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More than 100,000 new state-of-the-art lightweight SA80 rifle magazines have arrived in Afghanistan to be used by troops fighting on the front line. The 30-round Magpul EMAG magazine is around half the weight of a standard metal magazine and helps reduce the weight that soldiers have to carry in their kit. Made from a polymer, the EMAG weighs 130g compared to its metal equivalent of 249g. Troops carry up to 12 magazines, so this change means each carries around one kilogramme less weight in total than before. Although it is lighter than others, the EMAG is robust; it's durability is...

British soldiers training for Iraq are saying "bang bang" instead of firing their grenade launchers because the Ministry of Defence did not buy enough, defence sources said yesterday. The MoD did not have the money to order sufficient Under-Barrel Grenade Launchers for the SA80 rifle, so all those available have had to be sent to Iraq. British soldiers stationed in Basra They also failed to buy any training rounds so soldiers cannot be trained on the weapon until they reach Iraq. They are having similar problems with the Minimi Light Machinegun because there are no blank attachments, which allow blank...

British troops are poised to go to war in Iraq. But after 30 years of development, £470m of taxpayers' money and countless modifications, soldiers still don't trust their standard issue rifle - the SA80. How did the military get something so simple so spectacularly wrong? James Meek unravels a shameful saga of arrogance, incompetence and indecision In 1985, in the United States, a firm called Microsoft came up with a gimmicky piece of software called Windows, said to be easier to use for non-specialists, as if the masses were going to start keeping computers at home. In Finland - Finland!...

Defence ministers are under pressure to scrap the troubled SA-80 rifle after an inspection team sent to Afghanistan found that, even after a refit, major faults still needed rectifying if it was to be used in combat again. The modified SA-80 has to be cleaned five times a day, according to Royal Marines officers The original SA-80, produced by Royal Ordnance, jammed repeatedly under fire in Sierra Leone and the Balkans. As a result, Heckler and Koch was paid £92 million to modify the weapon. But defence sources said the modifications had made the weapon virtually unusable in many combat...

Soldiers in Afghanistan have reported three faults with the army's new SA80-A2 rifles, the Ministry of Defence say. Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has told troops he would investigate claims the weapon misfires badly, the same problem suffered by the gun it replaced. Armed forces minister Adam Ingram told shadow defence secretary Bernard Jenkin that three formal equipment failure reports had been filed from Afghanistan. He said: "The SA80-A2 is operating in a very difficult environment in Afghanistan with both dusty conditions and extremes of temperature. "In an operational environment any concerns are treated very seriously and a specialist team on...

<p>LONDON, England -- A British army rifle which has just undergone a £92 million ($140 million) revamp has been found to misfire by soldiers serving in Afghanistan.</p> <p>The 5.56mm SA80-A2 rifle was promoted by the Ministry of Defence as the best in the world after going through modifications that were supposed to remedy the same reported problems in its predecessor.</p>