British L129A1 Sharpshooter Rifle

The Centre for International Cooperation and Security (CICS), located in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, UK, is a centre for both academic and applied research aimed primarily towards policy communities. A principal research area is the development of cooperative responses to prevent and combat small arms proliferation and illicit traffi cking. The Centre co-directs Biting the Bullet, a major international project to promote the implementation and development of the UN Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons. A briefi ng on the safe and secure storage and disposal of ammunition stocks was recently co-authored by CICS within the framework of this project. www.brad.ac.uk/acad/cics

2007

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This thesis is concerned with the design and development of British infantry rifles. The specific weapons considered are the Lee-Metford (LEME) first introduced in 1888; the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) brought into service in 1904; the Experimental Model No.2 (EM2) briefly designated the Rifle No.9 Mk.I in 1951; and the Section Small Arms Post 1980 (SA80) issued to troops in 1986. Over the past twenty years academic literature has demonstrated that technological determinism has persistently crept into accounts of technical change. By consistently leaving human agency out of the equation, technology has appeared to evolve autonomously and to have determinate effects. Whilst studies of civilian technologies have shown that this way of seeing has serious flaws, very little has been undertaken to show how the same issues arise in a military context. The approach adopted here explicitly aims to highlight and avoid problems of technological determinism by putting human choice back into the story of British rifle design. This is achieved through the identification of key personalities and social groups who had a perspective on, and an interest in, the development of the various systems. Having identified the key actors, their views on each artefact are explored. What emerges is that different groups see a particular technical solution differently. The arguments about what must be included in, and what is irrelevant to, a design of rifle are as a result exposed for further examination. The eventual weapon that emerges from these debates can be seen as a negotiation among the various parties: an artefact around which various perspectives coalesce. What transpires is a detailed picture of the tactical problems each weapon attempts to resolve. This not only indicates how various groups see the battlefield problem but also describes how these same actors want the infantry to fight.

2010

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Doctoral thesis, 2020

This PhD thesis uses aspects of a criminology framework to examine the extent to which research on small arms and light weapons (SALW) undertaken to support international policy is relevant and replicable beyond its immediate field of practice. Using a sample of six primarily field-research-based publications, I examine whether this research generated a greater understanding of the most problematic uses and users of SALW, and the role of these weapons as instruments of violence. With respect to uses, the application of public health and mixed social science methods has helped to reduce knowledge gaps on the effects of SALW in developing and post-conflict societies. Estimates of the costs of violence in developing countries demonstrated the instrumentality of SALW—i.e. the more serious societal impacts of firearm violence than those of violence involving other instruments. SALW research on users contributed to expanding the agenda from an initial focus on international trafficking to supply insurgent groups to a more comprehensive examination of the patterns of SALW procurement, management, control, and use among a broad range of actors able to contest the state’s monopoly of coercive force. My work on the instruments of violence contributed to an increasingly precise understanding of the most problematic types of SALW held by criminal, terrorist, and non-state armed groups in Africa and Europe. Finally, replicating field-based black-market price-monitoring techniques in conflict areas showed that ammunition prices and war-related fatalities can be strongly correlated, and provides an important lead for further examining the accessibility thesis—i.e. the link between SALW availability and levels of violence. The present thesis provides several suggestions for moving the field of practice forward. Firstly, there is a need to consolidate the lessons learned from SALW researchers’ extensive use of social science methods—including surveying—in post-conflict situations, and to analyse their implications for the measurement of SALW availability and the incidence of violence more broadly. Secondly, SALW researchers need to engage in scientifically robust evaluations of the impact of the most novel interventions, which would represent significant contributions to both SALW policy and academic research into gun violence. Finally, various streams of SALW research have highlighted the importance of ammunition supply in sustaining conflict and violence, a subject so far largely overlooked by those researching gun violence in developed countries. More expansive inquiry into ammunition flows and their relationship to violence has the potential to represent a major contribution to academic research into gun violence.

Infantry rifles are responsible for the majority of war-related deaths. This paper describes how and why they became ‘stan- dard-issue’ military equipment. Examining testing reports, field surgery observations and bullet specifications, I develop a theory of instrumentality through which a specific way of killing in war- fare becomes legitimate and manifest in infantry rifles. Rather than pregiven objects that are made acceptable through an evaluation of their uses and consequences, I show that weapons become possible through an ontology that calibrates how killing in war occurs, technologically and ethically. More generally, this paper expands the study of weaponry and war by uncovering the mate- rial and moral specifications that not only design but also crucially define what counts as a weapon. Clearly stated are when and against whom the line between life and death can be drawn. This paper, by contrast, uncovers the conditions that generate how and with what that line can be legitimately crossed.

rarnsw.org.au

Small Arms Survey, 2014

Consistent access to small arms ammunition is vital to armed conflict; this is particularly true in conflicts involving non-state armed groups that rely on illicit small arms and light weapons as their primary tools of war. A detailed examination of seized or documented small arms ammunition may help to reveal the history and alliances of a conflict, while the tracing of illicit ammunition can identify manufacturers and supply routes. A new Small Arms Survey Issue Brief—Feeding the Fire: Illicit Small Arms Ammunition in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia—analyses small arms ammunition found in the holdings of non-state armed groups in three recent conflict zones: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. It provides an overview of the various documented calibres, the relevant supply chains, and, whenever possible, the corresponding ammunition manufacturers. Feeding the Fire identifies numerous sources of illicit small arms ammunition in an effort to inform measures for reducing illicit proliferation to conflict zones and within them. Based on available data, it also evaluates the serviceability of ammunition observed in the holdings of armed groups in the three countries under review. Its key findings include: The main calibre observed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia is the Soviet-designed 7.62 × 39 mm cartridge. Ammunition of this calibre is used with AK and AKM assault rifles, as well as other Kalashnikov-pattern rifles and variants produced in numerous countries. Most of the reviewed cartridges fall within a few standard calibres, primarily of Soviet design, along with some NATO standards. Other calibres are comparatively few in variety and quantity. Most of the small arms ammunition observed was manufactured in China, Iraq, the former Soviet Union, and Sudan. All of the observed calibres were designed and adopted before or during the cold war era. No modern calibres—ones designed and adopted during the past 30 years—were documented. Analysis of small arms ammunition is often limited as a result of poor documenting practices.

A History of INNOVATION U.S. Army Adaptation in War and Peace, 2009