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Scrap British rifle and buy Heckler, say the generals By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 07/07/2002) Senior army officers want the Government to scrap the service's fault-prone main assault rifle because of fears that it will cost the lives of British soldiers in battle. The demands arose after it emerged that several SA80-A2 rifles, the latest version of the weapon that recently completed a £92 million upgrade, failed to fire during operations in Afghanistan. One senior officer told The Telegraph: "You can't improve a weapon which is basically flawed no matter how much you spend on it, and the SA80 is a flawed weapon. It's not balanced, the optical sight easily gets steamed up so it can't be used, and it can't be fired in the left-handed position. "Even with all the modifications these basic flaws still exist. The lesson here is that no amount of testing can replicate conditions in war. The modifications have made it more reliable and it doesn't jam as much as before, but it still jams. And a stoppage in combat will cost the life of a British soldier." Another senior officer said he believed that troops had lost confidence in the weapon following the latest failures. "War with Iraq next spring is looming and our troops are equipped with a weapon which fails to fire in hot, dusty conditions. No one should underestimate the seriousness of this situation." The Ministry of Defence is under intense pressure to "cut its losses" and scrap the SA80-A2 in favour of a rifle designed by the arms manufacturer, Heckler and Koch. The woeful record of the SA80 is just one of a long list of MoD bungles that have cost the British taxpayer billions of pounds in recent years. The disclosure is a great embarrassment for Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces minister, who last October proclaimed that the rifle was the best of its kind in the world, adding that: "The Army has every confidence in this weapon." The gun that the senior officers want, the HK G36, is regarded by many within the military as possibly the best assault rifle ever built. Britain's Armed Forces would require about 300,000 new weapons in addition to magazines, spare parts and training manuals. Although individual weapons sell for about £300, the cost for a large order would bring down the total price significantly, possibly to below than the £92 million spent on refitting the SA80. Versions of the HK G36 are already being tested by the Special Air Service, which is believed to have used it with great success in Afghanistan. The German and the Spanish military are also understood to have signed contracts to equip their armed forces with the G36. The MoD launched the upgrade of the SA80 in 2000 after years of complaints by soldiers that it was prone to jam in adverse weather. Heckler and Koch, once German-owned and now owned by BAe Systems, won the contract and rebuilt the main firing components of the weapon. Live firing trials in extreme terrains suggested that the faults had been corrected. The new version of the rifle had its operational debut in Afghanistan, when the Second Battalion of the Parachute Regiment became the first unit in the British Army to fire the weapon in anger after a section of Paras was attacked while on patrol in Kabul earlier this year. Although 2 Para encountered few problems with the weapon, The Telegraph understands that many troops still believe it to be second-rate. The Royal Marines, however, have claimed that the weapon jammed at least three times in Afghanistan. The MoD immediately sent a team from the manufacturer to try to discover what had gone wrong. Terry Gander, the editor of Jane's Infantry Weapons, said: "The SA80 has been a problem weapon from start to finish and is the product of a weapon designed by committee. It would have made far more sense to buy American in the 1980s. Their M16 has its faults but it is a very reliable weapon - far more so than the SA80. For a long while the M16 was the weapon of choice of the SAS and that is always a clue." Last week, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, said reports of misfiring and jamming would need to be investigated before any decision was made. He added, though: "We have spent a considerable amount of money upgrading this rifle and I don't want to accept second-best." The SA80 is just one of a number of British defence projects that have failed to live up to expectations. One of the most embarrassing was the decision in the late 1980s to scrap the Nimrod early-warning aircraft after £1 billion had already been spent because the GEC radar system failed to meet the RAF's standards. Other notable failures include the inability of the Tornado GR-4 to deliver "smart" bombs after a £1 billion upgrade.