It was but I kinda miss it & understand it now.
It being section 1 made things so much easier on transport & storage.
Yep awful for target shooting, awful for blank firing as it was the most dangerous blank former in the British army needing to be fired at 45 degrees & muzzle blockages on fieldcraft exercises pretty much a given but it I kinda miss it’s quirkiness & I think it has more personality/character than the A2.
Wouldn’t mind firing one again.
As you say, the new weapon system will be modular no doubt so the ability to drop a new receiver on and chamber it at .22 rimfire or 5.56 center would be lovely.
Pipedream though I suspect. I’d happily take a few thousand L85 A3 for us to use.
It’s highly unlikely the L85’s replacement will be 5.56 mm. The Americans have gone for 6.8 x 51 mm for better performance against body armour and, as with the last two calibres adopted by the US military, NATO is likely to follow.
Totally agree that a modular design with a small bore conversion kit (as we used to have for the L85A1) makes much more sense than a separate weapon system for indoor ranges.
I can’t see a .22 version being bought. They would only fulfil part of the requirement (the target shooting part) but we also need something sturdy enough to work for fieldcraft, and to use blank ammunition. The rifle would also probably be too different from the service rifle to be viable from a service and support point of view. If you were going to do that, it would be easier to keep the L98A2 in service instead. The advantage of the L98A2 as it stands is, in the event of WW3, the rifles can be taken in, have a little tinkering done and then be issued to troops.
There’s little appetite within the MOD to support a weapon system that requires different tooling to service rifles. Hell, they wouldn’t even let us keep the L86s.
My understanding - from conversations with the manufacturers - is there are issues with conversation kits. So for a rifle to be S1 it needs to be built as such.
That said AR pattern rifles are fairly cheap so procuring dedicated units for miniature range use shouldn’t be out of the question. Unless we gold plate it.
The L98 conversion kits were removed from service and there is an L Pattern rifle that is factory converted to .22. This was done by HK for the Biathlon team.
Could we use those on sqns, (have to buy lots) as the L144 replacement?
Then some commonality between that and the L98.
Yes but still S5
There are a variety of S1-legal, semi-automatic .22 rifles on the market.
This is a typical example for only £595. Add on a cheap sight for another £200-£300 if needed.
It wouldn’t be much good for “target rifle” per se, but it would be an intermediate step between AR & the L98A2 - with a useful cross-over of magazine drills.
That’s the type of thing I was thinking of.
It seems a good and cost effective way to build up drills and range discipline, the drawback of the SA80 was it was one of a kind, and a ‘native’ .22 would have been too expensive.
(Interesting to note a .22 costs about the same as a better make of Airsoft rifle!)