| Bear in mind that this is from the Guardian - but can anyone comment on the accuracy of the article?
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Off target
British troops are poised to go to war in Iraq. But after 30 years of development, £470m of taxpayers' money and countless modifications, soldiers still don't trust their standard issue rifle - the SA80. How did the military get something so simple so spectacularly wrong? James Meek unravels a shameful saga of arrogance, incompetence and indecision
Thursday October 10, 2002
The Guardian
In 1985, in the United States, a firm called Microsoft came up with a gimmicky piece of software called Windows, said to be easier to use for non-specialists, as if the masses were going to start keeping computers at home. In Finland - Finland! - a former paper company, Nokia, was pursuing its insane dream of the masses buying portable personal telephony devices.
Britain's 1985 design ideas were more sensible. Such as Clive Sinclair's personal transporter, the C5, a quiet, low-slung electric car, made out of white plastic - cheap, simple, modern transit for the masses. Or the Royal Ordnance Factories' personal assault rifle, the SA80, a compact, accurate gun, made out of pressed steel and green plastic - cheap, simple, modern weaponry for the masses.
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On October 2, the day of the launch of the rifle, the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield, north London, was en fête. All the gun people were there: generals, defence correspondents and foreign military attaches. Gary Gavin, a 26-year-old sergeant in the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, was the first to swap his old SLR rifle for the new SA80. General Colin Shortis, the army's director of infantry at the time, said: "We are delighted with the SA80 - a really good weapon."
The ceremony went well. It seemed like a good day for the army, and for Enfield's engineers and designers. British soldiers were soon to be given the world's most advanced gun, made - and designed - in Britain.
The ceremony was a facade. The gun was not ready, either to be made or used. The public never learned - and, to this day, has not learned in full - what was going on behind the scenes as the weapon came into service: how the designers at Enfield had failed to grasp the difficulties of making a cheap, mass-produced gun using new technology, how seriously the Thatcher administration's determination to privatise the Royal Ordnance threatened the ability of British soldiers to fight, and how the Ministry of Defence failed to test the production version of the weapon in realistic conditions before accepting it into service.
Today, the latest modifications to the gun may have made it an adequate rifle, but it is hard to see how soldiers' confidence in the weapon can ever recover from the blunders of the past. How those blunders came about is a story that goes back half a century. It is a story of the decline of British engineering, the sacrifice of skills for political and financial gain, a complacent cold war military bureaucracy, and Britain's role as America's subservient ally in Europe.
As originally issued, the SA80 couldn't be fired from the left shoulder (it still can't), making it dangerous to fire from corners and doorways. The firing pins broke, the magazine fell off, the bolt-release button broke, the triggers got stuck, the cleaning kit wouldn't clean, the butt plate broke, the cheek-pad fell off, the cheek-pad melted, the cartridge cases wouldn't eject properly, the bolt carrier didn't fit properly, the locking pins holding the gun together were inadequate, and the safety catch wasn't safe. "I think - had it ever gone into serious combat in the early days - it would very quickly have been abandoned and replaced with a [foreign] rifle," one senior former executive says.
Military folk expect teething troubles with new weapons. They don't expect still to be having them more than 15 years later. One officer involved in trials of the gun in the 1980s says it should never have been rushed into service in the way it was. "It takes a lot of guts for someone to stand up and put their career on the line and say: 'I'm sorry, it's not ready, I'm going to stop it.'"
Nobody found that courage.
In the dining room of a large house in Essex, looking out through French windows on to an immaculate lawn, a heavy-set man takes a grubby J-cloth out of a bag and unfolds it on the table. Fat brass cartridge cases of different sizes, with copper-jacketed bullets sticking out of them, roll around inside. It is live ammunition, although the man, a former military armourer, promises that he has them legally. Pointing to the rounds in turn, he delivers a 20th-century history lesson - here is the ammunition Britain used in two world wars, here is th |
