Kim du Toit solves the British Army's small arms problems

Jon also passed along a pair of links to Kim du Toit's blog, discussing the looming problems the British army will have when the get around to replacing the current SA80 rifle:

I would have thought that making your country self-sufficient in terms of its basic weaponry would be somewhere in Chapter One, Page One in "Strategy For Dummies". I can understand if you don't have the technology skills to make, say, radar-guidance systems. But small arms? Good grief. [. . .]

After WWII was over, the socialist Brit government of Clement Attlee didn't return those rifles to their American owners. In an act of spite and ingratitude which has never been forgotten by Americans, Attlee ordered those guns simply taken out to sea and dumped overboard. Lost were untold thousands of P-14s (which had been made by American companies to help you fight the Huns in the First World War) and other fine rifles.

The replacement Kim recommends? The standard weapon of insurgencies, rebellions, and third-world dictatorships, the AK-47:

Here are the advantages to my suggestion:

1. This is called "war on the cheap": cheap rifles, cheap (and possibly even free) ammo. As your rulers seem to think that defence budget cuts are limitless in depth, this is no small point.

2. You have to buy your rifles and ammo somewhere, and the Russkis need real (non-ruble) cash badly, so they're not going to go all Belgian on you and refuse to supply the rifles, just because you're invading some far-off country filled with brown people. Recent events seem to indicate that they're not that fond of brown people, either.