First, repeated studies show the most important factor in wound severity is shot placement – essentially, whether you hit your target in the head or the leg is far more important than the calibre of the bullet.
Secondly, there is considerable difference between the raw muzzle energy that a weapon produces, and how much of that energy is transferred to the target – the so called ‘energy dump’. When a high-velocity bullet hits a person, it will generally pass completely through the body unless it hits a major bone, creating a second (exit) wound on the opposite side from the entry wound. Since any energy the bullet still has when it leaves the body is wasted – a so-called ‘shoot through’ – higher impact energy doesn’t automatically translate into higher energy dump. A theoretically ‘perfect’ bullet would fragment inside the target, breaking into multiple small pieces which would decelerate swiftly and release all their energy within the body; but ‘explosive’ or ‘dum-dum’ bullets designed to do exactly this have long been outlawed as inhumane. In practice, rifle rounds tend to destabilize and tumble when the pointed nose hits flesh and starts to decelerate, giving up more energy and often inflicting terrible wounds as they slice side-on through tissue matter. Although many people associate this with the 5.56mm round in particular, it actually occurs with all high-velocity rifle rounds, since most of the weight of these pointed rounds is towards the rear, making them inherently unstable when they strike. Ballistics is rarely as clear-cut as sometimes portrayed, but all the evidence indicates that both the 5.56mm round and the 7.62mm round reliably deliver enough energy to inflict lethal wounds out to 400m. For comparison, a .45 ACP round fired from a Colt 1911 pistol – often regarded as a ‘man-stopping’ round – delivers around 500 joules, less than one-third that of a 5.56mm round.
Finally, the SA80 has the capability for automatic fire while the SLR does not. This makes any discussion of single-round lethality a moot point because a three-round burst of 5.56mm will deliver more energy into the victim than a single round of 7.62mm.
The 5.56mm round was clearly inferior to its predecessor in two aspects, however. First, the 5.56mm round is good out to around 400m; beyond that, the 7.62mm carries better due to its heavier bullet, in the same way that you can throw a golf ball further than a table tennis ball. Although hits out to 600–700m with the L85 did occur, they were exceptional. In fairness, this was a design parameter of the weapon, and it was rare for infantrymen to be able to see and identify targets at such distances.
Secondly, the lighter rounds didn’t penetrate hard cover well, be it the concrete apartment blocks encountered in Iraq, or the thick mud-brick walls of Afghan compounds. Colonel Tim Collins remembers:
I ordered the companies to begin to train at an abandoned Iraqi army barracks outside the town. We planned to perfect our house-to-house fighting there and to test our weapon systems against the buildings, which were typical of the region. We found that the 5.56mm rounds had little effect, nor did the Iraqi 7.62mm (short), fired from their AK47s. However, the 7.62mm from our GPMGs ate their way straight through the buildings, and the .5 inch heavy machine gun punched fist-sized holes through the walls. A burst of five to seven rounds could blast a hole big enough for a man to climb through. (Collins 2005: 226)
Although the SA80 attracted a great deal of criticism in the press, the most important opinions are those of the men who actually had to carry and use it. The SLR was popular with soldiers, and it is fair to say that many did not regard the L85 as a worthy replacement in its early days. Former SAS soldier Chris Ryan’s opinion was that ‘SA80s are poor-quality, unreliable weapons at the best of times, prone to stoppages, and it seemed pretty tough to have to rely on them’ (Ryan 2011: 54–55). SAS Sergeant Andy McNab compared the SA80 to the US M16:
The regiment tried SA80s in jungle training when they came out, and found it not best suited to its requirements. With the M16 everything’s nice and clean, there are no little bits and pieces sticking out. The safety-catch is very simple and can be operated with the thumb – with the SA80 you have to use your trigger finger, which is madness. If you’re in close country with the M16, you can flick the safety-catch off easily with your thumb, and your finger is still on the trigger… If rifles were cars, instead of going for a Ford Sierra 4×4 – good, reliable, tested and enjoyed by the people who drive them – in the SA80 the Army went for a Roll-Royce. But at the stage when it was first brought into service, it was still a prototype Rolls-Royce, and there were plenty of teething problems. (McNab 1993: 75)
It is worth noting that while the SAS do not use the SA80, they did not use its predecessor, the SLR, either. McNab was not the only one to think the M16 was a better weapon, however. The first time Rifleman Steve McLaughlin handled an M16,
I could instantly see why it was rated as a better weapon than the SA80. The M16 was significantly lighter, much simpler to use and a hell of a lot easier to clean and maintain… A case could be argued for the SA80 having greater killing power and a superior sighting system, but the ultimate decider of a general assault rifle is its ease of use and reliability – and on that count, the M16 wins hands down. (McLaughlin 2007: 134)
The protracted reliability problems meant British troops were armed for a decade or more with a weapon they had little confidence in. This was a very poor situation and would have affected morale in almost any army, while many felt the MoD ‘quick fix’ solutions weren’t getting to the root of the problem. The situation only really began to improve with the A2 upgrade. Sergeant Dan Mills commented:
Forget what you’ve heard, the SA80 A2 variant was a perfectly reliable and good weapon. Its predecessor, the A1, got all the bad headlines and was a bit suspect. But its German manufacturers Heckler and Koch had done a lot of work to iron out the faults. The A2 had a sturdier cocking handle and a decent ejection mechanism that no longer threw the old shells back inside the rifle to cause stoppages. (Mills 2007: 40)
Royal Marine Jake Olafsen also thought the A2 upgrade had solved the weapon’s problems: