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Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
I've never fired a bullpup weapon, so...how does a bullpup compare to a conventional rifle? And has anyone here used one in combat?
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I've spent my entire military career (pretty much) armed with a bullpup rifle in the form of the L85A2, apart from some brief range days with Diemaco's, M4s and M16s at various times. I have used the L85 on operations (in my case also fitted with a UGL), and appreciated the compactness of the weapon (especially in vehicle based patrolling, and the limited amount of urban work we did), as well as the fact that, like the Steyr, it's very easy to use one handed while performing other tasks with the left hand.
The inability to fire from the left shoulder has never been a problem in my experience, but then my AO was mostly flat desert anyway. Something that was also brought to my attention is that for a weapon 785mm/30.9 inches long, you get 518mm/20.4 inches of barrel. Compared to the M16A2, which according to Wikipedia is 1010mm/39.625 inches long but with a 508mm/20 inch barrel, the advantages of the bullpup design in reducing overall weapon length without the loss of barrel length are obvious.
I also wonder if the lack of experience with firearms in the majority of the general UK population helped with the adoption of a bullpup design - the majority of people have never used a 'conventional' layout weapon anyway, so recruits joining the armed forces will have their first experience with an L85. I know that when I have later used rifles like the M16 series on exchanges and suchlike I have not grasped the layout as quickly as someone used to a conventionally laid out rifle might.
Unrelated to the bullpup design, but just as a general point, the weapon is unfortunately rather heavy, especially when fitted with a SUSAT (now being replaced by a combined ACOG/reflex sight) and LLM (visible/IR laser/torch thingy), and even more so when you stick a UGL on the end. However, this does mean that the barrel suffers relatively little climb in automatic fire (not that there is ever normally any good reason to be firing bursts of any length), and with the addition of the ops issue vertical foregrip/bipod, makes it very accurate.