[jordan8]

The British have not excelled at designing small arms since the muzzle-loading era, and most of their small arms over the last 150 years have been foreign designs which they somewhat modify and then slap a British name on. The Snider was an American design, the Martini-Henry Swiss-American, the Lee-Enfield was American, the SLR was Belgian, the BREN was Czech, the original British machine gun was the American designed Maxim, which was later somewhat modified and renamed the All-British Vickers, British aircraft of WW2 used the Browning (which the British assure us was so redesigned as to be really a British gun, Old Chap) and later they adopted the Belgian MAG-58. These were all good choices. The real problem here, however, is not American interference, privatisation, of lack of engineering skill, it is a disconnect between the designers and manufacturers on one hand, and the users on the other. The modern peacetime British army leadership has lost the gun knowledge the old-timers had, both military and hunting. The makers and army bureacrats simply didn't know enough about modern small arms to know what was desirable and what was wrong, and didn't care to find out (if they did they never would have used the AR-18 as a starting point). Small arms are simple machines and it doesn't take much engineering skill to design one. They will probably adopt the unproven HK G-36 now, since H+K is now British owned and this will no doubt be an improvement over the SA-80. I would suggest they replace the SA-85 with the 5.56 version of the South African SS-77 machine gun. In fact the U.S. should take a strong look at both the 7.62 and the 5.56 versions of the SS-77.

[jdege]

The modern peacetime British army leadership has lost the gun knowledge the old-timers had, both military and hunting.

That is the crux of it, IMO.

It takes a certain degree of expertise to successfully contract out a project. If you don't have it, the project will fail, no matter how good the people you contract.