In message , phil hunt
writes
On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 21:32:39 +0100, Paul J. Adam news@jrwly
nch.demon.co.uk wrote:
*Still* waiting on Bowman, but PRR works really well at unit level.

I heared the army had radio problems in Kosovo -- don't know which
model of radio.

Clansman, which is okay at what it does (insecure VHF voice) but is
_old_ and unreliable and vulnerable to anyone with a Radio Shack
scanner. The much-delayed Bowman is to replace it Really Soon Sometime.

As for L85/L86, after such a shrill whine the silence is suddenly
deafening. Where _are_ all those stories about British soldiers doomed
to death by their flawed faulty useless rifles?

Did the rifles actually *work*?

Oh, the rifles, have always worked... it's just they were prone to
not working if they got dirty. If I'd been the MoD, I'd have
specified burying them in sand overnight then firing them as part
of the acceptance tests.

They eventually did. Do-or-die competitive testing: sand trials in the
Middle East (including bury it, dig it up amd firing)

The rifles worked. In fact, the L85A2 worked better than any of the
competition...

When the Press start bad-mouthing a weapon I'm minded of a quote from
"Arms and Explosives": "The rifle was always bad, its defects always
notorious... and the propagation of badness will doubtless continue"
This was 1908 and they were describing that famously poor design, the
Rifle, Short, Magazine Lee-Enfield.
--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk