The Falkland Islands Defense Force is a small organization independent of the British military, run directly by the Falkland Islands government. When it decided to update its small arms form the L1A1 SLR (aka British FAL) in the early 1990s, the British assumed they would purchase the new L85A1 rifles. However, by that time the flaws in the L85 were pretty well known, and the Islanders exercised their independence and chose to adopt something different. After investigating a number of different options they chose to use the Steyr AUG. At this time the AUG was in service with a number of other nations including the Australians and New Zealanders, and Steyr offered good terms and good support for the FIDF.
The FIDF purchased about 160 AUG rifles in total, including a small number of carbines and heavy-barreled LMGs. The carbines were particularly useful in a maritime role, which was part of the FIDF mission at the time (fisheries patrol). The LMG version, fitted with an Elcan C79 4x optic, was intended to supplant the FN MAG as a support weapon, but was found unfit for that role. Instead, most of the LMGs were converted to standard rifles via simple barrel swap. In addition, the Elcan optics proved prove to breakage, and were eventually replaced with British SUSATs. Indeed, some of the standard AUGs had their factory scopes replaced with SUSATs as well.
The AUG remained the standard rifle for the FIDF until recently, when the service received L85A3 rifles from the British. The AUG was not configured to use the bullet-trap blank adapters that the British used, and the L85s were intended to allow better integrated training between the two forces. A formal replacement for the AUG has not yet been determined, as it remains a bit unclear what the British military will decide to do to replace the L85 in the coming years.
Many thanks to the FIDF for giving me access to their armory to dig out these rifles to film for you! They remain today a small but quite well-equipped all-volunteer force dedicated to maintaining the security of the Falkland Islands.
Small correction: AUG integrated optic is 1.5x not 3x.
The 3 positions change lever (to use British terminology) remind me of FN P90 & F2000 controls. By the way, F2000 was too late (2001) to compete here. But FAMAS could, if the French were OK and the FIDF had no prejudice (Exocet anybody?).
Out of the three then-available bullpup rifles, I think the FIDF made the absolute right choice. Steyr AUG is the only one of the three still lurking out there in production/use.
The FAMAS was, at the time, an idiosyncratic oddball of a rifle, typically French. It also did not come stock with optical sights. The L85 was what it was, and that wasn’t ready for primetime, something the islanders were wise to recognize. Hell, the Bermudans opted to buy ‘effing Mini-14 rifles, rather than adopt the L85… That’s a ringing endorsement for their common sense, and an honest appraisal of where that rifle really was, in those days before HK wrung out most of the issues. If I’d been given the choice between one of the early L85 rifles and just about anything else on the market in 5.56mm in those days, I’d have said “Yeah, the anything else, please…”
Early L85 was truly a study in what not to do for a modern combat rifle. Design, production, all the rest… The only thing on it that was really worthwhile was the sling, and that was something you could copy pretty damn easily for everything else on the market. The rest of the rifle rightly belonged back a lot deeper in the procurement process, and should never have gotten into general issue as it was actually issued. I’ve memories of observing Brits over here for Trumpet Dance, and the ranges they were using were a place where you could learn a lot of creative swearing, as well as observe some really good infantry small tactics. You got them aside, and none of them liked the L85, with some considerable justification. I mean, they’d defend the thing on general principles, but… Their hearts weren’t in it. Every time we did a small arms exchange with them, they universally preferred US rifles with US ammo… The Radway Green 5.56mm did not live up to the old 7.62 NATO standards, and I’d highly recommend anyone firing it through an AR-15 family weapon to lay off on that idea. Whatever the hell they used as propellant in those rounds in that era was best described as “filthy”. You almost believed the guys who told you it was factory-floor sweepings; it’d jam an AR-15 up pretty tightly within a few magazines. I had to do a drug deal with our armorer, and clean all the ones I borrowed from him for cross-training, because the usual drill just did not work. I’ve no idea what the hell the folks at Radway Green were doing, but that ammo just caked on the carbon, and you’d wind up having to do an armorer-level detail cleaning to get it all out… It was not anywhere near as easy as the US-specification ammo we had, which was exquisitely clean by comparison.
You’d almost believe the factory-floor BS. At that point in the history of it all, the British standard ammo was not, in my humble opinion, at all compatible with US rifles. It did function relatively well in the M249, from the magazine. No idea on the belts; I had no way of sourcing enough links to put their ammo into a belted configuration.
As an aside, the US ammo in the L85 of those days didn’t do very well either; lots of jams, and you rather got the impression that it was over-gassed or that the pressure profile was wrong for the L85. Friends of mine who did the same thing with the French described analogous issues with cross-compatibility on the ammo. I suspect that 5.56mm is much more prone to these things; I’ve never heard of or seen issues with 7.62 NATO compatibility; the British and German 7.62mm NATO stuff always functioned really well in any of the civilian-side rifles I fired it out of, and it did really well in our MGs, as well. Maybe better than the issue M80 ball, actually… I suspect that down on the level of powder/energies that 5.56mm functions at, any minor in-specification tweaking is going to produce large, observable issues when you start swapping the ammo between rifle systems. That cross-in-circle lies, sometimes…
@Kirk, You take this too seriously. I doubt FIDF would ever had considered the FAMAS, even the NATO compatible G2 export model.
But it is fun to imagine reactions to an announce of a British territory adopting the weapon of the frogs.
Like every other French rifle since the black powder days, the “French option” never really existed, being as it was too idiosyncratic and designed to uniquely French sensibilities. It is significant that neither the L85 or the FAMAS were ever really considered as serious competitors anywhere in the world, outside of people who were outright gifted the damn things. Steyr AUG, on the other hand, was fully competitive and won many bids around the world, for those who wanted the bullpup designs.
Ergonomically, I have my issues with it. I think it’s less awkward than either L85 or FAMAS, but it still possesses all the ergo-vices typical of the bullpup designs. None of which are weapons I’d want to take into combat, given all the minor little “issues” they all possess; being unable to do clearance drills and having to put attention on the rifle rather than doing things up in your line of sight are significant detractors, in my mind. Loss of situational awareness is almost baked into the bullpup, and you can’t get around it. Almost all of what I might reasonably have to do with a rifle is available to me in a conventional design, without having to remove the weapon from my shoulder and then perform the drills. Trying to correct or reload a bullpup in the middle of a firefight is a good way to get yourself killed, in my opinion.
It is rumoured that in the 1980s, there were some pre-adoption trials done on the SA80 (before it became the L85A1) where the Steyr AUG was used as a ‘control’ gun. I haven’t had the chance to see if there are any reports in the National Archives at Kew, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the SA80 came out embarrassingly badly in comparison!
In the context of the time, the over arching requirement to adopt the shortest possible weapon for NATO mechanised troops is understandable. However there is no excuse for the dire end result of the initial SA80 development and production by Enfield, exacerbated by the privatisation of Royal Ordnance. And not to forget how heavy yet flimsy it was as the L85A1.
There’s a weird obsessional thing present in a lot of these decisions; the UK had the various flavors of pre-WWI/II attempts at bolt-action bullpups, then the spate of attempts during the war and after which culminated in the EM-2, and kept on keeping on with the idea “bullpup good”.
I’m not sure that anyone ever, anywhere, managed to prove that thesis. If they did, they were likely the same sort of gormless wonder that never actually fought with a rifle under modern combat conditions, and they chose the bullpup because it looked cool, and answered a bunch of other issues and needs totally extraneous to the ones truly important: Staying alive and killing the enemy effectively.
You chose your weapon because it’s easy to carry, and easy to get in and out of a vehicle? You’ve just demonstrated an utter inability to identify real priorities or set them.
There’s one thing that matters with a rifle: Does it allow for rapid and accurate fire on the enemy, and does it afford the user what it needs to in order to facilitate skill-at-arms?
With the bullpup, the entire proposition of “facilitating skill-at-arms” goes out the window. If you have to remove the weapon from your shoulder to do routine drills like clear a jam, or if you’ve got to remove your attention from the surrounding environment in order to tend to the esoteric needs of your rifle? The designers of that rifle screwed the pooch. Bigly.
Watch the urban warfare drill demonstrations put up by the various British Army agencies. In them, you’ll see time after time where the engaged soldiers are stopping what they’re doing in the middle of it all, and tending to their weapons, then returning their attention to what is going on around them. That’s the result of them being issued a damn bullpup design like the L85; proper drill with a conventional design allows you to do nearly everything except for the odd complex jam while remaining attentive to the world around you. If properly trained, you do not have to “break contact” with situational awareness in order to serve your weapon. That’s the root of my disagreement with the bullpup designs; they’re not designed for the convenience of the rifleman actually fighting the rifle, they’re designed because the numpty in the pipeline above “rifleman” thought they were a better choice, mostly because “compact”.
You set your priorities improperly, then something like the L85 or the FAMAS appears. The insane focus on “Yeah, we have to have compact rifles because vehicles…” totally misses the point of the rifle: It’s a weapon. You don’t tell your Landesknects that they need to go to war with a Roman gladius because the Zweihander they designed their tactics around is too big and hard to carry; you figure out how to either shift tactics or make carrying those bloody great swords easier. Just “compactifying” everything isn’t the solution the numpties think it is; you still have to fight the rifle.
The L85 is the product of a school of thought in the UK that has resulted in all too many weapons being “fitted for, but not with…” It’s an inherently unserious approach to war, one that almost always proves to be delusional when actually encountering competent enemies. The UK got away with that for centuries because they were mostly a colonial force fighting forces well below their own level of proficiency and military potential; it’s notable that every time they went up against a near-peer force, they initially got their asses handed to them. See “Boer War”, WWI, WWII and the early days of the Napoleonic Peninsular War.
The bullpup designs are, in my mind, the ideal weapons for the administrators of the Army. For the poor bastards actually doing the fighting? They suck ass.
Spot on.
@RO Phil,
As I recall, while 1.5X was the standard, Steyr had higher power options available from the factory. Given the wide-open terrain, I would have ordered the higher magnification version, were I the guy ordering the rifles. FIDF may have done just that…
Actually – AUG was Irish choice as well.
And of what you shown of Falklands in the previous video, it is not taiga (which is forest – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga), but tundra rather, in other words not Siberia but Finnish/Norwegian border, lots of wind-swept barren flats
Maybe use the term “steppe”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppe
Three-position safety-selector switch was also used on other export AUGs, e.g. Malaysian ones. That type of switch first appeared on Steyr MPi 69 SMG, BTW
Has anyone out there actually fired the AUG? If so, any opinions on it.
I’ve only ever fired the civilian semi-auto versions, here in the US.
My take on them is that if I had to use a bullpup, it’d be an AUG. If I could get something else, with a conventional layout? The AUG would go on a wall, somewhere. It is absolutely one of the coolest-looking guns ever, to my mind.
Also, possessed of every one of the major issues I have with the ergonomics of a bullpup, particularly with regards to magazine changes and clearing jams/misfires. My take on that remains that if you can’t change the mags and clear the jams without taking your weapon off the shoulder or your attention off the surrounding situation, you’ve fundamentally missed several crucial elements of what goes into a fighting rifle.
Courtesy of the Austrian Bundesheer, I had serveral opportunities to shoot the StG 77. If given the choice, I would have chosen it over the G36.
Inexperienced persons sometimes inandvertently fired a burst instead of a single shot. This is due to the trigger: hard pull means full auto.
It is often forgotten that the StG 77 was the first generally issued military rifle equipped with an optical sight.
The StG 77 optic has the great advantage of being simple. Just the right thing to use under combat stress.
Why not an AUG in 6.5×55? Every soldier has a voice to 800m without resorting to a Swiss accent or bandaid cartridges. Makes the next step up worthwhile, like an MG3 in .338 LM. For close quarter work on Falklands just throw a sock.
6.5X55 is too big and powerful for an individual weapon. I doubt that it would be at all controllable on fully automatic in an individual weapon-sized envelope.
As a starting point for designing the IW cartridge? Absolutely… Just keep stepping down in terms of energy/propellant, find the sweet spot where it’s still controllable and yet lethal out to about the max 400-500m ranges for the individual weapon, and then downsize the cartridge case to match the amount of propellant. My guess is that you’d wind up around 6.5X48 or so, and that would be a good solution for individual weapon. The next step up? I’d likely start with the sister cartridge to the 6.5X55, and then work out the same pattern of “What do we need this to do” by way of pragmatic testing.
Overall, the whole solution is very unlikely to be any form of “One cartridge to rule them all”, and far more likely to be “Yeah, we need dual-caliber down in the squads…” That’s been the default “desire path” result since the Germans tried going to an all-StG44 infantry squad, and discovered that they really needed to keep the MG34/42 down there, as well.
Situation may change, going forward. I remain open-minded about where real-world combat is taking us, what with all the drone technology coming on. I suspect that the prevalence of drones is going to result in people saying “F*ck this…” in reference to heavy body armor, and then relying more on speed and stealth for the infantry. You wonder why you see all those FPV captures with Russian troops just laying out there in the open, waiting to die? Those poor bastards are exhausted and rendered physically incapable by having been run around by pursuing drones. Add in the stress and adrenaline, and the entire proposition that heavy combat loads are at all tenable goes right out the window. I can tell you exactly why those poor bastards are laying there, looking up into the camera: They’re physically expended, and the death they see coming is something they’re absolutely just resigned to. Maybe even looking forward to, as an end to the pain…
I have this opinion that what we’re currently observing is another one of those sea-change shifts in military affairs. Right now, Ukraine has managed to drive a major regional naval power off of the Black Sea; the drones on land have rendered the massive amounts of left-over Soviet armor irrelevant, and we’re seeing them begin to go after strategic targets inside Russia. By all rights, Ukraine should have fallen to the Russians sometime in 2022, and that was what everyone expected. Today? I personally cannot believe that the Russians have kept on throwing more money down on the table, because they’re rapidly reaching the point where the house is going to come in, call for the cards, and it’ll all be over. Cannot see this stupidity lasting past 2025. I also can’t see anyone learning what they need to from it, because the rest of the world is studiously looking the other way, just like they did back in the days before WWI, when the Russo-Japanese War was going on. All the precursor things like barbed wire and the artillery/machinegun combination were there, but nobody bothered to learn the lessons ahead of time. No doubt the next major war of this century will demonstrate that fact… My guess is that China taking Taiwan will be a very nasty affair, if the Taiwanese pay attention to lessons learned and do to the PLAN what the Ukrainians did to the Russian Black Sea fleet.
Ah, well… We shall see what we shall see. Human folly is ever-present.
Falklands look at the FAMAS?
French state employees improvised the launch of the Exocet missiles
ie French state participation in the war on the Argentine Junta’s side.
That is not something that can be forgotten nor can it be forgiven.
Lots of surface animosity, not all that much under it.
My understanding of what went on was that the French were caught between two mutually opposed necessities: One, to support their long-standing NATO ally, and two, to support their weapons sales pro-actively and honestly. They had to navigate between the two, and overall…? I think they managed.
I’ve heard rumors over the years that the French passed IFF codes and so forth for the Exocet over to the Brits, along with data on the actual weapons sold Argentina.
The real issue here was always that the Argentines of the day chose to turn on their allies of long standing, the British. Before the Falklands Islands War, they were on “the inside”, with all the usual military benefits. The men running the junta were not very bright, in that they thought seizing the islands would be acceptable to the British or the US; had they simply let nature take its course, and increased the entirely rational economic ties between the Falklands and Argentina? The flag of Argentina might fly today over Islas Malvinas, with the locals having voted for it. Unfortunately for Argentina, the stupid came over them all, and we’re where we are today.
It’s really amazing to observe just how feckless and foolish these regimes are, when put to the test of exigency. Why’d Putin decide to invade Ukraine, back in 2014, when natural economic ties were doing the work he wanted to accomplish? If he’d been patient and understanding with the Ukrainians, odds are pretty good that there’d be a de facto natural alliance going on there today. And, instead? Jesus wept…
Military adventurism is no solution to anything. All it does is harden attitudes and drive people apart; there is no way in hell Ukraine is going to let itself go under Russian authority again, and the entire question of Ukrainian nationalism is pretty much “It exists now…” due to these stupid, stupid wars Putin started. The idiocy of the economic damage he perpetrated is mind-boggling: Yeah, sure… Biggest steel plant in Central Europe? Turn it into rubble. Huge dam that waters one of the most productive agricultural regions of the world? Yeah, blow it the f*ck up, no cares as to the future.
The whole thing is insane. You don’t destroy crucial assets you want to capture and use for yourself. Unless, of course, you’re Russian. Then, I guess it kinda makes a sort of nihilistic sense, similar to how the various flavors of anarchists all thought it a brilliant idea to kill Alexander and traumatize the next generation of total monarchists…
If I were gonna buy the Russian nation a collective T-shirt to wear? I think the theme on it would be “Own Goal”, because that’s precisely what they do. Oh, we have a nihilistic lunatic that’s gotten power over Germany? Brilliant… Let’s support him with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of economic supplies so that the equally stupid bastard can conquer Western Europe. No chance of that going against us, is there…? Is there?
That’s the continuous theme throughout Russian history, along with “…and then, it got worse…” I mean, what precisely did Ivan the Terrible get out of murdering his heir? The point of that was… What? Same with Nicholas II: Assuming he knew what was going on, of course: What, pray tell, was the point of assassinating the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary? Did the fact that he was establishing a precedent not dawn on him until the Communists were shooting and bayonetting his family around him?
“Own Goal” is the main theme of dictators and “Conquerors” everywhere, everywhen. None of them ever manage to achieve their stated goals; it always goes south, and they never learn from anything except hard-earned personal experience.
Its a really good question why they didnt run full invasion in 2014.
It would give historical “prague spring” and other (Hungary) USSR “humanitarian interventions” (usa patent!) vibes, was it that they feared the old reputation.
Maybe they lacked power to do so and going even weaker then this in 2022, it would turn into even more bloodbath, as more land you conquer and get into, more opposition there is.
The whole of the Ukrainian situation defies rational analysis, mostly because the people running the whole thing aren’t at all rational.
Were Russia rational? It would look at the Siberian situation vis-a-vis a rising China, and say “F*ck me, that’s serious…”, and then do everything it could to closely ally itself with the West, such that Western allies and aid would be close to hand should the situation with China go kinetic. That’s a real threat; NATO deciding to conquer Russia ain’t. Not only would the biggest danger in that “Russia/NATO de facto alliance” be that the rest of NATO would decide not to keep anything militarily useful going, but that the entire NATO alliance would be in danger of going away with no identifiable threat to hand. Had Russia but waited a few decades, NATO would have been a moribund non-entity, a vestigial remnant like the Holy Roman Empire or the British Commonwealth.
Instead, Mr. Rocket Surgery himself, Vladimir Putin basically pushed Russia into the arms of China, made NATO enlarge itself, and then the reenergized the whole thing such that Trump is now demanding not 3% of GDP as military budget, but 5%. Which Russia cannot possibly afford to even attempt to keep up with.
Attempting to analyze any of this crap from a rational standpoint is a fool’s errand; it simply is not possible to rationalize any of it, nor are the involved parties running any of it at all rational, either.
A rationally-run Russia would be playing the long game, and working to protect itself from the inevitable Chinese denouement that’s coming for them. They certainly wouldn’t have a Tuvan running the Defense Ministry… Not if they bothered to consider where and what his actual interests might be.
I agree, its rather shocking that in this day and age you have international relations that are as rational as children feuds on kindergarten playfields – but horrifying fact is they are fought with multi million armaments, not plastic shovels and rakes, and sacrificing innocent people that die like flys.
It just shows that humanity is always one step near, really tiny step in regressing to barbarity – and some nefarious forces are always willing to push their agenda and ideology to make that happen.
As for Russia-Nato relations, I’ve read somewhere that back in the 90s some russian official asked someone from the west on some meeting, “Will Russia join nato”, and they were rebuked with: “We don’t need so big country in the Nato”.
It is an interesting comment on the SA80 that the most loyal, pro-British government in the world did not want it. I can see why that made army bureaucrats mad, but too bad, their rifle sucked. In a rational world, Britain would have adopted the AUG too, but that would never happen.
And learning that H&K behave like arrogant dicks towards their customers? Shocked, absolutely shocked!
Can they use the same magazines ?