Army to keep SA-80

The Army's controversial SA-80 assault rifle will not be replaced despite complaints about its performance, the Ministry of Defence is expected to announce.

The SA-80 is the British Army's standard weapon but troops in Afghanistan reported the rifle sometimes jammed in action, prompting speculation that it was to be scrapped.

However, MoD sources have told the BBC that there is no question of it being replaced and instead a confidence-building exercise will be carried out during desert training in Oman to show that a £92 million upgrade has worked and prove British soldiers have not been issued with inferior kit.

The message the MoD is anxious to convey to its soldiers is "look after your weapon properly and it will look after you".

Tests are believed to have shown that among troops using cleaning methods associated with the old version of the rifle, reliability was just 17 per cent but among those following a new maintenance regime, the figure rose to 85 per cent.

A series of problems with the previous version of the SA-80 led to it being suspended from the Nato-nominated weapons list in 1997.