British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

British Special Forces are: Special Air Service, Special Boat Service (a Royal Marines unit, and more or less the British equivalent of the US Navy SEALS) Special Reconnaissance Regiment (formed in 2005 and dealing mainly with anti terrorism).

Related to the actual special forces are The Special Forces Support Group (mainly made up of a Para battalion) Royal Marines Fleet Protection Group, the Pathfinders of the Parachute Regiment, the Royal Marines Mountain Leaders and the Close Protection Unit of the Royal Military Police. The weapons below are those most commonly understood to be used by British Special Forces and associated units.

L119A2 Colt Canada 5.56mm Assault Rifle. Used instead of the L85A2.

HK417 7.62mm rifle. Used instead of the L129A1 sharpshooter rifle.

L118A1 AWC 7.62mm sniper rifle with folding stock and suppressor. This weapon is normally only used by the Special Forces.

L121A1 .50 anti material rifle. bolt action, effective range 1,500 yards +. This rifle fires a round with a penetrator, high explosive and incendiary effect. It is designed to knock out vehicles, penetrate buildings and even knock out radar equipment. Not the same as the standard British anti material rifle.

L110A3 5.56mm FN Minimi Para light MG (The British Army also uses 7.62mm Minimi MG's these days alongside the GPMG).

Assorted versions (about 5) of the MP5 9mm SMG.

Glock 17 9mm pistol, this is now the main pistol used by British forces although there are also 9mm SIG Sauer's knocking about. The UK SF also use others on occasion. (As an aside, in Afghanistan the British Army issued a lot more soldiers with side arms than it used to, both as back up weapons, and for 'non-combatent' support troops).

L74A1 US designed 12 gauge pump action shotgun. Mainly used as a breaching weapon.(Note this is not the same shotgun used by the rest of the British Army, that being an Italian design).



While I'm, sort of, on the subject the standard British Army Sniper rifle now is the L115A3 8.59mm/.338 magnum that has made kills at ranges of up to 2,700 yards!.

The standard Long range/anti material rifle is the L135A1 .50 (ie, the US Barrett M82A1).

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

I just came across this list, for the SAS only.

Please note it is about three years old:

http://www.militaryfactory.com/small...as-weapons.asp

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

The Royal Marines Fleet Protection Group.
This is a roughly battalion sized force.

It is responsible for the security of UK nuclear subs, bases and missiles. It also provides RM detachments for Royal Navy warships and Royal Fleet Auxiliary (supply and support) ships.

It is also trained to protect, and retake, oil rigs and merchant ships etc.

The whole unit (like the Special Forces Support Group and the Pathfinders of the Parachute Regt) uses the L119A2 Colt Canada 5.56mm Assault Rifle rather than the L85A2 SA80.

For scenario designers British warships (and RFA's) on overseas deployments normally carry at least a section of Royal Marines from the Fleet Protection Group for boarding and small scale landing operations and that number can be increased in 'high risk' areas like the Gulf.

As an aside UK is just now opening a permanent RN Base in Bahrain in the Gulf, the first new base East of Suez for many years.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Why don't British Special Forces, and associated units, use the L85A2 SA80?

Well, these days it is not reliability, and certainly not accuracy, the SA80 A2 performs very well under all conditions. The main reason it is not used is that the L85A2 SA80 is a very bloody heavy assault rifle and that weight, as it is a bull pup design, is mostly towards the rear of the weapon.

The L85A2 SA80 A2, with loaded 30 round magazine, and optic sight, weighs 4.98kg (just about 11 lbs).

The L119A2 Colt Canada, with loaded 30 round magazine, and optic sight, weighs 3.9kg (just over 8.5 lbs).

That is a big difference for a soldier to carry around constantly and, of course, on operations a good soldier never, ever, leaves his rifle.

My first, much loved, British Army rifle, in the early 1980's, was a L1A1 SLR (that example a beautiful older rifle with wooden furniture, that I was genuinely fond of) and that weighed, with a full 20 round 7.62mm magazine, 4.96kg (or well under 11lbs)...

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

So British Special Forces can't carry an extra 2.5 pounds? Times really are changing. I guess it take a whole squad to carry a machine gun.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

As the British Army always says, "Any fool can be uncomfortable."

If you need a GPMG, you carry a GPMG, or whatever kit you need. You do not waste effort on a weapon, if you can get the same effect from lighter kit, especially if you are SF type forces who very often do not have APC's.

Another British Army saying was "Bull **** baffles brains." ;)

Average British soldiers, like most soldiers around the world, get the best, weapon in terms of value for money for the Government, filtered through assorted companies that need to make a profit and assorted civil servants who do what civil servants do (or don't do).

Special Forces soldiers, generally, get the best weapons money can buy. It's that simple.

I have never met one single British Army infantry soldier, who was around at the time of the change over, who thought the 5.56mm SA80 was a better weapon than the 7.62mm SLR, not one. I did meet a fair number of South African soldiers who preferred the the R4 (basically the Israeli Galil) to the R1 (not a lot different from the UK SLR).

The SA80, when first introduced, was not a good service rifle, in any way. The modern SA80 A2 is a good weapon, but it took years to get there and it is still very heavy for an assault rifle and not well balanced.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

While I am, sort of, on this subject it has been known, for many years, certainly since the mid 1990's, that the 'ideal' military round is somewhere between 7.62mm (too large and heavy) and 5.56mm (too small and weak).

The best Military forces these days have a mixture of 7.62mm and 5.56mm weapons, that mixture is not efficient, in terms of logistics, costs and effects.

Although remember, one of the major lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan was a lot of infantry fire power is about suppression (sending the enemy to ground) so he can be killed by mortars, artillery, attack helos, aircraft, etc... Although how far that would be true about a enemy that comes close to matching you in technology remains very much to be seen.

The experts have been saying, for a long time, that the 'ideal' military round is probably about 6.2-7mm. But this will not happen when every nation has thousands of 5.56mm and 7.62mm weapons and companies turning out those weapons and those rounds.

In NATO terms change will only come when the US changes and that depends, largely, on what happens with caseeless (ie non metal) rounds.

As a old -non bold- soldier I take a certain small comfort that we were right back in the day that 5.56mm really was too small and weak as a military round.

If I can find it there is a bloody good video on YouTube from a US Army officer about this...

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

All weapons systems are compromises.

While I'm not a fan of the 5.56mm (I'll take an M-14 firing 7.62mm any day) smaller rounds are handy in jungle/urban warfare where you're frequently enguaging at shorter ranges, a full auto capability is sometimes useful, and the ability to carry more ammo and have more ammo per magazine is handy. I.E. what SMGs tend to excel at. Out in the desert and mountains of the Mid East you want range and one-shot stopping power.

These days most Western militaries have figured out what the Russians have known for years. A designated marksman with an accurized weapon at platoon or squad level is damn useful.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

For anyone who does not know much about small arms, the small 5.56mm round mainly relies on high velocity to kill or wound, but that velocity falls off fairly rapidly with range and it also lacks penetrating power through obstacles like walls, trees or soft vehicles.

The US and the UK have both developed superior, more lethal, 5.56mm rounds in recent years, but the basic limitations of the 5.56mm round remain.

The 7.62mm round (and the NATO 7.62mm is a more powerful round than the short 7.62mm used in the old Russian AK47) has much better effects at longer ranges (ie, over about 300 yards) and much superior penetration through obstructions, through the greater mass of the projectile.

On the other hand 5.56mm is smaller and lighter, depending on the magazine used three 30 round mags of 5.56mm probably weigh roughly the same as two 20 round mags of 7.62mm. Infantry soldiers generally want to carry as much ammo as possible, but, since they are always loaded like mules, they also want to shave off all the weight they can.

5.56mm Performs well enough at under 300 yards and in the later stages of WWII that was the distance most infantry engagements occurred at, both in the villages and towns of Europe and the jungles of Asia and the pacific islands. In Iraq, and especially in Afghanistan, engagements were often at longer ranges, so 7.62mm has made something of a comeback in most Armies as a marksmen's weapon at section level.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

If you really want to get into ideal calibres, arrse has a thread on that, only 1,000 odds posts
https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/th...alibres.84454/

And see http://www.quarryhs.co.uk/index.html
The articles in question on the page (they open up as PDFs)
- The Case for a General Purpose Rifle and Machine Gun Cartridge
- Assault Rifles and their Ammunition: History and Prospects
- Towards a "600 m" lightweight General Purpose Cartridge

And back in my TA days (late 70s), if you referred to anything by its "L-number" then you were labelled a "train-spotter" or "sad anorak", as one NCO said when putting me strait after doing so one time as a fluffy newbie "L-numbers are only for shiny-ar*ed stores clerks for ticking off stuff on their forms. We squaddies call that thing an SLR, and never an L-whatsit."

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Interesting. Yep, it was always just the SLR, or, as Arrse would have it, 'The Rifle'. There again not everyone on here is even British.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

The SLR was invented solely so that NCOs could inflict "pokey drill" on squaddies if there was any spare time.
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/164...07/6841172936/

Oh the sheer fun:mad: of holding 11 pounds of rifle out at full extent, with the first to drop before the NCO called the change getting a good shouting at.

(Actually I seem to recollect it more in the first few weeks of joining, perhaps they used it as a screening method to see who would stick things out or not. )

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Yes I do remember doing that, although I don't think I ever 'lost' that.

I do remember, as a teenager, very early on in training leaving my rifle three yards away while I answered a call of nature. A grizzled veteran of a training Cpl charged me with my rifle and 'bayonetted' me in the stomach several times with it bloody hard while calling me every foul name under the sun.

My rifle never, ever, left my person in the field again.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

And that is precisely why that lesson was taught the way it was. Doing things that can get you killed ( or your Cpl killed) are frowned upon :)

I do not envy the job recruit training NCO's do ESPECIALLY in western democracies

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Agreed and one of several reason I do not favour women in front line infantry units.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Hey !
I represent that remark !

As long as a female can meet the same physical standards as the males I don't see a problem (and only 10-25% can). I TOTALLY hate the idea of any sort of dual standards system.[/quote]

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

In Norway we had "AG-gym", which was much the same as "pokey drill". AG-3 is the Norwegian licence-built H&K G-3. Gym is short for gymnastics, and it was often done to the chant "AG-gym er gøy", which translates to "AG-gymnastics are fun".


To get to start Officer/NCO training here in Norway, the minimum time for running 3000m is 14 min for men and 15 min for women. This is the same on all physical tests. (The qualifications and grading in Norwegian: https://forsvaret.no/karriere/krav/fysiske-krav)

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Yeah well...the guys see it differently. A few thousand years of evolutionary attitudes to overcome and yes there are plenty of examples of women fighting in partisan units and there will ALWAYS be a small % of true amazon warriors out there but if I had a vote ( and I don't.... ) I'd keep women out of jobs that are within front line hand grenade range....there are plenty of jobs just as demanding that aren't frontline.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

My point was a training NCO (unlike an enemy) simply could not ram a rifle barrel into a girls stomach in training, indeed even harsh words can lead a lot of women to tears.

Many years ago, I actually went out with a female British Army soldier, who shortly after women were made to start guarding their own bases in UK, told me that "she could not really shoot anyone."

I remember watching a TV documentary from Afghanistan in which a UK female (Sapper?) said that during firefights she would "get down on the ground and let the boys do their stuff."

The trouble is that they do tend to drop the standards: Women in the British Army for example being allowed to do 'knee' pushups!

The British Army have done extensive testing on women in infantry sections, all women and mixed sections both performed way below male only sections. My own belief is that there are a lot of roles women can fill in the military, but infantry soldiering is not one of them.

Anyway this is now a long way off topic.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

<SIGH>suddenly I feel my age......

I was never a runner, even in my teens I'd finish a X-country at the back of the pack.....might have something to do with the wonky heart valve I was born with but that's been fixed and now I'm bionic

After I recovered from the open heart surgery and stroke I decided I didn't want to be quite as chubby as I had become so I set out to loose weight and because I am NOT a particularly patient person I went at it big time with a 1000 cal deficit diet...so if I burned 3000 cals I could eat 2000......it's hard to do but you get used to it ( so is self-flagellation I understand...)....6 months after my surgery I was 50 pounds lighter than I was when I started and I was walking 4km a day and that , at the time was a "big deal".....and I was even occasionally running 400-500 m at a stretch ( again.....a "big deal" for me)....this year I start going further....then further...then I FINALLY got off the Beta blockers and I started running 2km a day......now to put that into perspective I hadn't run a full 2km IN MY LIFE before that and in the last month I've run nearly 70 km and if ANYONE had suggested even 20 years ( even 40 ! ) ago that when I was 63 I'd be running 70 km a month I would have wondered where you were buying your drugs:D

Anyway..the POINT of all this was your "minimum time for running 3000m is 14 min"....... I have a ways to go to catch up to 20 year old Norwegians:) 14 minutes is a good time for me for 2km........3km in 14 minutes seems impossible ....but so did "running" in general not long ago:)

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

There is a multi part documentary on YouTube about training future RN officers at Dartmouth (that I watched because my son is going there). These days the Royal Navy has a fair number of female officers (and ratings). It is called something like 'making an RN officer'.

During some of their training they do some Army type stuff on land, assault courses, PT, cross country marching, solving set problems in the field, etc. (although nothing very difficult by even average British Army infantry standards) They also do simulated ship damage control in flooding chambers, etc.

Now this being a modern TV show it goes out of its way to show the women officer trainees in a good light, but even so it is very plain that the women are all struggling with the more physically demanding stuff (and as I said most of it is not all that demanding by infantry standards) some of them really badly, despite the fact that the training staff are really going out of their way to help them. In the damage control stuff, battling against high pressure water that just keeps getting deeper, they were all next to entirely useless, with tears, etc. Frankly any damaged warship they are aboard that relies on them to save her will bloody well sink...

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

In theory woman can now join the British Infantry but I don't think any have, as actual fighting soldiers. They are not allowed to join the Paras (I believe) and they are excluded from the Royal Marine Commandos (I know).

Why? Because those two elite forces are the most likely to actually be sent to fight someone...

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

Yep......

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

I certainly don't expect to see any women in the SEALs (and while "GI Jane" was an amusing movie get real), Green Beenies, or Force Recon anytime soon.

But I was, and am, an oddball and exception. I'm 6'2" (yeah, a freak of nature) and grew up as the oldest child on a farm. At 18 I was in FAR better shape then 75%+ of males and 95%+ of females. While I'm hardly a FemiNazi I always remember a scene in the movie "GI Jane" ... where they're swimming and a black guy tells her she's just the first nigger on the block like his granpappy was during WW II.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

There will always be exceptions and obviously, you are one of them but 6'2" farm girl's wanting to be Marines are ( from my comfy perspective.. ) few and far between and I think what it comes down to is how the bar standards are being lowered to be "inclusive". "Equality" is only achieved when EVERYONE is judged by the same standard and we move further from that every day it seems

Don

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

There are always occasional exceptions, but the fact you had a USMC career, starting, if you will forgive me for saying so, some years ago, surely shows that the system was already working well enough for the small number of women who were interested in a military career and able to meet the physical requirements.

I think women can do excellent, and vital, work in areas like intelligence, etc. I don't think they belong in close range hand to hand fighting, trying to lug 60lbs of kit around mountains and c...p in plastic bags in fire trenches, etc.

Men need to behave, and think, in a certain way to be effective warriors. A great many women tend to want to change that pattern and their presence tends to disrupt it. There is also the fact that men will do stupid things to try to save/shield women in combat, that they would not do for a male comrade. All that stuff is a result of millions of years of evolution and no amount of desire for equality is ever going to change it.

There also seems to me to be a huge disconnect between the feminists who constantly want women protected from men in civy street -often on highly dubious factual grounds- and then women being put deliberately in the way of people who will gladly kill them very dead indeed in the most vile and nasty manner they can think of.

I was just watching a video of a female UK Police officer being attacked by an Afghan in UK with a hammer and her terrified screaming was very upsetting to hear, her male oppo was also attacked but did not do any screaming and eventually rescued her...

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

I used to coach female athletes and from what I learned during the courses in coaching and the experience is that the rule "Women athletes achieve 90% of the strength level of men except for shoulder and arm strength where they achieve 67%."

The big question is if pushups are a good measure of combat readiness or if it is just strength training. If the latter, then knee pushups are fine although I personally never let my athletes do them if they were able to do real pushups.

I'm all for equal requirements as long as they relate to capability in combat.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

My view is you set a high standard and then you stick to it, for everyone. Anyone who cannot make that standard does not get in.

Trouble is that if recruitment is low due to no combat (and yes recruitment, to the British forces at any rate, is always actually higher when there is actual fighting going on somewhere. Operation 'stay in barracks' not being very exciting to young men) and/or a pay freeze, etc, they tend to lower standards, especially where women are concerned.

There is a reason that the more elite the military force the harder the training, in every way, is a unbreakable rule.

It is not just, or even mainly, about the physical, it is about searching for the mental breaking point where someone cannot take any more and just gives up. Evolution has not really fitted women for that, they have a very different evolutionary survival strategy. Neither is better, they are just very different.

In Ancient society - and to a more limited extent even today - men who lost in war mostly died. Women might end up enslaved, but they did not normally die, providing they 'changed sides' at the right point. You can even find evidence of this in what happened in WWII in Europe. You cannot just change millions of years of evolutionary psychology.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

From my experience the biggest problem most females face (ignoreing those that just don't have the right mental attitude and expect the military to conform to them rather then them conforming to the military) is hips.

Most women have issues with their biologically wider hips (compared to overall height) when it comes to running and walking distances with a load. Sheer physical strength is a fairly minor issue. Lots of smaller guys in the military aren't as physically strong as some women. Overall guys have the advantage, duh, but it needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis under the exact same standards.

My "issue" is generalizations. Most females aren't suited to the military life, but to exclude all females based on that alone is what reasonable people, of both genders, object to. Again, I suggest we ignore the radical elements on both sides.

As to evolutionary psychology, I'm sorry, but that's an excuse not a reason. We're not governed by some inherent behavior pattern, we're influenced (strongly) by societal expectations. And those are what need to change. Just like the ones that for centuries dictated that the unwashed masses needed to be governed by the social elite (kings or priests) because they were incapable of doing so themselves.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

I think we must just agree to disagree on this.

Re: British Special Forces small arms 2017
 

I'll just necro this post since https://www.youtube.com/@britishmuzzleloaders has just done a nice video on good old pokey drill!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0AXZm0iTRM

For the good old SLR, there are some Rhodesians waving them round near the start, but the vid focuses on pokey with the No. 4 rifle.

Britishmuzzleloaders is a very good YouTube channel, mostly based on British black powder and then bolt action era kit and period drills and uniforms etc.