2 replies on “SA80: Is This The Worst Rifle Ever Made?”
The now-hackneyed story of how the U.S. ordnance establishment “cheated” the NATO alliance out of a revolutionary new intermediate cartridge and a weapon designed around it, namely the Enfield EM-2 bull-pup and the .280 British cartridge is an appealing one for some people, but it is also not nearly so cut-and-dried as some folks would have you believe.
Colonel Rene Studler, the American ordnance expert ultimately responsible for the adoption of 7.62×51 NATO, may not have been as forward-thinking as others might have wished, but nor was he entirely off-track, either. In no sense has the cartridge he championed been substandard or a failure, either as a center-fire rifle cartridge or one for GPMGs.
Indeed, many small arms specialists and firearms historians rate the 7.62x51mm and its civilian counterpart, the .308 Winchester, as the most-significant cartridge of the latter half of the 20th century.
The British, it seems to this reader, missed an opportunity when Studler shoehorned everyone into adopting 7.62 NATO. Namely, they should have agreed to adopting the .308 as the standard full-power rifle and general-purpose machine gun round, but should also have pressed their case for the virtues of intermediates – such as their .280 – for use in the then-emerging class of weapons known as assault rifles – and then asked that the .280 be classed as the NATO intermediate cartridge of choice.
It must be borne in mind that Colonel Studler, like his peers in the mid-20th century western senior military officers establishment, was a product of a different age than the young men then working their way up the ranks. He’d been born in 1895, an era so distant in time that Grover Cleveland was U.S. President, and Queen Victoria sat on the British throne.
Studler and men like him came of age in an era when military rifles fired powerful cartridges which remained lethal past 1,000 yards. An assault rifle laid out like a bull-pup and firing ammunition which seemed diminutive by comparison to something like the 30-06 or British .303 would have been akin to something out of a science fiction story.
The .280 was undoubtedly an intriguing cartridge design, and one likely with many virtues. However, it is arguable that it constituted an “intermediate” in any sense except perhaps in comparison to the 30-06, 303 or 8mm Mauser. If one examines its performance characteristics and dimensions, it is more like something along the lines of the Swedish Mauser 6.5×55 round than something like the Soviet 7.62×39 or the German 8mm Kurz.
The 6.5×55 is a superb cartridge, and has been since the 1890s, but virtually no one claims it is an intermediate. It is a full-power cartridge, one only slightly more compact and less-hard hitting than the “antiquated” designs it was supposed to replace. Highly-efficient, yes – but revolutionary? Evolutionary would be a better word.
2 replies on “SA80: Is This The Worst Rifle Ever Made?”
The now-hackneyed story of how the U.S. ordnance establishment “cheated” the NATO alliance out of a revolutionary new intermediate cartridge and a weapon designed around it, namely the Enfield EM-2 bull-pup and the .280 British cartridge is an appealing one for some people, but it is also not nearly so cut-and-dried as some folks would have you believe.
Colonel Rene Studler, the American ordnance expert ultimately responsible for the adoption of 7.62×51 NATO, may not have been as forward-thinking as others might have wished, but nor was he entirely off-track, either. In no sense has the cartridge he championed been substandard or a failure, either as a center-fire rifle cartridge or one for GPMGs.
Indeed, many small arms specialists and firearms historians rate the 7.62x51mm and its civilian counterpart, the .308 Winchester, as the most-significant cartridge of the latter half of the 20th century.
The British, it seems to this reader, missed an opportunity when Studler shoehorned everyone into adopting 7.62 NATO. Namely, they should have agreed to adopting the .308 as the standard full-power rifle and general-purpose machine gun round, but should also have pressed their case for the virtues of intermediates – such as their .280 – for use in the then-emerging class of weapons known as assault rifles – and then asked that the .280 be classed as the NATO intermediate cartridge of choice.
It must be borne in mind that Colonel Studler, like his peers in the mid-20th century western senior military officers establishment, was a product of a different age than the young men then working their way up the ranks. He’d been born in 1895, an era so distant in time that Grover Cleveland was U.S. President, and Queen Victoria sat on the British throne.
Studler and men like him came of age in an era when military rifles fired powerful cartridges which remained lethal past 1,000 yards. An assault rifle laid out like a bull-pup and firing ammunition which seemed diminutive by comparison to something like the 30-06 or British .303 would have been akin to something out of a science fiction story.
The .280 was undoubtedly an intriguing cartridge design, and one likely with many virtues. However, it is arguable that it constituted an “intermediate” in any sense except perhaps in comparison to the 30-06, 303 or 8mm Mauser. If one examines its performance characteristics and dimensions, it is more like something along the lines of the Swedish Mauser 6.5×55 round than something like the Soviet 7.62×39 or the German 8mm Kurz.
The 6.5×55 is a superb cartridge, and has been since the 1890s, but virtually no one claims it is an intermediate. It is a full-power cartridge, one only slightly more compact and less-hard hitting than the “antiquated” designs it was supposed to replace. Highly-efficient, yes – but revolutionary? Evolutionary would be a better word.
Well Said! Grumpy