SA80/L85: Why Didn't Enfield Just Scale Down The EM-2 Instead Of Bullpupping The AR-18? 

It is interesting how reverse engineering something properly is almost as much of a pain as starting entirely from scratch.

As Her Majesty's government was stingey enough to essentially undercut Sterling on the SMG they were highly unlikely to contract them for the AR18, no matter how much sense it would have made haha. Good video mate, wrote my MA thesis on the EM2, you make some excellent points regarding the engineering.

Thank you for leaving the bolt carrier departing the rifle in. It's been a tough day, I needed the laugh. The observations are solid.

Persons using the "just reverse engineer it" argument have not tried to dimension items. The tools used to dimension the part have tolerances, on parts with tolerances. And, you have little control over whether those tolerances are additive or subtractive. The Data Package you buy with a license includes things like fixture measurement jigs, that are used to calibrate the QC gauges and tools. And, the AR-18 were not made with an "Enfield Inch" either.

Just from reading the title, I get the same feeling of dread as when someone (sales/management etc) at work asks me to (re)design something saying "oh you JUST need to tweak project xyz, that won't be any trouble"

Have to love it when a man who clearly actually understands all the whys takes the time to explain it for a wider audience. Thanks for this Bloke, helped me understand something that had bothered me for a while.

Ah yes, the eternal question - "can you not just...?" No. No we can't. That's not how this works.

I love how everyone in this debate tends to forget the Cold War. European nations went to bullpups because they were looking at a new, faster type of warfare on the battlefield: precision artillery and airstrikes before rapid, tank-led thrusts followed up by infantry delivered by APC or truck, not marching. A shorter rifle that took up less space in a cramped APC made a lot of sense, even more so when you consider troops might be wearing bulky NBC gear. Hence, most European armies in the late 1970s and 80s began transitioning away from full-length 7.62mm battle rifles like the FAL. A bullpup is a compromise that makes sense in that environment. Now that the likely conflicts we face have changed, armies are adopting weapons appropriate to them. It doesn't mean "bullpups are shit", it means warfare has changed.

Appreciation for the sheer amount tooling and engineering that goes into the manufacturing process of firearms and other complex machinery is something that your channel, Forgotten Weapons, InRangeTV and C&Rsenal have given me. For that I give many thanks to you all!

Until I started watching "history of firearms" videos like Bloke, Forgotten Weapons, etc. I'd never given any thought to how difficult it is to reverse engineer or scale down a piece of technology. I really enjoy videos like this which explain why certain decisions were made in weapon design.

I've seen Ian's videos on the EM2 the EM2 is a manufacturing nightmare

The SA80 failed every trial it was subjected to, with all the program managers assuming that ‘somebody will fix it later’. That somebody was HK after the rifle had been adapted and had turned into a scandal.

Enfield had been gutted of people who knew what they were doing years before they got told to make the SA80 system... it's not a shock they screwed it up.

"Only 4.5 inches shorter than an M16." That is a significant difference, in handling characteristics. The cartridge is "only 6mm shorter than a .308". The .208 is a short action cartridge, to be begin with. Six mm off that makes for a very nifty little cartridge. The difference is, again, significant, in terms of weight, cost, etc etc. I can't help but feel that 6.5mm in such a short cartridge might have retained more downrange thump, if it could reliably cycle in that design.

Eye opener on mass distribution. Very true on coming up through drafting to "engineer". The very best went to night school on the way. Others came from the machine shop. Still, understanding section modulus, and materials is something you need. These days many have access to solid modeling tools but it helps to understand the fundamentals to be a good designer. To be great, one needs more of something. Not always sure of what that something is.

Wait, wait, you're telling me that just because it worked that one time with the AR-10 to the AR-15, it won't work with the EM-2? No... impossible... HERESY!

Some comments on the non-engineer drawing office thing. It doesn't hold that the drawing office system doesn't produce fully qualified engineers; Enfield may possibly have had a particularly lousy implementation of the system, but it's pretty much how most of the aircraft companies were set up through at least WWII (and probably the rest of the defence and engineering industries as well). The Spitfire was designed by R J Mitchell, who came out of a drawing office, and not even an aircraft company drawing office (Kerr-Stuart built steam trains). Sydney Camm, who designed the Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest, Hunter and Harrier started as an apprentice carpenter with Martinsyde, swapped to the drawing office, went to Hawker as a Senior Draughtsman and was their Chief Designer two years later. The Royal Corps of Naval Constructors (who designed almost all of the UK's warships from Victoria's reign through the '80s) did push their Constructors through an in-house degree-equivalent, but that didn't mean the drawing office staff under them weren't also capable of carrying out the complex calculations involved in things like stability, they just needed to be checked by a Constructor afterwards. Draughtsman as a career route was considerably more than just technical drawing. My father started off with an engineering apprenticeship with his local council's drawing office, by the close of his career he was a Chartered Civil Engineer (Professional Engineer in US terms), running the entire engineering department. He got there by the well-established route of engineering apprentice-drawing office-night school for HNC-night school for HND-Chartered Engineer by demonstrated competence, which is pretty much the same route Mitchell took in a different branch of engineering. (To get to CEng under the current system you need an M.Eng + experience). In my own engineering career I've worked with chemists, astrophysicists, mathematicians, and probably a whole slew of other non-engineering specialities, while the most useful of my colleagues had an HND rather than a degree, and it didn't stop us from turning out the safety-critical FBW systems for Typhoon, 777 and a bunch of others, or being rated at the highest level of engineering competence by the US government. Admittedly software engineering is probably more amenable to that than other areas of engineering, but the safety margins we worked to tended to make other safety critical engineers go pale.

Excellent background info on the EM-2. Its nice to learn the hows and whys things were done...and the end results.

Awesome vid me old. As someone who worked in reverse engineering hydraulics before I escaped the UK there are usually *very* good reasons for including stupid angles or wierd expensive features. Usually to prevent explodey seal situations or parts bending or flying off spectaculalry. Even when dealing with writing about the toy gun industry in Taiwan and how airsoft guns are made and where the costs stack up it can be frustrating dealing with people devoid of an engineering background. It's all 'so easy' when you don't have to deal with/think about thebtolerancing issues, materials selection and manufacturability of them, even just getting access within enclosed spaces for welding or machining and design and manufacture of tools, jigs, CNC fixtures and programs to just get things made consistently. One of my old colleagues was at Enfield Lock and Nottingham before it closed down and we had endless discussions about the L85 program and other heavier systems he worked on as well as the same culture you heard of regarding progression and apprenticeship etc. Would love to sit down with a few steins at some point when I'm in your part of the world if it ever goes back to normal 🤔😉🍻

A sincere thanks for illustrating some of the design and materials selection decisions made at Steyr in the production of the AUG.

I know that Ian has address this sort of question alot on Forgotten Weapons, but I think that the EM-2 and it's cartridge .280 British would have actually made an appreciable difference on the battlefield and a wars outcome. If the EM-2 or FN FAL in .280 had been developed and deployed earlier, I think it could have made a difference in the Korean War, especially given the fact that the Chinese heavily relied on close in mass infiltration tactics, aka human wave attacks with extra steps. The extra fire power over Lee-Enfield rifles would be appreciable. I am not saying that EM-2/FAL would have allowed the UN to straight up win the war, but it may have given Commonwealth units and extra edge. More specifically one battle in particular comes to mind, the Battle of Kapyong, where 1 Australian and 1 Canadian battalion faced down a Chinese division during the spring retreat in 1951. The Canadians and Aussies won in the end, but took serious casualties and both almost overrun due to the Chinese actually having superior small arms fire due, mostly a crap ton of Soviet SMG's.

I'm on Arizona time, gotta watch this in the morning🤙 very interesting and insightful so far

Great Video Bloke and Nathaniel F! Keep up the good work....

Well hello! I just discovered that your channel is back, can't believe it took me so long to find that out! So glad to see you're still around :)

Iron Sky for meme purposes. That's the most correct use for a film ever.

thanks bloke and team,i needed this educational distraction. Please be well everyone.

A smashing video! What a pleasure to listen to somebody with the right qualifications discussing a subject they know. I wish you would do something similar about the FAL, which I still believe was the best battle rifle ever put into production.

Your anecdote is actually very similar to the experience I had with the L85A1, I was in the R.A.F. competing at Bisley in 1984 when an Enfield rep turned up with an example of the new SA80 “wonder weapon”, he went on about what a great improvement it was over the current L1A1 we were all used to and the American M-16, we did get to try it out and it was nice to fire, apart from the horrible feel of the trigger, luckily I had left the forces by the time it was standard issue and all its problems started to appear.

An SAC!! I was looking at the last rifle siting in the rack, thinking it looked very much like my old SAC. At the end of the video you bring it out it and it is an SAC. Such fond memories. Make sure you keep neoprene buffers on the end of your breech block. It was always considered to be their weakness. Thanks BOTR, it was good to see an SAC again.

I know its a bit silly, but I still enjoy the idea of Kraut Space Magic as a literary device. Same with other hemi-demi-semi true weapon myths. Like Soviet weapons being forged from Stalinium and being utterly indestructible. Or American weapons being infused with the power of Freedom and Liberty.

Good, intelligent presentation, Bloke. Excellent! Thanks!

Just got a new $250,000 haas mill at work. Big upgrade from all the ww2 machines and crappy garage shop cncs we had. Ran it for first time yesterday and within 1 day I did a job that would have taken me 30 working days. Upper management and the command (organization is part of u.s. army) already looking at completely overhauling how we do things. Something people do not understand is how manufacturing techniques constantly change and how much of it plays a role in say firearms of a certain era.

The best thing about the EM2 wasn't the rifle, but the cartridge it fired. NATO would have been much better served if they'd adopted .280 British as their main rifle cartridge during the Cold War. The FAL, CETME, and G3 would have been much better arms with that round. Also, to your point that it would be easier to turn the AR 180 into a machined design than turn the AR-15 into a stamped design, aren't you basically just describing the BRN-180?

Thank you for bothering. I can't get enough of this kind of content. Patreon dollars well spent. Cheers.

👍 for the Iron Sky clip. One of my favorite comedies.

Non engineers don't understand tolerances, some engineers don't either. Ford were tasked in WW2 to build Merlin engines, by mass production methods, they had to spend a year in the middle of the war just re-tolerancing the drawings from RR so they could make the things quickly as there were not enough time served fitters to do it the Rolls Royce way.

Ah, your trademark British rambling. :) Always a pleasure to listen to.

The AR-18 is the Velvet Underground of rifles--they only sold 10,000 guns, but everyone who bought one designed their own rifle.

Just signed up on Patreon. I feel better now. :)

Just figured I would add another point regarding why bullpups are often heavier than standard configuration rifles is the barrel length. It seems like a lot of bullpups tend to have longer barrels as a selling point. Same overall rifle length but you get a handful of extra inches or maybe a hundred or hundred and fifty mm of extra barrel. That's a fairly significant weight increase as well; probably not as much as the extra receiver length but it does make a difference. L85A2 and the M4 are roughly the same length, L85 is slightly shorter even, but the L85 has almost 50% more barrel length so that is adding a fairly significant amount of weight to it. Roughly comparing the M16 to the M4 you have about a kilo difference in weight and lost about 140mm off the barrel and overall length. Not exactly an accurate comparison but I think it's safe to say that a bullpup might be carrying an extra kilo of barrel compared to a similar overall sized standard config rifle.

Ooh, this is relevant to my interests! Thanks Mike. To support this, I can add that at no point in development was the EM2 considered as a starting point. Not even for the bullpup layout (well, it might have been looked at, but they didn't reference it in writing). The only connection is the original designer, Hance, having worked on the EM2 originally (but did not design it), and the use of old EM2s as test-beds for the 6.25mm cartridge.

As an engineer, I can tell you people have no clue as to the investment costs to make stamping dies, especially progessive dies as very few bent parts are stamped just once. Firearm magazines are a prime example. Not easy to make, that is why so many manufacturer's just have Mec-Gar make their magazines.

10:32 brownell's has in part started producing a machined AR 18 with their BRN 180. They shortened the upper receiver so it would work on a standard AR lower and the upper is made from machined aluminum Pete Brownell said in an interview that making a stamped upper would be very cost prohibitive.

Back around 1984 my good friend and mentor, the late Pat Walker, acquired SN#2 BSA built EM2 rifle in 7.62 NATO in a 'trade' with Major Maurice Fogwell of the Smallarms School Museum. It was missing the unity power optic sight but I modified a Red Dot scope to fit... Pat shot it a lot (as did I), it was quite a hard kicking rifle, not well suited to the heavy 7.62mm round. I studied that rifle extensively, and also had a chance to study the two examples that Interarms had at their Manchester HQ. They were beautifully built guns but obviously toolroom prototypes, to enter service they needed extensive engineering input in my opinion.... On a side note, I wonder where SN#2 is now? Australia or Canada is my best guess!

Excellent and balanced presentation there.. I think the root issue with Enfield was that it had produced nothing original or of value since the 1950s and that their much vaunted expertise was simply not tested. If they had been kept producing technology demonstrators and concept weapons during the period, then the development staff would perhaps have learned something. Instead, although the factory was perfectly capable of doing repair or refurbishment, they had almost no development capability. You also need to understand that the British small arms industry was being chopped to pieces at the time as well. It became almost impossible to get export licences for military small arms (...unless you were a governement factory!) and most went to the wall. We did manage to produce a world beating sniper rifle, but this was more down to good luck than judgement.. The Enfield management were not a nice lot, and were perfectly willing to stick the knife into anyone who challenged them. They were not adverse to setting the Police and the Security Services on individuals who voiced concerns about what they were up to!

The AVRO Arrow suffers from the same "this would be the most perfect thing with no issues ever if it had been adopted" where people get completely lost in the fantasy of that thing.

Brilliant essay.

I never thought about that but this was interesting

Check out what some RU-vidrs are doing with 3d printed stamping dies.I think that lower volume demand for obsolete clips could match up well. Heat-treating them for spring tension might be trouble though.

Funny you mentioned machined AR18s, as there's a company here in Canada that's done exactly that, not once but twice.

A good explanation of why the Tavor bullpup is surprisingly heavy, despite its polymer chassis and aluminum receiver.

Thank you for the video. While all interesting the main thing I learned in the last few minutes was the reason why bull pups are heavier. Always amazed how heavy my SA80 was compared to my SLR.

Come to think of it, the AR-18 itself is basically Eugene Stoner's idea of "making" the AR-15 into a stamped design. It seems that it is easier to design something from the ground up, especially when your goal is ease of manufacture

We miss you Nathaniel F!

I was told that 1 WFR and 1 BW carried out the field trials for the L85 A1 and ended up passing a huge list of issues back to the trials team, think the only one I saw that was fixed was the magazine release catch but the SLR was my lersonal weapon until I was posted to NI and did the conversion course. The A1 gets quite a bit of grief, some of it is deserved, some of it isnt, tbh I had more issues with the L1A1 than I ever did with the L85A1, the A2 fixed the major problems but in theory that should have been done before acceptance. I can squeeze the RG magazine issue in here as well, we were told that these were disposable magazines, then they changed their mind and we got stuck with them rather than the heavier and less flimsy ones, the RG ones were not really squaddie proof, slamming the mag home rather than placing on and pushing just damaged them, causing stoppages when you didnt need to (due to now damaging the top of the magazine).

Interesting video, you have managed to answer a question I've had for a while about scaling down guns. One of the firearms I wanted to see shrunk down was the M1 Garand to Mini-14 weight/size. Yes, I know I could just get a Mini-14, but I like the feel and look of the Garand better. Well, now I know why it isn't feasible. As for the weight issue with bullpups, has anyone ever tried to use the same polymer as the type used in Glock pistols for the extended receiver of a bullpup?

Oh wow! You have a Leader T2 Mk5, I've always loved them for the brutally simple Aussie engineering, how do you find it and would you do a video on it?

Nice video I bet you have ordered a copy of Thorneycroft to SA80?

Fascinating. I get the distinct impression that you are an engineer yourself, Bloke? I had no idea about the political skullduggery between HMG/Enfield and Sterling. I still have moderately warm memories of my L85/SA 80, but that was probably because we could carry twice as much ammo and blaze it away on auto. Didn't ta e it to war in the sand, though.

So a couple of observations for you;, Engineer James Sullivan was one of the engineers at Armalite, who was tasked with scaling down the AR10 to create the M16. Later he worked for Ruger on the Mini-14 rifle, which is actually largely made from investment cast parts, which eliminates the vast majority of machining required, as parts are cast in the desired shapes. The AR18/180 was first produced in Costa Mesa, California and then produced by Howa Machine in Japan and finally by Sterling in England. The Costa Mesa is considered, along with the Howa to be the best. The Sterling produced guns are basically junk, poor quality control and unreliable. The (continuing) disaster of the Enfield SA80 is not surprising and even the H&K rebuild and redesign, which cost more then buying new M16/M4 rifles or G36's, basically put lipstick on a pig. Since civilian riflemen are in short supply in the UK, I expect more of the same in the future, unless they simply commit to buy unmodified, proven, foreign designs. At least the Army & Police purchased Glock 17 pistols. Nathaniel F. is awesome. Thanks Mike for all that you do.

National Serviceman firing an experimental rifle? - seems unlikely. I did a weapons familiarisation programme in 1981 and spent several days firing almost every available military weapon, from all over the world on the ranges at Portsmouth. The M16 was everyone's favourite. I believe the modern variant is currently the weapon of choice for UK special forces. I'm not surprised.

Point of order on the length: The barrel is 623mm, rather than the 518mm of the L85 & the receiver longer than needed for 5.56x45. Merely reducing the barrel length to that of the L85 would bring it down to the same length (actually 1mm shorter...).

Good points. Politics, War Department and MoD aside, it was still not a possibility with all the points you gave. Also wish more people would reiterate the points Eugene Stoner made when he came in to look at the L85 and its issues during production.

unrelated to everything outside of 10:17 , in Canada we do actually have machined AR-180 variants.

Interesting topic! After watching this, and remembering Ians videos about the L85/SA80, even if the EM-2 would have been a readily usable tried design, i think the scale of messing up the endresult, would have probably been the same. As i suspect the same people would have been involved... Also i never understood why people always claim Bullpubs are so heavy. (The ones we had, including optics, were at 3.6kg empty) Due to this video i looked up the weight of the L85/SA80 and was surprised. Wiki says an empty SA80 is weightwise closer to an AUG-A1 or A2 with full mag than to an empty one. 😮 (the a3 is heavier than the A1 and A2 but still lighter than the L85/SA80)

The key to design sounds like tolerance rather than patience.

Very interesting. I find the rifle very pleasing to look at and admit to imagining it didn't see use because of those awful bureaucrats who always spoil things. It is rarely so simple.

What's the conical thing with the brass machinery on the top right of your shelf? A partial mortar shell? My brain wants me to think it's some kind of small rocket engine.

Was it ever considered that they just adopt the AR18 from Sterling and drop the bullpup idea altogether?

In Engineering, where I'm from, a Draughtsman is a trained Engineer, he's really a junior Design Engineer.

1:06 if you want to illustrate this point to yourself ever, print off a side view to scale using publisher. It's a damn big gun, you really don't appreciate how big until you do this.

Awesome

What did happen to the FN in 280 British? Was this weapon finished as in finalized?

Any idea why they changed the bolt carrier design on the SA-80, putting the recoil spring in an extra rod?

good video

Imagine carving something out of a block of wood versus making something out of folded cardboard. You can make way more shapes from the wood. Also, I wonder if they had similar design problems with the AK-74? They weren't changing fabrication technique but they were going to a higher pressure cartridge.

Didn't have the ability or the money so they made the SA80 that ended up costing quite a lot for H&K make work.

The reality is that unless you're building a 100% known quantity, there will have to be extensive testing to identify and solve issues. The perfect modern example, IMO would probably be the US Army's IVAS program, which attempts to apply the technologies around the Microsoft hololens to a military environment. The first version which used a literal modified hololens was developed and tested for the better part of a year among a mostly closed loop of infantry troops and microsoft employees basically camping in a field before the second, ruggedized and helmet-borne prototype was finalized. Thing is, that second set of prototypes was tested by a bunch of troops outside of the program recently and there were _a lot_ of little things that were identified as needing refinement. You don't get quality hardware overnight, and if you rush it out before it is ready you _will_ get a substandard product that is not reflective of its true potential.

I'm wondering if the Ruger Mini-14 would have replaced the M-14 had it been introduced in the early 60's rather than the 70's.

Also just casting parts and then mashine finish them where needed is or was also a thing, like bolts. As long as you mashine finish parts in contact with other parts it's completly fine. It may be heavier and look weird but if done right its cost effective and faster than mashine something from a bigger block of steel.

The iron sky cameo made me laugh

The EM-2 may have been the right rifle in 1950, by 1980 it was out of date, made the wrong way with the wrong materials. If it had been fully adopted and continuously developed for the next thirty years then it might have been fine.

as an up and coming draftsman, hearing that a company making mechanical parts brought in fine arts majors with no engineering background baffles me, though I can understand hiring them as draftsmen, because drafting was a lot of artistry and drawing back in those day, and in some countries it still is.

Huh. I never knew it was so complicated.

Maybe the L85 would have turned out better if they didn't bullpup the AR-18, but derived a different design from the AR-18.

When it comes to tolerancing features on engineering drawings I personally think CAD has made it worse for the machinist. Engineers can be just as lazy as any body else. CAD makes it too easy for the designer to simply call out the same few tolerances for everything. Especially if they are using ISO tolerancing. Also, for shops in the US unless they have ISO tolerancing handbooks it can be tough on the person producing the parts. Plus every place behind the decimal point adds a lot of cost. Often it means an extra machining operation that involves grinding. My last job before I retired I was doing inspections on machinery designed under ISO tolerances with Inch measuring tools. Having to convert everything to metric was a continual PITA. I tried talking them into just setting up everything with Excel forms that used macros to do all the calculations with automatic accept/reject.

As I eagerly await Jonathan Ferguson book, Thorneycroft to SA80, do you think if the EM2 had been adopted would it have been a better rifle than the L1A1? and the now infamous L85? Would you also like to speculate on the L85's replacement as it's now pretty long in the tooth?

Almost every weapon there are service men who loved it, and servicemen who hated them it seems.

Before watching the video I am going to guess: A decade plus newer design integrating developments not available to the EM-2 in the late forties. Combined with extensive use in the field and resulting refinement of the design. Plus just downscaling a rifle to a significantly smaller cartridges isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

What movie is that ~12 minutes in?

Don’t mind me, I’m just here to try and help boost the metrics

There is also the obvious point that the L85 is almost entirely made of steel, whereas the AR-15 is part steel, part aluminium or polymer. It's quite possible to make a lighter bullpup, but it would have been more expensive, at least till injection moulded glass fibre reinforced polymer construction took off in the 90s.

Does anyone outside of Ruger's development department know how the AC-556 has held up in French service (Mousqueton A. M. D. ) or some of the other services? Geoff Who has examined some used police semi-autos but I have no knowledge of the rifles history., training, use, etc.

I think a couple of things need to be clarified with engineering design from today to then. CAD design for mechanical only existed from the 1970s and onward. This means that design work before this was done on draft table, calculating rulers, and very large books of tables for calculations. If you were doing design changes today, we can literally just pick 2 points, get a straight line, and have dessault or Catia tell us it's structurally sound. Thus the idea of tooling changes is more significant back then, compared to now. Additionally, unlike today's high speed contract seeking manufacturing market. People had life long permanent jobs and positions. However, that means that employees need to be busy for the rest of their lives. 25 years of EM2 development, and they still couldn't get something decent or working after establishment of .308 and .223 (albeit, this is less time for development). I feel that there was a major mismanagment with the team to the point of dumbing down the team through complacency. Thus by the time the AR-18 bullpup idea came around. It was something fresh, new, exciting, and as well they were too rusty to do it properly. 25 years of spinning in your chair on the same project with the title structural engineer. Asks the question "what were you doing the whole time?" I believe the EM2 could have been better if like bloke said, got Sterling involved. However, Enfield would then have to actually get off their butts and do something because Sterling is cracking the whip. Rather than sap government money until retirement.

If Sterling upset the Ministry with a court action, then they were ultimately doomed. Government ministries always bear grudges- think Virgin/Stagecoach who sued the DfT over their unethical award of the West Coast rail franchise to First Group. Now no more Virgin/Stagecoach franchises.

The book "History of Sterling armament company" just arrived in the mail. The lawsuit and the AR18 mess ,interesting.

Never just walk away from the CNC. It might just throw something at you.....

The AUG’s receiver stops at the end of the barrel and doesn’t go track to the buttplate.

Excellent video. Design teams , with the expertise, experience, open minded, able to think laterally, only as good as their last success, need to be nurtured.....they do not grow on trees.

Needs to be renamed Bloke sitting on a sheep.