Viewpoint - British Army Contract for L96A1 Sniper Rifle (by Gil Boyd B.E.M)

[sd4f]

SDF, you're honest enough to admit in para 3, sentence 2, the answer to your querie! Sniper rifles ain't target rifle and never will be - and nor are snipers target or competition shooters. The two are absolutely and totally different. A sniper rifle is a one-man-dog and has to be maintainable at unit level except under the strictest conditions when it'll be sent away. At that simple criteria, the No4T and the L96 reigned supreme. The trials team, in their wisdom and after taking advice from Canada and Australia decided that maintainability was not one of the PH rifles greatest attributes. And it's not all about target shooting accuracy either.

Maybe I should have added that I am a mechanical engineer. I understand what you're saying but some detail would be more useful in explaining the issue.

I've seen other posts where you've provided a PC OS analogy to the L81, and it seemed that a big part of the problem with the maintenance was that the infrastructure around the rifle didn't appear to be well equipped to carry out maintenance.

I've seen M82 maintenance manuals, which appear to have a lot of material and instruction on how to do things to ensure proper function, but since that was just a plain old commercial M98, many of the repairs just seem like as if they address things which don't go wrong, because lets face it, the M98 went through two world wars with numerous nations, lots of custom gunsmithing, modification, dangerous game rifles, exhibition grade rifles, whatever, and there isn't anything known to really go wrong with a well regulated action. So it makes me wonder, what problems did they have that would cause such grief?

Main thing to remember is that this discussion is academic, we all know the history, so just in case I sound like as if I'm flogging a dead horse, I'm just using this discussion to learn about the perceptions and design aspects of these rifles. Main point is, I didn't get a M85 because I think it's better, it's just a cool, unique rifle, and one that is very rare and collectable.