Earlier this year the UK Ministry of Defence announced the formation of a “Ranger Regiment” which will be the core of a new Army Special Operations Brigade.
One interesting feature of this new unit is that it will not be issued the SA80 bullpup pattern L85A3 currently standard issue for UK forces. Instead, the MOD has issued a tender for a “Armalite Rifle (AR) platform Alternative Individual Weapon (AIW) System.” Sure, it’s a new rifle for the Bristish Army, but this isn’t as big of an issue as some might claim, considering certain UK Special Forces units already use several alternative rifles and the Royal Marines have adopted the Colt Canada C8.
The AIW system will consist of:
1. A Rifle System (comprising of a Rifle and Signature Reduction System); and
2. An Optic System
The AIW system will be a 5.56mm Armalite Rifle (AR) platform, optimised for use with L15A2, a 62gr 5.56×45 NATO ball round, equivalent to SS109. For the purposes of this tender, an AR platform is defined as being gas operated with a rotating, locking bolt.
The rifle should have a non-reciprocating charging handle.
The rifle’s controls are to include: a magazine release, working parts release and a rotating selector lever that incorporates a safe setting.
The rifle is to have a standard configuration, not bullpup, with the magwell in-front of the trigger housing.
The rifles upper and lower are to be mated using industry standard pivot / takedown pins located at the front and rear of the lower receiver.
Signature Reduction System: The Signature Reduction System is to be detachable, to enable the operator to configure the Rifle System to meet operational requirements.
Optic System: The Optic system is to complement the Rifle and should be ballistically matched to the stated ammunition nature and supplied barrel length.
Offerors, which are referred to as Economic operators, may only submit a Rifle System from one OEM and an Optic System from one OEM. The Rifle and Optic do not have to be the same OEM.
This is a relatively short notice tender. Economic operators only have until 18 August to submit their basic proposals. The MOD will then evaluate proposals and select a maximum of six Economic operator systems to evaluate with a minimum quantity of 88 and maximum quantity of 528 AIW per type.
The MOD states that anticipated delivery of the trial AIW Systems to a UK MOD Location is required by December 2021 or March 2022 at the latest.
One successful economic operator will be awarded a contract for the Rifle and One successful economic operator will be awarded a contract for the Optic. This could be the same economic operator being awarded the contracts for the Rifle system and Optic system to enable the Authority to procure the Full Operational Capability (FOC) circa 3,000 systems with options for the Total Fleet Requirement circa 10,000 Systems for a period of 10 years.
