Anyone have any information on the British SA80-A2? There's an article on the BBC news website that mentions these weapons have been used in Afganistan by their marines and have failed because they were not maintained correctly. Sounds a lot like Vietnam when the M-16 was first introduced. Comments?

This has been well documented, both here & in gun rags. Yes, the weapon failed miserably as it was rushed thru testing & the Brits wanted one of their own designs rather than the normal FAL rifle.

You are thinking about initial fielding problems.  The system was extensively reworked by HK recently, thus the A2 designation.

So to restate: Has anyone heard any specifics about the latest version of the SA80 system?

ice...i suggest you read the data i posted today on assaultweb.net...the ar & m forum.

seems the bullpup still has some issues.

[url]http://assaultweb.net/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003193.html[/url]

[url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=129565[/url]

Precisely what I was looking for.  Real information on the current system, not the original version.

I agree with the marine quoted that a service rifle should be relatively easy to clean and maintain in the field or it is useless.  If you need special tools to clean it properly the system is unsat.  If it takes more than a few seconds to expose it's innards so you can clear excessive dust and crud build up jamming the trigger group, the system is unsat.

A rifle that cannot be adapted to shoot left handed is screwed up. A rifle that depends upon an optical system that is constantly fogged up is screwed up.  The system is batting really poorly on those bases.