The United Kingdom’s Military Rifle – The L85A1

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Police in the world ain’t easy somebody’s got to do It oh you have a giggle mate that’s what you get blood Boom Splendid at least our schools on the shooting gallery a I bet you Brits thought we were done with you after the Revolutionary War not even close we have a very special occasion that we have been granted permission to do a lot of shooting on this rifle we won’t call it a review per se because it’s only about a days of

Experience and a lot of shooting but we can give a lot of good opinions being uh season Shooters ourselves so today on Grand thumb I hope you’ll join us as we talk about the British military’s service rifle and probably the worst service rifle ever made you w mate but

Before we get started we of course have to thank the biggest sponsor of the channel the biggest sponsor of the channel is the Sonoran Desert in if you’re looking to get your stting Gunsmithing there the people to go to can’t thank them enough go and check

Them out and of course who can we not forget Micah primary arms yeah great Optics great price we love them everything else you could possibly want go and check them out if you’re looking to get better at shooting dry fire is your way to go mantis will turn your gun

Into a dry fire machine we are dry firing a lot right mic oh it’s so much it makes it fun it does and of course today I have to give a big thank you to AAC um we are sponsored with them they provide awesome ammo we are shooting 77

Grain today and it is a performer no matter what so we love it but with all that being said talk cheap so right here we have the l85 A1 it should be noted that there is a upgraded version that is in use within the British military but

Unfortunately for them we’re going to be using the original version because why Micah it sucks just because we we owe you guys some favors from the War of 1812 so we’re going to go ahead we’re going to start with our favorite thing me and Micah are going to be running

Drills with this piece of [ __ ] and we’re going to see who is better with this terrible terrible rifle are you excited no all right let’s do it uh we’re going to be starting with a Bild drill on semi and uh it should be noted how off the

Optic is um that’s because the optic requires special tools oh neat it’s a feature does that does that count no 226 I’ll take it oh God so I don’t think the optic is on at all but I was up there it’s two out what is that point .1 per Charlie so that’s

246 I am liking now I have never shot this gun and I hate it stand by uh 194 good job and you were all in so I guess I just suck with the sa80 so you win yeah I don’t know if it feels good to be good with these kind of guns

Okay now we’re going to run it really really fast um we’ll uh we’ll try to give it about six rounds but it will be about keeping it in the a Zone cool stand by I was way off I don’t know if you were or the optic was the gripping

Wasn’t bad but I was certainly alha 2 3 4 5 six he are you using the irons or the scope irons were’re using the optic yeah damn should I just use the irons or the optic I use I use irons okay s by ah dude it’s getting hot don’t touch that

Right where your thumb could go don’t touch that yeah it’s the that’s the same problem the M4 though with the front sight post [ __ ] don’t touch the heat shield under there either yeah yeah Jesus Christ problem with the M16 A1 nice good job I think that uh I think

The optic is way more on than the irons I think you’re correct obviously oh way better oh yeah you know what I guess when you’re close enough it doesn’t doesn’t matter those going be two to the chest one to the head oh 173 yeah yeah that was actually

Very good about switch okay shooter are you ready yeah standby 128 I don’t understand why you’re so good with these shitty guns it’s always it’s always the gun that doesn’t matter man it’s always these stupid obscure piles missed that first one give me one do over

316 oh my God I got lost in the optic three five shoot ready stand by dude I got lost in the optic twice so I okay one more time one more time I hate this yeah so once you insert a MAG you can reload several ways you can

Either run the charging handle or you can hit that little guy right there it’s the most awkward kind of reload I’ve ever done so what we’re going to do right here is a one round one because that is the basis by which all guns are judged right Micah yeah but just to show

You kind of how awkward the um controls are on the L85 oh gosh that was give me one more I think that’s about as fast as I can do it on the l85 dude was it 407 You’re doing Great have you ever seen I’ve never reloaded this gun you seen the uh videos of uh Firepower United when he does the [ __ ] up like reloads on the M was that me right there Yeah Jesus Christ You ever been kicked out of the M you just got kicked out of the British military was your apparel designed by some designer who’s never run a mile in their life or was it designed from input from athletes in tier one military operators because Barbell Apparel did

Just that now the reason we here on the channel like Barbell Apparel so much is one it’s a lot of stretch take a look at these pants right here especially when you concealed carrying it’s nice to have a little bit of give and then also if

You do any type of rucking or squatting it just sucks when you don’t have give these are athletic cut they feel great and they look great and for those of my dudes out there getting big and swole there is a lifetime replacement guarantee whether that’s size ripped or

Torn clothing they’ll replace it Barb apparel if you don’t have it then you probably don’t lift and eat meat that’s wrong get yourself some Barbell Apparel so we have done a lot of shooting with the l85 A1 about 700 rounds at this point which is a real treat this isn’t a

Rifle that you get to see every day in the United States especially one that is in the configuration that we have right here um we do have to give credit where credit is due so the um both a94 and the sa80 that we have out here the l85 A1

Are from maxims from their collection so a big thank you to them for um allot us to borrow them and put rounds on these very Priceless weapons cuz there aren’t as far as I know a lot of these rifles that are currently in the US so very

Base of them thank you very much Maxim and uh let’s get into it and now it’s time to do our favorite portion which is talking about it from a Shooters perspective from a military perspective uh more so than the engineering perspective um so my name is Mike I

Retired out of Air Force Special Warfare and uh spent a good amount of time in the military and now I just do a lot of shooting and then of course we had Micah Micah what’s the best way you describe yourself nerd nerd gun enthusiast gun enthusiast Counter Strike Counterstrike

Counter Strike shoots better than me a lot of the times so that’s the cool thing about our Channel but getting into the l85 A1 you have to realize that it was plagued with quite a few issues I don’t know if this was so much the problem of the design to some extent as

It was problems with the QC um where it was made and this is pretty unfortunate because I think that there were it it could have come out of the gate doing a lot better but you have to realize that when it came out at the time it came out

The M16 A2 had already been out for a year or two and had already been adopted by the United States military so we talk about like reliabilities of of a service weapon and being you know well tuned with 556 that had already been accomplished not just the M16 but

Multiple others so when the British came onto the scene with the l85 A1 and it finally made it into soldiers hands it was certainly a disappointment in many ways it’s not all bad um I do have to note that when the um l85 A2 came out which was basically an upgrade from HK

Which was British owned um the weapon performed much better and that’s more than likely due to the fact that the tolerances were much better the QC was much better and essentially the entire rifle was gutted except for the receiver and uh you had a much better rifle at

That point um as far as my experience with this rifle in Practical terms I spent a lot of time working with the British military um the guys know who they are out there um so I I gotten to talk to a lot of people about the l85 A2

Mostly not the A1 but you guys certainly have your opinions on it in any case let’s go ahead let’s get into it we’re going to start tipto butt just like my my Roy Marines love and we’re going to start with flash hi right here the flash

Hider is very uh very much so like the m16a1 which was a full spectrum bird cage flash hider which means it’s not there’s nothing on the M16 A2 if you take a look at this flash hider you can see that it has um it’s blocked off for

The ports at the bottom that way you don’t kick up as much dirt when you’re firing um that’s not so much the case with the l85 A1 this isn’t a bad design per se it’s just a design Choice it does a good job at flash suppression it is

Longer than the typical A2 bird cage Flash Hider and performs very well in my opinion when it comes to the l85 as a whole weapon we do of of course have a Bullpup what this means is that we’re able to get more barrel length despite it being a shorter weapon so both the

M16 and the l85 have the same barrel length but as you can see the l85 is quite a bit shorter than the M16 um A2 right here so it’s quite impressive why this is important is the M4 is a very similar size to the l85 but the

Fragmentation range of 5.56 out of the M4 is much shorter than what you get out out of the l85 now there of course are problems with having a Bullpup the action being closer to your ear means that it’s louder at the shooter’s ear um some ergonomic problems and weight distribution problems especially during

Full Auto fire but there’s always a trade-off and the British decided that they really wanted to have a bullpup rifle so moving from the barrel it is a very um from what I’ve seen accur rifle we weren’t able to test that as well and that came down to a problem with we

Didn’t have the correct Tools in order to properly zero this older optic that’s not a dig against the rifle or the optic it’s just um those tools are somewhere in in the United Kingdom God knows where but if you have them send them to us from talking to soldiers who served in

The British military they’ve noted the weapon is accurate and from everything that I’ve heard it’s slightly less accurate than the Air1 15 anywhere from 1.5 to 2 m away um from the factory and then from there um of course you have your uh about 4 MOA before it’s retired

Out of service or barrels change etc etc so good on the barrel moving back to the handguard this is where a lot of problems with the l85 A1 kind of came into play um the plastic that they use um had a problem with the insect repellent that was used in the British

Military so it end up melting from that insect repellent so that’s super unfortunate of course um for the composition of the plastic that they use the composite material but another problem was that this kind of top plate right here um it’s really easy for this to come loose

So a lot of guys ended up zip tying it down you can see why that would definitely be frustrating to have that happen in the field um so that’s definitely something that um frustrated me as I was shooting because if it caught on gear as I was moving switching

Positions that ended up catching that’s kind of a what’s the best way to say it it’s kind of a theme that you’re going to see throughout the l85 A1 that there’s these little things that just kind of irk you about the rifle as you’re kind of working it as you’re shooting it as

You’re going through it so we do have a sling Mount point right there um no issues there actually it’s a great mounting Point much like the M4 moving back I do have to say though my favorite thing about the l85 A1 is how cool it looks it like I remember seeing this in

Like Call of Duty back in the day and like the heat guard the um in the stamp sheet metal these holes it just looks cool as hell I I think it’s one of the cooler looking bullpups out there do you agree with me Micah no Micah just hates

This rifle so we can’t we’re not we’re going to pretend he doesn’t exist now moving back from there because we have a Bullpup um we’re going to be slightly out of order but we do have the fire control group now when it comes to bullpups um something that a Bullpup

Does suffer from is a worse trigger compared to a more conventional weapon that comes down to the fact that on a conventional weapon like an AR-15 there’s not a whole lot of Engagement that has to be released in order to release a hammer on a Bullpup

Because the bolt is all the way back here that hammer has to be all the way back there that means this trigger has to have a bar that’s traveling all the way back longer bar just means you’re going to have to exert more Force the Bullpup triggers are typically more

Gritty longer they just feel worse and people say a trigger doesn’t matter I highly disagree with that I think a good trigger is a godsend for a shooter um people will probably disagree with me but as long as I’ve been shooting and as many rounds as I’ve shot I found that

The more I shoot the more I appreciate a good trigger so with all that being said let’s go ahead and let’s try the trigger out right here okay going into it we have about 3 mm of play pushing into it about five six about six PB pole let’s feel that

Reset coming forward about three four five six 7 7 mm uh that’s a long reset on that guy from the reset good let off about 4 lb not a terrible Bullpup trigger there are of course better ones out there um I think the d’vorah has an exceptional uh trigger for a military

Rifle that is a Bullpup but this is certainly miles better than the Stog which is still to dat the worst trigger on a Bullpup I’ve ever felt so not bad for my British military guys the safety is right here right above the trigger so press n for safety so when you’re

Holding this weapon this is a right-handed weapon if you need to disengage that safety it’s with trigger finger and then you’re on your trigger um being an AR15 guy um of course I love being able to kind of have my trigger ready and prepped um and being able to

Flip click off the safety with my thumb on the opposite side so I don’t like um using my trigger finger to disengage the safety I do understand that for a military force it is uh a better safety protocol and procedure but um I’m not going to specifically dock the rifle for

That that’s certainly just a manual of arms thing that’s just me personally as a shooter what I don’t like about it but the grip angle is fine um moving back into the action the one thing I do have to say about the L8 5a1 is that um I was

Really surprised at how smooth the bolt rides inside the rifle it I hope you can kind of see that or or feel that it it’s an exceptionally smooth rifle and you really have to give it to them um for how good that feels a lot of rifles when you when you cycle

Them when you rack them you can feel a lot of grit um like the styro and stuff it doesn’t feel good to cycle but l85 does when it comes to its recoil um it’s very much so styr Aug like it’s not incredible and that’s due to the fact

That so much of your weight is kind of back that your muzzle has more of a tendency to rise I understand this is you know there’s always pluses and minuses to bullpups I don’t prefer it I don’t like the weight all the way back there but so when you fire it definitely

Does jump a little bit more than an air15 that being said um if that’s a trade-off that you’re okay with then it’s not that big of a deal when it comes to select fire on this guy um I do find that it’s um it’s not terrible obviously but it certainly has more

Recoil than any other 5.56 weapons out there you can really feel that bolt kind of chattering as you’re um on Auto on this guy not my favorite thing semi-auto is acceptable so it the best way I could describe is it’s a Bullpup it it it’s a little bit clunky

When you’re kind of firing it in semi and and auto it’s not the best experience although you do have a very compact rifle now moving back from there we do have the magazine release this is a big pet peeve of mine right here so the magazine release is really not not

That protected at all um and what can happen is it can push up against your gear up against magazines and release and this was a big complaint from the British military folks of course with the Advent of the 82 A1 um this is no longer an issue so the magazine release

Is just weird kind of the whole Manual of arms when it comes to reloading is a little bit weird I understand kind of what they’re doing the idea being that you have your let me get that locked in there you have your bolt release right here and I

Don’t think I can get it with uh without a bullet in there but the idea being that you know you mag you’re going to rip that mag out you put your mag in and then either you’re going to reach up and hit that or reach back and hit that

Charging handle or reach over or press it up whatever have you it’s just kind of odd on a lot of bullpups usually end up having the bolt release somewhere back here because that way when you get that mag in you can just hit that bolt release and get moving I think that’s a

Better position after having run many bull pups kind understand that the l85 A1 is an older design but that being said we’re still going to dock it it’s just a very odd Manual of arms when it comes to the l85a1 from the magazine going back we do have the selector

Switch this isn’t uncommon to have a separate safety and selector um a lot of my AR-15 guys are so used to Safe fire Auto but on many rifles it’s safe fire up by the trigger group and then you select the firing position um at some other location so right here we have our

Select fire then up there we have our semi um I think it’s intuitive I do like the location it’s certainly not something you’re going to be changing that quickly but um I really don’t have a whole lot of issue here I do have issue with the cheek pad right here it’s

Very well known that these crack very easily and in fact while we’re shooting it did crack I do understand that this is an older rifle and you know there’s plastic has a finite life but that being said it was known to crack in many different environments same thing goes for the

Butt sock as well again all these upgrades that were done by HK ended up fixing this but I’m going to take the moment to really kind of go hard on the rifle that when it kind of entered service it could have avoided a lot of this with a little bit

Of QC and a little bit more on the soldier trial side to ensure that this didn’t happen if and if we’re not being honest about these things then you know history is going to repeat itself but moving back from there from the entire rifle we do have the optic um I

Understand that the optic is kind of a pain in the ass nowadays but back then it was definitely very cool and very Forward Thinking uh it is very lanik in fact I believe it was a predecessor to the Lan and the uh reticle is very thick

That being said uh that was true of many reticles back then I think it was a good thing overall especially compared to many of the other server rifles that you had out there at the time you have iron sights on the top um the eye relief is

Not great on this optic it’s the susat s a t let me see right here yeah so it it’s not not great but for the time good overall with the l85 A1 um definitely not my favorite shooting experience definitely not my favorite rifle I’m definitely not going to say

The worst service rifle um I was just being dramatic there at the beginning um but a service rifle that could have avoided a lot of the problems by simply putting this rifle through better trials I think this is a weapon that you can certainly get good with it can be very

Effective and deadly the earlier earlier teething issues weren’t due to the design so much as they were due to just poor QC so overall a good service rifle a good military rifle especially after the upgrades from HK and uh really don’t have a whole lot of problems with it

Other than I have to give the uh British guys a hard time about it because you guys it’s kind of a rough go at the very beginning there but here’s the thing guys if you’re training with this rifle you’re going to be good with it you’re

Going to get deadly with it I’ve seen you know tons of different British military guys just absolutely crushed with these rifles so get out there train get Hands-On time with these types of rifles and you’re absolutely going to do a great job and you’re going to rock

Guys thank you so much for uh hanging with us we’ve got to review a lot of different cool interesting rifles and the sa80 the l85 A1 is definitely one of those thank you for tuning in and we got nothing else for you guys D advice for today don’t discipline your kids out of

Anger discipline with a cool head let them know what the problem was in correct with love thanks guys talk soon