…at least off the Horn of Africa:
Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles.
In the ensuing gunfight, two Somali pirates in a Yemeni-registered fishing dhow were killed, and a third pirate, believed to be a Yemeni, suffered injuries and subsequently died. It was the first time the Royal Navy had been engaged in a fatal shoot-out on the high seas in living memory.
By the time the Royal Marines boarded the pirates’ vessel, the enemy had lost the will to fight and surrendered quietly. The Royal Navy described the boarding as “compliant”.
I’ll bet it was. Don’t bring an “assault rifle” to a machine-gun-and-SA80 fight with Her Majesty’s Navy.
As the article notes, I suspect that they decided after the incident with Iran that they weren’t going to lose another sea battle to a second-rate power, let alone to a bunch of disorganized buccaneers.
I don’t think SA80 was a decider here. More likely the Minimi or MAG did the job. And more importantly, the proficiency. Although much is said about terrorist training camps, their effectiveness relatively a first world army’s training is open to question, IMHO.
There were centuries when “yesterday
The SA-80 is an Assault Rifle. A true bullpup configured, lighweight, air-cooled, shoulder-fired, select fire, 5.56mm rifle. It is the Brits counterpart to our M-4’s and M-16’s.
Pete, I doubt that Somali pirates train at all, much less train in terrorist training camps. But I suppose anyone with any sort of military training would be valued. In any case, starting a gunfight when you’re heavily outgunned seems to indicate a lack of training.
I bet there’ll be a few more examples. But the smart pirates are going to hide for a while after this one. Remember there’s still the Russians and Americans out there too. Piracy probably won’t stop until Somalia has a real government again and the shore bases that the pirates use have been raided and destroyed. But it’s just like any other criminal activity. Lie low when there’s too much heat out there.
Based on what military friends have told me the SA80 wasn’t the deciding factor, I suspect attitude and training had more to do with it. Go Marines.
There should be lots of dirt on the SA80 on line. It was the first mass produced British weapon and had a nightmare production history including: cartridges ejecting into people’s faces; gun jamming on automatic fire when dropped from short heights onto concrete; a nasty sand allergy.
When the marines helped the Sierra Leone government to stabalise in the 90s, one of the things I heard they taught them first was only to shoot at targets rather than letting off a clip in the hope that they’d hit something. I suspect that terrorists will never win in a fight against real soldiers.
“There should be lots of dirt on the SA80 on line. It was the first mass produced British weapon and had a nightmare production history including: cartridges ejecting into people’s faces; gun jamming on automatic fire when dropped from short heights onto concrete; a nasty sand allergy.”
H&K fixed it for you at a far greater cost than it would have entailed to simply have bought M-4’s. Only Britan could fuck up a bullpup version of simple rifle like an AR-18. Britan used to have excellent armories that were the envy of the world.
The SA-80 is the ‘Ares I aka stick’ of the rifle world. Take a compromised design and throw enough money at it and eventually it works.
For a while, I began to wonder if Lucas got into the small arms business.
Mike, I remember that the SA-80 was referred to by British soldiers as the “civil servant”; as in, it won’t work and you can’t fire it.
The SA-80 was a real mess. As you said, even given that the weapon had already been procured and deployed, it would have been cheaper to throw them away and start over than have the fix done. It wouldn’t have to have been American weapons, either; I’m told that several European manufacturers have excellent designs. However, that would have been an admission that someone in the MOD had screwed up, and that might have mildly affected someone’s career, and we can’t have that, can we?
Having said all that; congrats to the Navy and Marines. Maybe this is the first baby step on the long road back up to respect for the RN, and maybe, in the military that is “lions led by donkeys”, the donkeys have been fired.
“By the time the Royal Marines boarded the pirates’ vessel, the enemy had lost the will to fight”
I was disappointed when reading this sentence, because the word “boarded” was used instead of the phrase “sank with all hands.”
I don’t see the equivalence between the anarchy in Somalia and piracy.
Most piracy in the world occurs, primarily, in three shipping choke points: the Cape of Good Hope, the Straights of Malacca, and the horn of Africa. Modern pirates are mostly Chinese, with some Arab or African in origin. Somalis are a tiny minority of those.
Britan used to have excellent armories that were the envy of the world.
Mike, the problem was that the experts at Royal Ordinance weren’t really allowed near the project. It was designed by non-armorers and it showed.
Friends who did their military service in South Africa still have a soft spot for the AK47, mostly for it’s pure simplicity.
The Armalite AR-18, which the SA-80 is clearly based off of, is a simple and reliable design.
Kind of like fucking up a copy of an anvil.