Its always nice to see Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.

For those of you unaware, this is Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK. This is not, in fact, Ian McCollum at Forgotten Weapons, who's here at Rock Island Auction. Rather, it's Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weaponry from throughout history.

AK-47s jam when exposed to mud' M-16s jam when exposed to ice' L85A1s jam when exposed to ammunition.

My A2 had 3 stoppeges in the 10 years i had her and 2 were with blank rounds she was a great bit of kit once issued with the LUD

Ahahah no way, is that Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.

Beggars belief that this rifle wasn't exhaustively tested in all environments before letting British troops entrust their lives to it.

I shot at camp lejuene in the states against the US marines in 1995. I swapped a t-shirt for 8 Colt magazines and I never had a mag stoppage in the next 6 years of shooting at Bisley.

The biggest issue with the rifle was the workers making it being told they were all being made redundant once they were finished. Resulted in zero fucks being given. Shocker.🤷‍♂️

Great to see Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK.

Was he speaking? I was distracted by the beautiful SLR in the background. I’m welling up now.

I remember using the straight pull version of the A1 in the army cadets where I was a kid. It used to jam CONSTANTLY 😂

Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history IN THE WILD! I always enjoy hearing JF chat about the L85.

The L85 is now being replaced by the Knights Armaments L403A1 (an updated M-16 variant) for the Royal Marines and Rangers.

2:27 to be pedantic, there are two additional external changes with the A2: the magazine release is given a guard to prevent it catching on kit & dropping the mag, and trigger was replaced for one with a notched back face to clear compacted snow that would otherwise prevent it from moving when pulled

Many Japanese people look down on the L85A1 and the improved L85 as "blunt weapons," but I disagree. Although they are being replaced by new rifles, I still love them.

The Brits have great thinkers and engineers and so great discoveries and inventions, the L85A1 maybe wasn't the pinnacle of it

Great video, very informative 👍🏻

Excellent video, thanks. I last fired one 30 years ago before the upgrades. For peeps like me driving ambulances it was a Godsend when we first got them as they would actually fit in the cab!

Never really got o play with the A3 but used the A1 and A2 before switching to L129. L85 should have been scrapped years ago in favour of the L119 (C7/C8). Nice to see bootnecks finally getting the Stoners though.

The empty cartridge going back into the breech was very real. That comma shaped cooking handle was a big improvement. Massive improvement over the A1. The two biggest problems remain though, it can only be fired right handed and it's too heavy.

Love this explanation

Its a decent weapon now

Should of never given up the Brown Bess.

That's really good stuff, thanks.

thank you for this info. I carried the A1 on ops for a number of years. and have experience of a broken extractor. got me a whole pile of trouble

Ah yes, the civil servant

Bravo Jonathan, i like your presentation now

So a FAL and a l85A3 in the background, nice.

SLR every day of the week for me.

no stoppages when i was using one at basic last year, it seemed pretty good to me (i didn't understand why people were slagging it off) now i know they were slagging off the old variant.

Remember the days out in Norway when i was in Norway and the Royal Marines were conducting cold weather trials on the weapon , running it through all the drills , example withdrawal out of contact and then setting up a snap ambush hot weapon to then cold , when the ambush was initiated some of the weapons had frozen , big problem with temperature changes , the advice was to keep the weapons outside of our tent groups , the susat sight was always prone to misting ,, how to unfreeze a weapon, urinate on it ! as for the real safety issue , that was the bolt head which was massively prone to building up brass flange on the head which in turn caused the weapon not to eject safely on the unload , saw many NDs due to that, which resulted in the School of infantry folks rewriting the unload drills , as for the SAS/SBS , they just said , we told you so after they binned it ! easy for them given their wide range of personal weapons to use, as for the rest , we were stuck with it ! as for a competition shooting weapon , OK as long as you managed to keep back a whole bunch of them from going out on exercises and defiantly away from assault course . especially the LSW ! which rattled like a biscuit tin after a while . in conclusion the weapon at that time was a bag of nails which allowed snow to clog up in the perforated areas , , any moisture on it would immediately freeze , and if one just happened to land in a big dump of soft snow and then attempt to engage the enemy with a snowed up SUSAT ?

This is fascinating.

Thanks for the upload. Regardless thank you Eugene Stoner.

The gas parts were also coated with a low friction coating that lasted two minutes before not using scotch bright as instructed by HK didn’t compute with WO’s and SNCO’s.

Multiple people misspelling the name of Jonathan Ferguson the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal *Armouries Museum* in the UK which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.

I used the A1 in basic trainings but was issued with an A2 when I got to my unit. I didn't have issues with the A1, but I wasn't using it under real field conditions much. With the A2 I found that as long as you kept the gas parts clean it was a pretty reliable weapon.

If I remember rightly, the spring in the magazine was also changed out to also stop the bullet tilting and had a little more tension so it wouldn't get jammed up

Steve Raw's "The Last Enfield" is a MUST read.

So the question is how many of these have been sold abroad, and are being used by other forces than the UK. 🤔

And the L115A1 was built in a shed 😂😂

They say the 5.56 calibre round needs replacing due to modern body armour making it less effective. As a former soldier, I'd probably agree. Plus I didn't like the way I nearly got brass in my face and hair when fireing it. I've fired an American AR that's nice compared to the SA80 in all its forms its also lighter to carry. The later SA80 A3 was okay but nothing more far from the best in my opinion but it did the job.

"How BAE Systems coined it in twice with the L85" A rifle created from an arse-about-face AR -18 so RSAF would have something on it's order book when it was flogged off to British Aerospace (latterly BAE Systems). An upgrade that cost more than decent new rifles from other manufacturers so H&K would have a sizeable order on it's books before H&K was flogged off by it's then owners BAE Systems.

Always got hold of colt gi mags 28 rds worked well

The new steel mag was a game changer on its own. A heavy old girl, but once the a2 came in it definitely improved people's thoughts and expectations of the rifle. The amount of play between the upper and lower was always a blight on its accuracy though, plenty of wobble.

I loved my SLR!

Proof, if it were needed,that you can’t polish a turd but you CAN sprinkle glitter (and a picatinny rail) on it.

Rifle was fine before the update too if you got a good one. Biggest problem seemed go be the random nature of quality from unit to unit.

How about a video on the L98 cadet rifle. This was a Single shot bolt action rifle with a handle on top, a bit rubbish. I used one in the 1980’s in cadets. we never had those yellow things stuck on the end to stop bits firing out, probably as we were only cadets.

hey guys I think that may be Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.

Quality vid good insight ypu just need to make everything soldierproof

More sexy and killer looks for this rifle compared to the previous one. Great

How much money did they spend per rifle in total compared to the SIG550, G36 or FAMAS?

How do you fire around cover though in either hand? The Famas had a user variable ejector. Our services would have better off with a FAL.

In the background on the left is a SLR. Once she was issued in any country only 2 changes. Cuts in slide to handle sand, wood to fibreglass stocks for UK. Thats it she worked never let you down L1A1 thats it no further models needed.

The mag wells were not welded correctly causing a lot of malfunctions..

Shocking bit of kit.

I had zero issues with my A1 SA80, couple of stoppages in all the time I used it, that said I only used it in environments it was designed for. Most issues were caused by the garbage magazines rather than the rifle itself.

My dad used the first issued one he said he definitely preferred the L1A1😅 he eventually moved over to the FN MAG

Wow its really awesome n impressive

Good thing they didn’t go to the Falklands with this

On the A2 the lugs on the bolt look a bit more rounded-off and polished than those on the A1, I'd say.

By the time it was fixed, I’m betting the final cost of acquiring and modifying the SA80 puts the per unit lifetime cost well above what just buying M16A2s and the M4s would have been.

From my understanding and memory, H&K upgraded the first batch even before the A1? Adding the mag release catch guard, removing the oil bottle above the gas parts and reworking the gas parts too among other fixes. We were certainly taught that. Any truth in it?

Heckler & Koch acquired by British aerospace and are still in business .

In the 1970s, bullpup assault rifles were put into service on both the British and Austrian lines. Only these two countries in the world legalized this because they thought that the bullpup was a better weapon due to its reduced size due to recoil. This is a controversial question to this day, whether it is a good idea or not It is certain that the Austrian Steyr already started producing plastic transparent magazines for the AUG and for both weapons, 4X optics were also made for the SA80, which was an epoch-making solution at the time On the one hand, I think the transparent magazine and the quadruple optics are a very good idea from Steyr, the SA80 is currently still in service with the British, but it will be replaced by an M4-like assault gun soon Neither bullpup gun has a buttstock and neither the sight can be changed nor can a gun light be mounted on it, so both are outdated and not suitable Austria is not currently planning to replace the Bundesheer's weaponry, and the new AUG A3 is already 13 years in production, but it is only used by Austrian military special units (I think essentially, it would also be suitable for military commando units or paratroopers). Steyr upgraded the German G36 with the STEYR ARMS G36 Upgrade Kit (the perhaps instead of G96?), but it was not put on the market by either Austria or Germany It would be better, because the Germans already had problems with the G36 in Afghanistan. Above 30 degrees Celsius, the weapon showed an inaccuracy of one and a half meters with a single shot, as the barrel tends to overheat. The Austrians also converted the new version to a STANAG magazine, put a picatinny rail on it and replaced the barrel with a much more durable one and the weapon was replaced with a metal receiver So, in all respects, the weapon is much better and it would be timely to replace it, but neither Germany nor Austria seem to be planning to replace their old weapons at the moment

In my day this weapon was known as the SA80 the L85A1 was the support version.

Did Jonathan forget the magazine release catch buffer? for the A2? haha Love his series on gamespot and as a VET thought he would find such a insight funny

The L85, the epitome of being unable to polish a turd.

Wait, who is that man? I can't seem to find any information on him in the comments ;-)

If I recall, all HK did was remake it to spec + some added extras

I think the powers that be, got a little side tracked with the idea of a bullpup rifle. And didn't give enough attention to it actually working properly, just goes to show if your going down the rabbit hole of a totally new radical design it had better work as intended. Especially comming from a design that was very good, the FN Fal. To be honest it's had its day really, 40 odd years old now, probably time for a replacement at this stage...and I can nearly guarantee, it won't be another bullpup. Probably some form of AR platform.

Should have gone just gone for that neat Swiss, Steyr AUG.

Thank god we still had the L1A1 in the Falklands War 👌

Yeah I broke 2 firing pins on the range in 1995 doing basic training, yes it was an A1 PoS, the NCO's tried to blame me, but having already been a qualified machinist engineer before joining the Signals, I told them the pins were too hard and brittle, clearly they weren't being batch tested and made by the cheapest manufacturer. I had so many issues with dual feeds squishing the end of the rounds, I told the Sergeant "The only chance I have of killing an enemy with this is if I club them to death with it" to which he smiled.

The story goes thus: The original plan was to have factory filled, disposable magazines. Use once, throw away. That's why they're thin and light on the A1. But somebody realised they could save loads of money by NOT throwing away the SINGLE USE magazines. No idea if that's true but it seems to fit, looking at the h&k magazines.

“Being able to be fired in the theatre of operations” was a UOR. Does sound quite urgent, to be fair.

Even after all the mods lets not forget a number of facts. It's way too heavy, it can't be fired left handed, it has virtually ZERO international sales and is slowly being phased out of service to be replaced by an AR-15/M16 design weapon which the UK could have adopted back in the 80s-90s. It's never been a "battle winner". It's always been a second tier firearm that UKSF refused to adopt. If all that doesn't speak volumes I don't know what does.

The A1 "Civil Servant", can't get it to work, can't fire it.

Ahhh, the civil servant. Doesnt work and cant be fired.

LSW never gets mentioned but it was a good weapon, if you knew your job you'd keep a couple of spare firing pins, cocking handles and GPMG oil bottles or two for the jungle and dessert and at least two sets of SA80 barrel rods.

Thought this rifle was being replaced now following the new rifle issue.

It is not that the L85A1 is a terrible weapon (I have no experience of it's use, it is just fundamentally important that the user thinks it is the Bee's knee's like my Gen thought the L1A1 and the No.4 L.E. were) unfortunately I do not believe that it has fulfilled it's promise even after the H&K rework, in that compared to the M4 Carbine it is too heavy, too bulky and difficult to maintain, but again no personal experience in service. One has only had to dismount from a vehicle with and S.L.R. once to see the importance of a shorter weapon but did the L85A1 meet that requirement better than an AR platform. It is I doubt not going too have the same respect from it's era that the former Rifles did, correct me if I am wrong.

I heard they're planning to phase this weapon out altogether soon. Glad it's never had to be relied on against a truly professional military in a pitched battle

apparently it can only be used from the right shoulder, wouldnt do for Australia

Aka "The Civil servant" It rarely worked and was difficult to fire.

5:28 that’s almost a direct quote from my wife…

Who cleared this thing in the first place how much was his backhanded and where is he now On a board somewhere no doubt

Nicknamed the civil servant you couldn’t fire it and couldn’t get it to work 😂

I was there when we moved from SLR to SA80 what an awful rifle left in 1993

into an adequate weapon.

Peluru betul punya. Kelongsong yang belakang tu xde apa2 ye?

If they switch to an Ar15 platform weapon in the end, it'll all have been a waste of a time and money

The rail didn’t come out till about 2005/6

Forgive my question but why do so many military rifles have magazine problems?

Futuristic desigb

I was in from 93 till 01 and never had any problems with the rifle.

And it all started with the EM1 and 2

is that Jonathan Ferguson, the Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armoury Museums in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history.

H&K could have replaced it with a rock and called it a vast improvement.

Is it still just for right handed soldiers?