Off Target (Lengthy tale about Britain's SA-80 'rifle')

The Guardian ^ | Thursday October 10, 2002

[Man of the Right]

What's idiotic about this saga is that Britain has exclusively all-volunteer, mostly long-serving, relatively well-paid ground forces. The cost of a first-rate weapon is $1-2K. It takes 10 years to train and mold a first-rate NCO -- $500K -- and a miminum of 3 years to train and mold professional private soldiers -- $150K. Yet Enfield proposed to get these people killed forcing them to use a weapon appropriate for the Iraqi Popular Army, or some other rabble.