Hahahaha Bowman...my god do British soldiers get lumped with totally shit, overly expensive equipment - often made by a British government jobs scheme (sorry I mean defence contractor). The amount of times I've politely smiled when getting a demo of kit like the Bowman, SA80, various rubbish body armour and webbing designs, Snatch Landrovers, etc etc

This is a very good book on the topic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions,_Donkeys_and_Dinosaurs

I'll have you know the SA80 is now pretty decent, granted, it's been redesigned for us by the Germans though ...

A lot of the issue, especially with things like the Snatch, is that they were designed to get around quickly, hence minimal armour, but in modern theatre of war against insurgents planting IED's it breaks down totally.

Same issue with the Eurofighter Typhoon - great A2A, but awful for what's needed now, with is A2G.

IMHO its rubbish from the start. The SA80 was LA's attempt to build a Steyr Aug and completely failed.

See also https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Category:British_Military_Procu...

Warning content contains squaddie humour potentially NSFW.

The boots problem is basically solved at last, Altbergs are excellent

TETRA replacement is called "ESN": https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-ser...

It does seem like a boondoggle, but hopefully it will actually work.

I hadn't realised tetra was considered outdated, I believe Ireland only moved to it for certain emergency services over the last few years.

Did they solve the PTT problem yet? Or the direct mode problem? Or the spectrum problem? lol