So we can buy the best available weapon, without nationalism getting in the way.
To be fair, it wasn't nationalism (leastways not domestic) that got in the way with the SA80 program. As noted elsewhere, the version of the EM-2 rifle with the experimental 6.25×43mm cartridge would have likely been ideal for the British Army in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. However the United States (along with HM Treasury's obsession with anything American made or mandated) put paid to that.
The 'original' SA80, otherwise known as the Enfield Weapon System (chambered in the 4.85x49mm cartridge), was developed by RSAF Enfield in conjunction with GST 3815 and GSR 3518. Early work was carried out in the late 1960s by many of the same designers that had worked on the EM-2, headed up by Sid Vance. Unfortunately, in the early 1970s, they all retired (said retirements 'helped' along, it has been speculated, by Treasury mandarins who wanted people who more amendable to Treasury desires, no matter how insane they were). After a pause, a new design team was assembled from scratch to resume work on the EWS. The new design team weren't as experienced as the old team, and it showed. Things weren't helped by non-stop Treasury interference and Labour government cost-cutting in general, which led to a number of ongoing ill-advised design changes even at that stage (this despite various prototypes of both the IW and LSW having been successfully tested in the interim) Despite all this, the team were able to produce two more prototypes [XL64 / XL65] with all the changes, good and bad, ready for the 1977 NATO Ammunition Trails (albeit at a cost in maturity and reliability). Unfortunately, the outcome of those trials were predetermined despite 4.85x49mm being superior in a number of respects, and the team had to start redesigning the LWS for 5.56x45mm. At this point, to save time and money, a number of features were rather hastily 'borrowed' from Armalite's AR-18 rifle (Armalite needless to say was not amused). Also at this time the consequences of one of those previously mentioned bad design choices, which arguably was a major part of the core concept of the 'later' LWS, really began make itself felt. This was the idea that a weapon that which was meant to meet the exacting operational requirements that the LWS was expected to fill, could be made easily and cheaply from stamped metal and plastics rather than machined components and wood or similar. You could kludge together prototypes together using this concept (sometimes of uncertain reliability, let us say) but when it came to actual production standard examples... Of course disaster ensued. To try cut a long story short, by 1980 it was clear that the Treasury's dream of a dirt cheap rifle system for the British Armed Forces was becoming a nightmare. However no-one (read bureaucrats) wanted to take any responsibility for the ungodly mess that had come about. To make matters worse, the new Thatcher government was planning to privatise just about everything in sight, including the RSAF and the rest of the Royal Ordnance Factories (RSAF Enfield was privatised in 1984). Which in turn goes a long way to explain how the revised IW & LSW 'passed' their IDTU trails in the years leading up to 1984, with the subsequent acceptance into service of the SA80 weapons system in 1985. (Though to be fair, they had at least kept the excellent accuracy of earlier incarnations of the LWS. When the rifle actually fired of course.)
In 1987, British Aerospace, who had bought the bulk of the Royal Ordnance, discovered that costs for the second batch production order for the SA80 (the first tranche was still being manufactured at Enfield, though with not inconsiderable difficulties due to the aforementioned design flaws) was higher than they had anticipated when they bid for the contract. In one of the most boneheaded (if you are being charitable) maneuvers of all time, the company decided that in order to cut costs (on what was a fixed price contract), they would move the production line from the (well equipped, with an excellent workforce) Enfield factory to a new supposedly
cheaper facility at Nottingham, with a mostly new workforce. Despite this, the go ahead was given for full introduction of the SA80 to all branches of the Armed Forces. To say things got even worse would be a polite understatement. It may be another such understatement to say that the rifles from the new production line were dangerous garbage. Ultimately it transpired that this move was actually part of a very dubious real estate deal that would see the Enfield site (the factory had been closed in 1988) being flogged off for redevelopment in early 1989. British Aerospace may have made far more money from this than it did from the SA80 contract. Any subsequent investigations into this appear to have been killed off under the Major government.
To her credit, Thatcher did not know the true state of affairs with the SA80 (the same can not be said of other notable figures in her government & the Civil Service). It is unclear when she finally discovered the full truth, but it is likely it was sometime around late December 1987 at the earliest. This was at a time when other early Thatcher era defence blunders such as the Nimrod AEW3 (originally inherited from the previous Labour government it must be noted) and the Challenger tank had already come home to roost, and then some!
All this was paving stones on the SA80's road to infamy in
Operation Granby, in particular in the form of the L85A1 rifle.
