Royal Marine Reacts To Enfield L85A1: Perhaps the Worst Modern Military Rifle 

Ah so you finally got to see Gun-Jesus as we call him.

True story. The Czechs sent a bunch of CZ805 rifles to Ukraine as aid and the guys who got them didn't get manuals or instructions so they googled CZ805 and up popped Ian's You Tube video which includes a full strip down so after that whenever an odd rifle popped out of the Ukrainian logistics system the recipients googled Forgotten Weapons and watched his videos in lieu of the manual.

Ian's videos are much more history & engineering intensive. He focuses a lot less on shooting videos, though, he does some.

You do know the A1's nickname was the civil servant because it never worked and couldn't be fired.

Every time a new RU-vid Reacts-or gets introduced to Ian McCollum an angel gets its wings

On two separate occasions we found full mags from an L85 on my street in the late 80’s. They must have either fallen from a rifle or from a pouch. Never saw this when the soldiers patrolling carried FALs.

Ian is actually kind of a bad ass. He does a lot of competition shooting and will use old firearms that can't even mount an optic lol

Surprised nobody has mentioned Jonathan Ferguson at the Royal Armouries as he has done so much research on the SA80 family and also has videos on the prototypes and the EM2 rifle

He has a video comparing the a1 and a2, you should check it out.

Everything you could ever want to know about the L85 can be found in Jonathon Ferguson's book "Thorneycroft to SA80: British Bullpup Firearms, 1901-2020". He also is a big fan of bullpups and a Brit like you.

You'll have to check out his other video where he shows the A1 and A2 side by side. If I remember right, he goes into more detail on all the A2 changes.

While this is his video on the L85A1, it's an overview of the L85A1 just showing how it works and what it looks like. It's only 1 out of an 8 video playlist called SA80 History or History of the SA80 or something, I can't remember exactly. But they go over the initial XL60 Prototype, issues at Enfield and the MoD that essentially made the Rifle too big to fail, and perhaps most importantly and interestingly "Why, SA80"; and explains the thought processes behind the decisions that led to the inevitable Cluster F that was the initial L85A1's and AFAIK ALL L86's with then just sorta giving upon it instead.

You should certainly do more reactions to Ian and his videos. He is very well researched and unbiased, and unlike alot of gun tubers keeps politics out of it nearly entirely. Fun fact he is friends with Jonathon Ferguson, the Keeper of Arms and Artillery at the Royal Armories Museum and helped author and publish a book with Jonathon on British bullpups. He has probably gotten his hands on all kinds of early prototype L85s. I also recomend taking a look at the EM-1 and EM-2 rifles, very interesting to see what could have been if they had been adopted.

He has another video showing the A1 and A2 and the differences between them side by side. Definitely worth checking out.

I believe Ian has a short series about this rifle and some of the later iterations such as the A2. He also has videos on British WW2 weapons. Id be interested if you did a reaction to any of those too.

I used to fall asleep every night listening to Forgotten Weapons and listening to him ramble on about the benefits of steel guide trunnions over aluminium ones.

I think Jonathan Ferguson mentioned in a conversation with Ian, that HuK didn't actually change that much of the design but just built it to specs, which tells you something about the British arms industry of that time.

He's dipped his toes into the 'research paper' Guntuber scene now...... Shall we throw him in the deep end with C&Rsenal and Othias doing a 'Primer' episode?

You're absolutely correct! I like the M 16 A1. That's what I used in the US Army. One that I didn't like is the grease gun tankers used. It looked exactly like a grease gun, it was approximately 16" long ans a .45 cal. It had a ton of kick. At the range we finished our recertification. We had thousands of rounds left and the Army wouldn't accept unused rounds back in the armory. So we had to finish them off. My friend was in an M 88 recovery vehicle, which is a tank with no big gun but had this solid steel boom on it and 50 cal mounted. So I attempted to fire the grease gun, that's right attempted. I pulled the trigger and that barrel was pointing straight up half way through the magazine. I almost sh*t myself. I had no idea it did that. I'm usually shooting my M 16, you can fire it one hand and it doesn't do that. So I gave it right back to my friend. Screw that. We were trying to waste ammo, we didn't want to do 3 round bursts. My M 16 I was just smoking that barrel. I shot almost 1000 rounds in about 5-7 minutes. I could have cooked a steak on that barrel. It was the most fun I had with my weapon.

yes i love forgotten weapons, he defends the uk and the usa alot with our decisions bc its hard being the greatest military powers

To summon Gun Jesus, go to a gun show and say out loud, “I have 32 French Long” 3 times.

I hope you'll check out the General Dynamics NGSW bid, now known as the Lonestar RM277 (Garand Thumb has a pretty good video on it). It's one of the best examples of what a bullpup design can offer with modern design implements and processes. And in my personal opinion a rifle that would have had more long-term potential than the SIG XM7 the US:A went with.

His comparison video is SA80 History: L85 A1 vs A2 (and the coming A3). With how much you talked about it you might want to see the differences.

I’m half way through the video so don’t know if he is going to mention this, but the SA80 was designed for fighting in the mud of Central Europe and the snow of Russia against the soviets. The reason there isn’t protection on the magazine release catch, and the clocking handle and change selector are huge is so they can be operated with mittens on when it’s minus 20. The reason for the huge tolerances are so they guns wouldn’t freeze like the nazi’s guns did. All these things worked against us in Afghan when you humping tonnes of kit and when sand and dust could clog up the weapon. In the 80’s the designers didn’t expect we would be fighting for 20 years in the Middle East.

Ian McCollum is notoriously a left handed shooter, so he takes the ergonomics of left hand shooting seriously.

When I was stationed in the UK in the early 90s, we got some range time with a British Army unit. We swapped rifles. After 30 rounds, I was done with the L85A1. Horrible trigger pull. Crap optic. Tedious mag change. I had no idea how they used it. Such an unwieldy beast. The Brits got our Model 604 M16s. These predate the M16A1. We're talking original 1965 rifles still with 3 prong flash hiders & chrome bolts. 30 years old. The Brits loved them. Switched to full auto, they were in awe of how controllable it is. Smiles like you've never seen before. Here we are 30 years later, and they are finally getting their own AR.

Ian is definitely more of a gun historian. Hes covered everything from white elephant prototypes, to antique weapons, to iconic weapons like the M1 Garand

Really enjoy seeing you give your input and experiences on some of these channels. Most of them are American veterans and getting a British military (or any foreign service member) perspective is really refreshing and informative.

He had made a separate video on comparing the A1 with the A2. So check that out!

If you have any reason to watch more Forgotten Weapons videos, you will not be disappointed, especially with the huge range of both shooting and history videos

L85A1 aka "The Anakin" (Skywalker)

You need to check out more Forgotten Weapons videos, Royal Armouries videos with Jonathan Ferguson the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal armories museum in the UK that houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons throughout history is feeling better this week lol Also Gamespot "Firearms Expert Reacts to" and there are even Ian and Jonathan colab videos that are a must see.

Exports were limited to Bolivia for the most part, many were eventualy demilled and sold to nostalgic British service members, if youve ever heard of those, thats where they came from, or possibly demilled canadian cadet rifles. The rest of the Bolivian test rifles got sold to gangs, at least one has been spotted in the hands of Brazilian gangsters. There were definatley semi auto ones made for civilian sale, a few hundred to Switzerland and possibly as many as 80 to the US

Glad you found Ian. He is so incredibly knowledgeable about firearms and their history. If you need to know anything about any firearm made in the last 100 years Ian is the guy to turn to.

Sig Sauer spear like that cheerleader chant " where do you give'em the spear?"

For the length of XM7, it keeps short by shortening the barrel (13.5 inches only). L85 has 20 inches of barrel instead. AND, with a short barrel, XM7 requires a special rounds which produces a very high chamber pressure. The new bullet is almost as big as 7.62mm NATO which 5.56mm NATO is replacing.

From what I've seen, compared to an M16/M4 the SA80 is an absolute nightmare to clean no matter what you do. Yes, you can get good at it, but my god, there's SO many more surfaces than M4. Weird thing is, too, that there's not actually many places to clean that affect reliability, but so much of it gets so dirty. When you fire blanks, blue gunk appears on top of the barrel under the gas system. Cleaning the piston isn't that bad, cleaning the bolt carrier isn't that bad. Boom, your rifle is probably reliable. But getting it clean enough to turn in to an armory? Man. That sucks.

He also did a whole series on the development of the SA80 with all of the prototypes from the Royal Armouries.

Hoping you return to your Medal of Honor playthrough once you return to games. Love the vids

Awesome react vid dude 👍 Especially cool seeing and hearing your nostalgia kick 💜 A mate of mine is a SStg in the Aus Army, and he joined when they had just ironed out the teething problems with the F88A1 (Australian manufactured Steyr AUG). He said a lot of the older guys were still struggling with the transition from long rifles, still pining for the L1A1s heavy round. Around 2000 they had some UK troops visiting, and they were fully ready to try and steal some F88's rather than keep their L85A1's

I've shot the EM1 and the EM2, my uncle got ahold of them about 20 years back. They were... alright (given that they were the tail end of WW2 era technology, they were probably pretty good, but I haven't fired many guns from that era.). First experience with a bullpup form factor for me, so I didn't really have a lot to compare them to at the time. I was also 14, so I don't remember it as well as I could. Bullpups always look cool, but it's very model dependent, sometimes even down to the individual gun as to whether they're any good, at least from my experience and what I've seen and heard from others. Also for what it's worth, I firmly believe that any gun that can safely (to the operator) throw lead downrange is an okay gun. There are some real bottom of the barrel guns in that category, of course, but at the end of the day if it won't explode in your hands or delete you outright when you try to shoot it, it does what a gun is supposed to do. There will always be redeeming qualities. As much hate as they get online, I myself have a Hi-Point C9 that works perfectly fine, and I've always done well with accuracy at the range with it. As much as there are definitely some guns that are just better than others, it falls as much or more on the operator in question as to whether the gun is useful. But of course you know that since you were in the military, this comment is more for others that may not have been. I myself wasn't in, but nearly every male in my family besides me and my brother did join at one point or another, so I grew up in what amounts to a military household.

Xm8 forgotten weapons with larry vickers lots of info on that weapon.

If I were British MOD, I would go with licensing IWI Tavor instead of adopting the AR-15 platform. It's bullpup and it would be an upgrade over the existing SA80. But what do I know :)

Retired US Army infantry officer here. I did a 6 month NATO Officer exchange in the mid-90’s with the Royal Highland Fusiliers. The L85A1 is objectively a piece of junk. I say this as someone who has trained and qualified on multiple platforms. HKs, Galil, AK, FAL, M14, Garand, Tavor, AUG, SIG, Beretta etc. The L85A2 is a RADICALLY improved rifle over the A1.

If you haven't tried metro, give it a shot, the DLC goes quite hard too

If you’re into Ian’s type of videos, he’s done a few collaborations with a guy from your neck of the woods (the two seem to get along well). Can’t remember his name (I only watched one or two videos with him in it), but I believe he was the firearms expert at some Royal Museum, or something. I think the collab video Ian did with him, that I saw, was regarding the Lutey and Makarovs (or something of the sort). The dude actually has his own RU-vid channel as well; his videos are constantly being recommended to me.

Almost forgot, the new Sig we are using comes in different lengths and configurations, there is one or two shorter than 36" if memory serves. Also, you totally missed a chance to copy the Fat Electrician with the 6" line. Have your wife stick her head in the door after you say " 6" is big?a lot", she sticks her head in and says " you call THAT a lot", and then she leaves and you talk about "it's not the size of the pencil it's how you write your name" or something to that effect! I was totally expecting it.

If you ever wanna do a tank squad match in Hell Let Loose, let me know!

21:55 Ian did say that H&K changed "all the springs", among other things. =)

We love our ARs and are skeptical of bullpups. That being said, I just bought a Tavor, I love it, and if the UK would export a civilian L85 to America I would buy one in a heartbeat. I love oddball guns, they just make everybody smile on Range Day.

I've always really liked the look of the L85 :> Great video, greetings from Finland!

Boot polish on the rubber eye ring never gets old….. Binos doubly so. The Soldier fix of attaching a para cord and clip lanyard to the magazine being carried in the weapon was a thing back in the day until the guard to the magazine release has fitted I have been told.

Back in 2000 the Danish TA thought about getting the L85, but they went with Colt Canada c7 and c8.

Regarding the A2 the only real complaints I've heard is that it's heavier than contemporary rifles, and the controls are not effectively laid out, with your hand reaching over to opposite sides to charge it and press buttons or operate the safety. Reliability wise I think they tested it against other rifles around the time of the war in Afghanistan and it was performing just fine in terms of rounds between stoppages.

You need to see Ian McCollum aka Gun Jesus, make his Finnish Brutality, gun matches.

Now, this is a good reaction video. Informed insight coming from both ends. Thanks, mate!

Ian is not a usual Guntuber. He is a real Historian and Expert. And just casual beside that, he is cool as Frick, it has Reasons he is called "Gun- Jesus" =)

the FAL can be ridiculously controlable with the right muzzle device in FA.

"Yeah, I feel like I never had an issue with that, personally" - Yeah, because you were on the A2, d'uh!

Ah, I see after Garandthumb you decided to watch Ian

Mag release and fire selector switch. One of these is going to be really stiff to make it really difficult to accidentally adjust. The other will be left for fate to decide...

I’m across the pond, so I can’t say I’ve heard from any inside sources in the British Military, but I HAVE heard from sources close to KAC that the new L403A1-AIW program adopted by the Royal Marine Commandos and UK Army SOF is essentially a shadow trial run for full Armed Service transition to the AR-15 platform. I’m closely watching it to see how that goes.

As a Yorkshireman, I was surprised to find that Gun Jesus spends more time in Leeds than me!

We should have a drinking game...every time he flips backend forth from good to bad rifle or bad to good rifle, drink. 😂

If you want a side by side comparison worh A1, A2 and (possibly) A3, I think there is a video which Ian has done more recently.

The A1 was crap. And the A2 was crap. I was issued one prior to going to afghan. The "normie" RAF weapon was the A1 but those to be deployed had to zero their A2 on pre deployment training like I did. It jammed after 3 rounds. Cue "you didn't maintain it directly correctly blah blah". Well it was fresh from the station armoury so it was maintained properly.....and yes the L1A1 SLR was amazing.

The original SA80, the one with the rounded cocking handle got double feed jams all the time, the improved version with the curved handle was much better and never had a problem with it. But you wonder how it could ever have been recommended for service in the first place?

Forgotten Weapons has a whole series of videos on the SA-80 story.

1:55 Sounds like a good start, Ian also really like bullpups, the old versions of the SA-80 just were pretty dire. And of course Ian is a lefty, so he'll prefer ones that you can switch around. =)

For military games the "Combat Mission" for example "CM Black Sea" or "Shock Force 2" Series is likely one of the most realistic. Its by the way also used by the dstl.

Ian also did a video on the L129A1 sharpshooter’s rifle.

28:15 It doesn't take a big change in the angles and materials (hardening spec etc.) of the bolt and bolt carrier to make big change in how well the gun performs. Some guns get a little bit of wear on the cam track or cam pin develops some slop and it stops being reliable. (EDIT: While many don't, good example is how even a worn down AK is usually going to run OK.) Has been interesting to watch you reacting to Ian's videos, hopefully you'll do more. As someone who likes bullpups, I recommend watching his other bullpup videos (he has a playlist of 51 videos ru-vid.com/group/PL9e3UCcU00TTzXDor8v2xKyjHqR03X00R). And in general the channel is just fecking awesome to learn about the history of firearms.

Ian has videos on the A2, wierd prototype stuff for the SA80 (grenade launchers, etc.) and a few on th EM rifles. You'd get a kick outta those.

This is the last british service rifle, they still do some sniper rifles and such but like tanks etc the British no longer have the know how to make any new ones or even upgrade them. That makes L85A1 as epic as Challenger 2 (soon to be renamed Challanger 3, the same tank with a few German upgrades).

Yould look the video where he showed the diference between the A1 and the A2 and what HK fixed.

We had some of these from the reg demo team before they entered full service. Issued at 4am for a dawn company attack at Longmore. Of about 30 weapons, ALL were US by endex. We were meant to have them for 48hrs; we handed them all back and went back to our SLRs after 6. Utter sh1te.

Sir, if you are interested in many videos, the Royal Armories have a channel where they break down the weapon to bare bones which you might like

After watching your L403A1 video and your L85 video, I would actually be interested in seeing your thoughts on the L119A1 and the L119A2. (L119A2 is not the L129A1 that you previously mentioned). Looking forward to your L129A1 video though.

Yeah Larp thumb is generally more hands on with weapons (also with women who aren't his wife) while forgottenweapons is generally mor educational

I've heard that the standard issue bug repellant during Desert Storm dissolved the plastic furniture on the A1. Can't confirm, but if true..... yikes.

For all the hate the SUSAT gets, virtually nobody else was issuing optics on general service rifles in the day this entered service. Whilst it's well out of date now in its day it was a big step up in rifleman capability. Context is everything.

Agreed! It's a fine looking weapon. "Bullpup the AR-18. How hard can it be?"🤷‍♂️ Apparently, the answer is "rather".

Everyone is mentioning Jonathan Ferguson and his book, but I’d like to recommend you watch the video from the Royal Armories talking about the EM2. I just checked, and it’s the video with “did these experimental bullpups see action?” In the title. Similar format to this video, but I don’t believe he disassembles the gun.

Here's something I never understand. It took them until Desert Strom to really talk and address the issues with the rifle but no talk about Northern Ireland? All the sand yes but not rain and mud? The heck happen in all that time leading up to 91?

I used both A1 and A2 and the difference in reliability was startling. I liked having a Bulpup weapon because it was reasonably compact, compared to a full-size rifle. Thats is great if you're jumping in and out of vehicles. It was too heavy compared for what it was though. Given that war in Europe is back to being mechanised, i wander if its worth investing in one of the more modern and well designed bulpups that are available.

You should check out Forgotten Weapons or Bloke on the Range's videos on the AR-180 so you can see where some of the design of the L85 came from. Bloke on the Range is a former British service member living in Sweden because he can own all the guns that are banned in the UK there.

Bullpups only have an advantage in CQB environments as far as my training and experience tell me. For a marine who may specialize in away boarders I can see the appeal and would probably agree. For all other disciplines of engagement I was trained in, I prefer the traditional ergonomics (the triggers are better by a mile with half the quality).

You need to watch the new Forces News 3 part or so videos on the SA80/L85 life and into the new KS-1

It is in army of two the cartel. It is one of the last rifles you unlock and can buy in the i think either rifle or assault rifle section

considering how long the UK has made weapons especially small arms but in order to make this weapon "OK" they had to ask the germans. Thats how far the UK has fallen.

Forgotten Weapons videos are well worth watching as cover history of each weapon they cover. Ian is known as the gun 'Jesus' for a reason!

For the same 450 pounds spent upgrading to A2 the MOD could have bought brand new m4 carbines.

Gun Jesus has a series of videos on the development of the SA80, on the l85a2 video he compares the a1 and a2 models

I know people give this thing a bash and well deserve but foundationally it was a truly good idea and made actual sense. I mean compare that to M7 or whatever the name change before and after they are playing around with, hell even the marines with M27 if it wasn't for the fact it is a fairly good system at the very least just not actually needed.

There is an A2 video by Ian that you should watch as a follow up with.

Ian has an Engineering Degree and you get good tech information from him

Talking about the A2 not A1!: Probably fired around 1000 blanks and 25ish live from an A2 and never had a stoppage. Most of those blanks were in a two day period. Put six mags of 30 through it in around 5 mins with no trouble at all (acting as enemy force), solid rifle.

Please check out the rabbit hole of the SA80 series Ian has done. He has made videos on the experimental XL64 (the Enfield from Black Ops 1), the XL70s, and even the L85A2 and does a parts comparison between the A1 and A2.

Ian does one of these videos every damn day!

4:50, yes and thats why i like his channel so much