one of the SF guys has actually just cut off that extended handle because it's really annoying.
And that's not uncommon to see being done to them.
The grip that was chosen for this rifle is actually a Lone Star grip out of Texas.
It does have storage in the bottom of the pistol grip, which may be why they chose it.
It's also worth noting that when these were being made, circa 2000,
there was ... certainly not the variety of after-market part choices that we have today.
You'll notice that this has a first finger groove, which is something that everyone today
... tactically in the know would look at that and go,
"Oh god that's awful, you'd never want that. Ugh, finger grooves on an AR grip, that's terrible."
But that's what UKSF went with because, frankly, that's largely what was available at the time.
And if you get the bonus of having the storage compartment in the bottom, that makes up for it.
My own personal opinion of this sort of thing?
While it may get snooty looks today,
it's really not that big a deal and it's pretty easy to work around.
One of the really interesting things here that is not really very visible
is the profile of the flat top rail.
... Diemaco actually pioneered the flat top uppers on the AR,
and ... then it moved back down to the United States.
And when Diemaco did it, their rail profile isn't quite the same
as what became standardised as the 1913 Picatinny rail.
So ... the cuts on this are actually closer to a Weaver spec than they are to true Picatinny.
Now they'll still work with Picatinny items, but the machining isn't quite the same.
There's also a little bit of a step down right here.
There is one extra section compared to today's standard flat top AR upper.
And this bevel at the front.
So not really a big deal, doesn't have any specific implications, ... it doesn't cause any problems.
But it's interesting to point that out.
Colt Canada would later go on to ... using the standard configuration for a flat top.
But contracts like this that were set continue to be manufactured that way to this day.
Now the handguard here is a Knight's RAS quad-rail system.
Again, this is state of the art circa 2000,
this lets you put all of your accessory stuff on the front end of the gun.
And there is something that is a little bit unique here,
UKSF figured that they ... were probably going to buy under-barrel grenade launchers.
... Normally you would want the top rail to ... hold zero perfectly.
And so there's a clamp, up here, to lock the top rail in place, and that's standard.
Well, they also wanted to reinforce the bottom rail, and so there is also a clamp on the bottom.
Top and bottom there.
And ... the L119A1 is totally unique in this handguard.
I mean, it's a really subtle difference, but this is specific to this pattern of rifle.
And this would actually go on to have an ancillary benefit years later.
... The guys started using PEQ-14s, which is a combination light and laser module.
And they would hang them on the bottom rail of the gun,
and that's potentially an issue if the bottom rail doesn't hold zero.
Well, on these they are locked in place, the bottom rail does hold zero.
And it was highly beneficial to be able to put a laser aiming module
on the bottom rail and know that it would maintain zero.
I should point out, UKSF issued these with ACOGs,
4x power ACOGs with Shield SMS red dots on top of them
and a special metal sight-protector wing for the red dots.
They actually, interestingly, never issued a rear sight for these.
We have a front sight here, in fact the front sight post is a bit unique in itself,
it's narrower than normal and square in profile.
But they literally never issued a rear sight,
and you'll basically never see one of these with a rear iron sight.
They had so many other sighting systems already on the gun,
you've got the ACOG, you've got the backup red dot on it.
And the ACOG has its own, simple, crude, but they are there, emergency backup irons.
So there really wasn't any need, nor was there necessarily a lot of rail space available
to put on a ... standalone rear iron sight.
These guns originally came with bayonet lugs on them,
and on the 10 inch guns the bayonet lugs were all ground off upon delivery by UK Special Forces.
The 16 inch ones retained the bayonet lugs.
But on the 10 inch the flash hider didn't allow you to actually use it,
and so they cut it off so that it wouldn't interfere with mounting anything else down there.
One thing that you will find in the reference material
is a statement that these have a reinforced heavy gas block on them.
Some do, but not all of them do.
And there are plenty of pictures out there of especially the short guns,
the long ones all do have the reinforced gas block,
but the short ones often have this standard gas block.
The reinforced version was allegedly done for stability with a grenade launcher,
and what you'll see is that there's no gap right here.
This metal is extended and comes down, and the mounting points are a little heftier.
So that you can have an extensive amount of firing with a grenade launcher
without breaking this out of its mounting points.
But that doesn't seem to have been a huge deal because, like I said,
a lot of the short ones don't appear to actually have those.
This is the SureFire FA556SA can, a nice little 5.56 suppressor
Welded end caps. ... SureFire would improve upon this later,
but procurement for the UK was always this pattern.
Notice also they've got the flats here instead of the rounded lugs that SureFire would eventually go to.
What's more unusual about this is the muzzle device.
This is a SureFire FH556-216A flash hider, and it's got these extra-long tines
like narrower in diameter, extended tines, that nobody seems to actually really know why.
There were plenty of more standard flash hiders out there that would work fine,
and I've been unable to find any reasonable, reliable information on why that muzzle device.
But that is the muzzle device that they used, and for people building clones of these rifles that's,
love it or hate it, it's a very distinctive element.
It's also worth pointing out that the barrel profile on these guns is really quite heavy.
These are both kind of forward balanced guns and heavier guns than they necessarily need to be
for being so short, just literally 10 inches.
Now, they are also massively over gassed.
And that's probably in part due to the use of a custom 10 inch barrel instead of the standard 10.3,
and just the wide variety of environmental testing that was done with these guns.
The over gassing makes them almost ... unpleasant to shoot,
they recoil harder than you would expect for a heavy 5.56 carbine.
And that's because the over gassing leads to a high bolt-carrier velocity,
which slams into the back of the gun and transfers that impact into the shooter's shoulder.
However, the over gassing also means that they are extremely reliable.
It takes a lot of fouling to stop up one of these guns, and that's a good thing.
... For a Special Forces combat carbine like this I think it makes a lot of sense,
especially if you are talking about a carbine that's going to be used in
like in the field combat conditions.
Not just we jump out of a truck at a building and run inside
and shoot the terrorists and then go back to the pub.
If you are going to be deployed in theatre with a gun that's going to get dirty,
having that over gassing and the reliability to it is a reasonable compromise to make
for heavier recoil from firing.
So the story of the L119A1 actually continues today.
So despite the fact that UK Special Forces about 10 years ago started looking for a replacement,
... they wanted some different features,
they had some ideas of how they thought they could improve on this rifle.
And they started looking for a replacement, which would become the L119A2.
However, these guns are actually still being procured
because this ended up becoming a standard rifle for the Royal Marines.
So you went from a relatively small procurement for UK Special Forces,
which is like the SAS, the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service,
and a variety of other secretive sort of units, just those guys.
Now, with the Royal Marines using this rifle,
(and they use only, by the way, the short version, this one),
these are actually still being procured from Colt Canada.
Which is really, I think that's really pretty cool.
And I would certainly much prefer this, even though it has some kind of weird features to it,
I'd much rather have this than even an L85A3.
So where the original guns were being used with ACOGs
they are today being issued out with EOTechs.
And a variety of other aiming devices, magnifiers, lasers and such.
But you'll ... see these in current service with the Royal Marines.
So these continue to be used to this day.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.