Can you hear that? I can hear it. That's the sound of every former British service member cringing at the mere sight of this rifle. And it's so loud you can hear it over the internet.

• Ian McCollum

have you ever wondered what it would look like if you had a combat weapon designed by a bunch of people whod never even fired a gun before

or what about a government wide conspiracy spanning decades to cover up horrible basic inadequacies inherent in the design

what if you had it constructed and inspected entirely by factory workers who knew they were all going to be bought out and fired as soon as they produced enough rifles to look profitable

this is the L85

it had all that and more

a rifle that might actually be improved if it just exploded

but its ok

tragedy can be compelling storytelling too lol

so our story really starts in the 70s

the british were kinda wanting to ditch the slr theyd been using because its long and heavy

and if you remember the british were opposed to the 7.62 nato round from the start

theyd wanted a really small fast round

but america convinced them to adopt the 7.62 round by promising to adopt the fal as a quid pro quo

the british reluctantly agreed

and the americans revealed they were crossing their fingers the whole time lol oops

and the best part is the americans switched to the m16 soon after

which uses a small fast round ha

so that was dumb and annoying but whatever nato was now ready to standardize on a little round like britain had been wanting all along

so the british submitted their tiny 4.5 x reallysmol

but nato picked americas 5.56 x 45

lol 0 for 2 there england

but the other thing theyd been working on was a rifle to shoot this tiny stuff

for their first mockups they took the ar180

designed by armalite and license produced in england by sterling

the government was like yoink

stole it without any consultation or compensation to sterling

then gave the design to their gov engineers at enfield

but realize the last guns designed at enfield were two decades earlier

these guys were rusty to say the least

and here is our first category of problems

these guys did math and got whatever answer saying yeah this is a good idea

but they didnt have the practical experience to realize a whole bunch of little things were issues too

they ended up with tolerances that were wide enough to leave pressure bearing parts unsupported

dust entry points

sharp edges shaving brass and sprinkling it randomly inside the action

and the designers had no idea what was happening

plus there was a lot of turnover in the design group too

so the new guys didnt even know of the old problems

they were doing stupid bs like switching styles of safety or mag release

second set of problems was government interference

the gun was so crappy it couldnt pass literally any of the acceptance criteria

it needed like 2500 rounds between failures

it had like friggin 300

hey if it gets 8 times better then it only barely fails miserably

yaaay

so the government redefined the criteria

its not a failure unless the gun breaks so hard it needs to be rebuilt by an armorer

but even only counting catastrophic failures like sheared bolts and split barrels it still failed minimums lol

fuck dude

and another set of government problems

friggin penny pinching

stampings were too thin

improper construction techniques

and all the while the government was trying to sell the enfield factory and the soon to be fired workers knew it

it was horrible

so the government kept this under wraps until after the gulf war

when the guns choked harder than a soldier drinking a camels spitoon

eventually a military report talking about this scandal was leaked

title was

the top 304 ways the L85 megasucks like wow guys

and the government went all monty python

but the news stories wouldnt go away so eventually they had to hire hk to fix it

hk used actual gun designers

crazy

who identified that the main problem was the part of the rifle between the flash hider and the buttstock

also the flash hider and the buttstock

im not kidding

so they tweaked the metal specifications

they redesigned the bolt and extractor

increased tolerances in some places

tightened them in others

new furniture that didnt shatter

new flash hider

polishing and relieving parts all over

now once they were done with this the L85a2 actually ended up a decent rifle

20 years years into this

god damn man

so having said all that

lets look at how this turd works

so its a short stroke gas driven system with a multilug rotating bolt

its copied from the ar180 which is a very successful system used in many successful rifles

the fact that the L85 is so bad is a testament to the skill of the designers at enfield

you pop out a couple pins and it separates into two halves for easy cleaning and maintenance

and the gas system has a little door so you can clean it

every 300 rounds

300 rds wtf thats bs

my hipoint lasts longer than that

right hand eject only

one actually very good feature is the optic

all L85s had an optic from the very beginning

short rifles means short sigt radius

so an optic fixes that

magazine release is a stupid unprotected button

cross bolt safety up front and separate fire selector knob on the back

not he best layout but not horrible

they had better options earlier on like rotating safety levers and magazine release lever on the back

whatever

after hk did their magic everything worked much better but i wont pretend anybody thinks its a great rifle

a machinegun variant was also made called the L86

in addition to all the problems already listed it also would shoot way fucking high left after the first shot

and by way fucking high i mean at 600 m you missed the target by 20 ft no exageration

overall i think a bit under a half million were made with zero fucking export sales

nobody wanted this thing

and around half received upgrades to the hk a2 standard

now that they sunk so much money into it the uk will probably keep it around for a while longer but i imagine theyll start replacing them by the end of the decade

probably with a boring ar variant like a 416 lol

i think most everybody will be happy to finally close the book on this debacle though

the L85

probably the worst infantry rifle of the modern day

pew pew

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