[.45cultist]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

As someone who had the opportunity to use the L85A1 during the early 1990s, I am going to dispute the claims that the L85 was "rubbish" and that it suffered "truly horrid performance".

The L85A1 certainly had issues but they were vastly overblown by the media at the time. Yes it had problems with the plastic furniture deforming/breaking and the magazine catch being exposed and other problems but many of these issues were teething problems that could have been sorted out before issue if the government had not tried to do things on the cheap and tried to push it into service so soon.
If you think the situation is unique to the L85, have a read about the early years of the M16 and I can tell you some of the claims about the first batch of F88 rifles that follow the same sort of "this rifle is crap" soldier's tales.

The rifle was very accurate, with better accuracy than the M16A1, M16A2, F88, L1A1 and M14 I was also able to shoot on the same days. I put this down to the SUSAT sight. With iron sights it probably would have had a comparable accuracy to the others.
It did tend to feel as though it was overheating compared to the other riles and it was heavier than the other 5.56 rifles however that weight tended to be towards the rear so it didn't feel unbalanced to me. As a bullpup, like the F88, it was very quick to "point & shoot".

The L85 also had a free floating barrel that adds to accuracy.