DavidPodedworny wrote:You know what i wanna know? Why is the L86 such a crappy marksmen rifle? I mean the british rifleman is the same thing basically and it has more ammo and toys.
Because its supposed to be a SAW (but it was **** at that too) and the MOD don't want to look silly (espcially after they turned down the Minimi in the '80s for the L86 then bought the Minimi later, which did make them look rather silly) so they had to find a new use for all the L86s they paid those nice men in leather shorts at H&K to upgrade to A2 standard which didn't involve chopping them up into L22A2s.
So they looked at what the US were doing (because if the US do it, it must be the best thing in the world), and they happened to be putting DMRs into infantry squads (M14/SDM-R/SAM-R/etc). And they thought, hey, we could do that! So the L86A2 got branded as a DMR, a role it was never intended for.
So in PR you get a weapon which in performance terms is bascialy identical to the L85A2 (bit more accurate, but thats it really), but with less ammo, less frags, no spade, fewer smokes and no resupply bag. Oh, and in its current version, its ugly, too.