From 2011, Magpul moulded-polymer magazines were issued to infantry units on operational deployments. The first version of these magazines had solid sides, but later versions had a clear window in one side, allowing the user to check how many rounds remained in the magazine without having to remove it to do so. The magazine’s follower spring was coloured yellow, and when that came into view through the window, the firer knew he was down to his last five rounds. Each of the polymer magazines came with a detachable dust cover to keep grit and dust out. At 130g each, the Magpul magazines were just over half the weight of the previous 240g steel magazines, offering a welcome saving of nearly 1kg on a load of ten magazines.
Magazines were sometimes stored in pouches with the open end downwards, so that water drained out if they became wet, and troops doing this often attached black tape pull-tabs to the bottom of magazines to allow them to be removed from pouches more easily. Some of the polymer magazines were fitted with commercially made rubber pull-loops, for the same reason.
Magazines were regularly disassembled and cleaned to ensure reliable feeding, especially in dusty environments, as Captain David Blakeley of The Parachute Regiment describes: ‘Each man had six thirty round mags for his assault rifle in his webbing, the first facing forwards and the right way up, so it would slot directly into the weapon. Every few days we’d de-bomb our mags, getting rid of any dust and grit, then check and oil the spring and reload it. Some guys only loaded twenty-nine rounds per mag, so as not to overstress the spring’ (Blakeley 2012: 130). Eventually, even the manual recommended loading only 28 rounds per magazine in dusty conditions, thus providing space at the bottom for any dust that entered the magazine to gather.
The 5.56mm ammunition was usually issued in disposable green cotton bandoliers of 150 rounds, allowing troops to carry extra ammunition easily. The cartridges themselves were packaged in disposable stripper clips so that magazines could be reloaded quickly in action, ten rounds at a time. The Army trialled the 100-round Beta C-Mag double-drum magazine as an option to fix the limited ammunition capacity for the LSW, but this did not always feed reliably with British ammunition, and so was not adopted.
One of the advantages the Army anticipated from changing to a 5.56mm weapon was lighter ammunition loads, since 5.56×45mm ammunition is less than half the weight per round of 7.62×51mm ammunition. This was partially offset, however, by concerns that the SA80’s automatic capability would mean troops expended ammunition at a faster rate, and would thus need to carry more of it. Riflemen were initially issued four 30-round magazines (i.e. 120 rounds); LSW gunners were issued eight 30-round magazines (240 rounds) since they were expected to use their weapons for automatic fire to a much greater extent. The standard issue for riflemen was quickly increased to six 30-round magazines, but this still proved to be inadequate in practice. Men generally carried as much ammunition as they could, bearing in mind the significant weight of armour, grenades, radios and water (at least three litres in the Afghan heat, and preferably more) they also had to carry. Dan Mills describes what his men carried in Iraq:
I liked the boys to carry as much ammo as they could. The standard drill was six magazines of thirty rounds in each. But we always took out ten per bloke, plus a bandolier that held another 150 rounds, packed into a piece of green material and slung around the shoulder. That made a total of 450 rounds of ammunition per man. (Mills 2007: 38)
Captain Leo Docherty of the Scots Guards carried a similar load in Afghanistan: ‘My pouches contain five magazines of 30 rounds each (there’s one fitted to my rifle), two bandoliers of 5.56 ammunition (300 rounds), two smoke grenades, a red phosphorous grenade and a high explosive grenade’ (Docherty 2007: 125–26). Some units loaded their magazines in a specific sequence, like paratrooper Jake Scott:
My team loaded their rounds the same way as me: three normal ball 5.56mm at the bottom followed by three tracer 5.56mm; this way you had an indicator that you were nearly out of rounds when your tracer rounds start flying downrange, because you never count your rounds when it goes for real… The rest was made up of normal 5.56mm ball until the top. Again, I put three tracer 5.56mm together with two ball 5.56mm sitting on top to finish my magazine. In the Army there is a sequence on reaction to effective enemy fire: the first two being the double tap in the direction of the enemy, which would use the two normal 5.56mm ball rounds at the top of your mag… [followed by]… unloading tracer rounds into the target area and therefore clearly identifying the enemy position to your muckers [mates] around you. (Scott 2008: 31–32)
‘In a place as dirty and dusty as Iraq, you would clean your weapon every single day,’ recalled Sergeant Dan Mills.
That meant stripping it down, wiping every surface with a cloth, cleaning out any dirt, carbon or gunpowder residue, oiling the moving parts, wiping it down again, reassembling it, and finally performing a function check by cocking it and pulling the trigger. It takes between fifteen and twenty minutes. You do it so often that the whole process doesn’t require any thought at all. It became a ritual. And you’re happy to do it, because you know that lump of steel can save your life. (Mills 2007: 42)
Any weapon needs daily care to remain functional, but the SA80 needs more than most. It is a relatively complex weapon to strip, as Steve McLaughlin of The Royal Green Jackets discovered in basic training:
We were introduced to the SA80 assault rifle and began lessons on how to operate it, strip it down and clean it. I was shocked at how complex the thing was – it broke down into more parts than a kid’s jigsaw. I had presumed the rifle split into two like a shotgun and would just have a few simple mechanisms to clean. Boy was I wrong on that one. The rifle was more like a small engine than a gun – springs, bolts and screws fell out of it like confetti. It was a seriously complex weapon. (McLaughlin 2007: 51–52)
When McLaughlin later encountered the M16, he found it simple by comparison.
Soldiers used a variety of methods to try to keep sand out of the SA80’s sensitive action, including adhesive tape to seal external openings and keeping an empty magazine permanently attached to the weapon to prevent dirt entering via the magazine well. The long open slot in the side of the body for the reciprocating cocking handle made this difficult, however, as the weapon would not operate with it taped over. The issued plastic muzzle covers were a simple friction fit which unfortunately meant they froze in place in the Arctic but expanded in the heat of the desert, making them difficult or impossible to remove in either case. They also lacked a retaining cord, which meant they were often lost if removed in haste or while wearing gloves.