Most British forces use the SA-80… When originally issued it was a temperamental bit of kit. Magazines would fall off or a bit of dirt would cause stoppages. But Heckler & Koch, the German firearm makers, got their hands on it and made some changes and the latest model has proved to be very reliable. The more I used it the more I liked it. (Olafsen 2011: 20)
His fellow Royal Marine Matt Croucher went further, describing the SA80 as ‘a brilliant weapon as long as you keep her clean’ (Croucher 2009: 210).
BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD
Cost reduction was originally perceived to be a key advantage of switching to the SA80 system, since the new weapons would be made from cheap stamped components, rather than expensively machined parts like the SLR and GPMG. When originally proposed in 1978, the SA80 series was expected to cost £150 for an IW and £170 for an LSW, excluding the cost of the SUSAT optical sight. This compared very favourably with a quoted price of £350 for an SLR and £2,362 for a GPMG. By the time the rifle prices were fixed in 1983/84, however, the prices had risen to £203 for the L85A1 IW, £320 for the L86A1 LSW and £135 for the SUSAT and its bracket. (The equivalent 2015 values, inflated using the Retail Prices Index, are £612 ($930) for the L85A1, £964 ($1,465) for the L86A1 and £407 ($619) for the SUSAT and its bracket.)
The Heckler & Koch upgrade to SA80A2 standard cost around £92 million, or £460 per weapon in 2000. Added to the original cost and adjusting for inflation, this suggests that the total 2015 equivalent cost for an upgraded L85A2 would be around £1,300 ($1,980) without the SUSAT or ACOG sight units, rail interface upgrade or laser module. For comparison, the US Government paid $800–$1,200 for each M4 Carbine, depending on contract, excluding the ACOG sight.
The SA80 was originally produced at RSAF Enfield in London, a government-owned factory which had produced weapons for the Army since 1816. Production of the first tranche of 175,000 weapons began in June 1985, although this was complicated by numerous small modifications necessary to fix problems emerging from the user testing, which was still going on.
The SA80-series weapons were largely made from components stamped out of sheet metal in hydraulic presses, as a way of cutting costs compared to the SLR and GPMG. Production of the latter weapons used many components machined from solid material, which produced strong components to close tolerances, but was an expensive and time consuming process. RSAF Enfield had produced weapons using stampings before, but these had been simple weapons like the Sten SMG, with relatively lax tolerances. They now discovered that producing stamped components to the tighter tolerances required for the SA80 was more difficult than expected, resulting in production delays and higher-than-expected wastage.
Meanwhile, the British government wished to privatize the whole Royal Ordnance group, including RSAF Enfield, in line with the Conservative Party’s belief that many state-owned assets, such as the railways, coal mines and telephone companies, would be run more efficiently by private enterprise. Obviously, such a sell-off would be much easier, and achieve a higher price, if Royal Ordnance had a full order book. Most people were not surprised, therefore, when Royal Ordnance was awarded the contract to manufacture the second tranche of SA80 weapons in 1987, despite the various issues that had emerged. In fact, British Aerospace (BAe) – which had purchased Royal Ordnance, including RSAF Enfield – found itself unsure as to whether it actually wanted to proceed with the second tranche. Problems with manufacturing and quality control meant that the agreed contract price was actually less than the weapons were costing to produce. BAe decided to close the Enfield factory, having concluded that the working practices were old-fashioned and the workforce inflexible. Production would move to a new £15 million factory in Nottingham, which would produce the weapons at a lower unit cost by using the most up-to-date manufacturing and management techniques. As a bonus, the Enfield site could then be sold for redevelopment, realizing a considerable profit for BAe. Production at Enfield ended in September 1988. Bitter at the impending redundancies, one of the staff commented: ‘Having been shafted by BAe and our own management, we thought why the hell should we care if [the SA80] worked or not. All we wanted to do was see the last of the bloody things and leave’ (quoted in Raw 2003: 161–62). Such attitudes are unlikely to have helped resolve the existing quality-control issues.
Meanwhile, the new factory at Nottingham was having its own problems. Few of its staff had previous experience of firearms manufacture, since management felt that it was little different to working on any other production line. Production of most components was outsourced to subcontractors, with only 15–20 components being made in-house, compared to 230 at Enfield. While this kept costs down, it caused significant teething troubles when combined with the then-fashionable ‘just in time’ manufacturing techniques used. If components from a subcontractor were delayed or did not meet the required tolerances, the production line had to be halted as the plant kept very low levels of component stock.
Production at Nottingham ended in 1994, after around 330,000 SA80 weapons had been made, with 95 per cent being L85A1 IWs. The production line was broken up when the hoped-for export sales did not materialize, thus ending any possibility of further production. The site closed in 2001, and was sold off for a retail development. Residual work on the SA80 passed to Heckler & Koch in Germany, itself then a subsidiary of the British BAE Systems Group.
Britain has a strong history of exporting arms, especially to current and former Commonwealth countries and to the Gulf States, with which it has long-established links. Royal Ordnance produced brochures and manuals for the SA80 system in French, German, Spanish and Arabic when the weapon first appeared, in expectation of strong export sales. In fact, very limited numbers were sold or provided as military aid to Bolivia, Jamaica, Mozambique, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the relatively restrictive gun laws in Britain limited the domestic market for a ‘civilianized’ semi-automatic-only version, and only a few of the latter were sold.
The MoD rejected the embarrassing implication that poor export sales reflected badly on the weapon by implying that the SA80 was ‘an extremely sophisticated’ weapon that was effectively too advanced for most potential purchasers such as the Gulf States. This rather failed to explain, however, why those same nations were often buying British tanks and missile systems at the same time, exactly because of their sophistication. Since the SA80 had failed to achieve any significant further sales by the time the order for the British Army was completed in 1994, the Nottingham production line was broken up, meaning no further examples would be available. This meant that the SA80 could not take part in the exercise to select a new 5.56mm rifle for British police firearms units in the 1990s, leaving the field open to the Heckler & Koch HK G36. The MoD Police are thus the only British police force to adopt the SA80, using weapons bought as part of the production for the British armed forces.
THE FUTURE FOR THE SA80
All weapons have a limited service life – even those that are not overtaken by the march of technology. Barrels wear out, components break, and stocks of spare parts – no matter how large – eventually run out. The clock began ticking for the SA80 once the Nottingham production line closed in 1994. The 330,000 units produced were originally expected to last the Army around 20–25 years, with procurement of a replacement beginning around 2005. The end of the Cold War meant the British Army roughly halved in size in the 25 years after the SA80’s adoption, however. This significantly extended the SA80’s expected service life, as it created a large stock of spare weapons which could be stripped for parts.