Equipment changes towards 2000 (Brit focused)

[Cypher]

As I've been considering a new game for a party of British characters set in Africa, I've been wondering what changes to issue kit would have been seen leading up to/through the Twilight War.

Using the v2.2 timeline, we can say the SA80 would be the main infantry weapon. It's pretty much universally acknowledged the initial version was, to be polite, rubbish. The issues weren't quickly rectified after the 1991 Gulf War, with SA80A2 not coming into service until the first major overhaul in the early 2000's.

Now accepting that this was a huge piece of work to rebuild all the individual weapons, I can see it being unlikely this would have happened in the T2k timeline.

What about other individual changes though, the introduction of the AG36 and the M249 (early 2000's), acquired as part of Urgent Operational Requirements for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? If Options for Change hadn't slashed the military budget in the early 90's (and I can't remember if its referred to in the books at all) and in the face of increasing Soviet threat, would gaps in capability have been identified and these acquisitions have happened earlier, or would the FN Mag (GPMG) have been issued more widely in it's place?

I think we can be certain that vehicles like Coyote, Mastiff etc would never have been acquired or existed as the need didn't exist before Iraq/Afghanistan, but what of other like the (in)famous Sergeant York, if it looked like tensions were ramping up would this have been dusted off and put into service (iirc by the time it was cancelled most of the kinks had been worked out and it could have functioned at least acceptably enough)?

Just some keyworker working at home musings...