Let’s cut to the important question: How does this review affect the cadet forces? Will we receive upgraded GP rifles and more ammunition?
Short answer… No
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The L98A2 is more than satisfactory for cadet shooting.
No upgrade needed.
What would be nice is a greater number of l103a2s for dry training and WHTs.
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Isn’t the A3 replacing the LSW in terms of cadet shooting
And more importantly arms drill…
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Hell yes
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Negative.
Cost of upmodding l85A2s to A3s and then down grading to L98A3 is ridiculously prohibitive.
Also there is no established (I.e. spec’d and tested) requirement for L98A2s to made A3s.
The cadet forces will be using L98A2s until either…
The MOD moves onto another weapon system and we follow suit.
OR
Loss of Spares, tooling and anncilaries dictates we drop the L98A2.
Anyones guess which will come first. But I would anticipate we have L98A2s in service until 2030 minimum.
As for getting more L103A2s. This in my view should be a priority. That and having them fully deactivated, so they are no longer section 5 weapons.
If they wernt we could hold them in armored on Sqns without alarms etc.
This would mean more IWT, more WHTs and yea @AlexCorbin more arms drill.
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Hmmm, that would mean a significant change to the working parts, so…
…not so easy to achieve if fully deactivated.
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Yes yes I know all that.
I dont think it’s a realistic possibility.
But it’s the only way to really enhance full bore training opportunity across the Corps.
If we are spending budget on weapons the need is for more L144. A weapon we can hold and use locally.
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Or a replacement for this heap.
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Do we need alarmed premesis to hold these?
Err. Gonna call beadwindow on that one?
Im sure someone told me the ones with mechanism removed and barrel barred and welded can be kept outside of alarmed premises unlike the l103 where they need to be
I might be imagining it though.
Dont make any difference with a benweld.
I’ve seen first hand the length of time it takes to break one of them.
…
One idiot unit lost keys…
Let just say it’s more than secure.
I belive there was a Din that went out a while ago that long story short said any DP/L103 should be treated as S5!
No need to call beadwindow. Just keep it short. The answer is yes, no more details to be said! Unless you’re OC LaSER then you can put it all over Twitter instead…
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Might of been someone’s opinion I misread
I think after the PR issues of headlines along the lines of “They could be converted to live fire” there won’t be any chance of having anything that even looks like an L98 outside of a central holding location.
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It’s obviously been a long time since I did any comms stuff, and I’ve just had to look up what beadwindow means… but I’m intrigued why you even considered calling it? what has been said that you think isn’t common knowledge?
Does anyone have any actual experience or knowledge of ammunition shortages for the RAFAC?
In all my years I’ve never known ammunition being refused based upon reaching our allotted maximum.
Unconfirmed but I’m sure someone once told me the RAFAC’s allocation was something like 200 rds per Cadet per year so even using fag packet figures that would be 40,000 cadets x 200 rds each = 8,000,000 which is a huge number.
I accept that the likes of SATTs will burn through a chuck as will JL and Shooting camp but I still doubt anyone is actually counting or indeed worried…
On an average 6 Lane Barrack range I’m sure we only just hit 1000 rds in a day (admittedly mix of 0.22 and 5.56 shooting)
To cover our Wing of 1000 cadets we’d need 200 shooting days a year, or 4 days in every week.
These are conservative numbers. If the quality of training was reduced and concentrated on L98A2 brass conversation by doubling rds achieved per day it would still require every Saturday and Sunday in the year to be shooting at that rate to get close to the Wing’s Allocation
So I’d suggest no move to the A3 and no need to consider upping an ammunition allowance given its so high we don’t reach it
I was always told we were budgeted 20 rounds per Cadet per Year. which would still be 600.000 rounds per year at least. (18,000+ per Wing).
Likewise I’ve never known anyone to be told “no you’ve used them all”
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