It was an innovative weapon with the compact bullpup layout, built-in carrying handle and an optical sight. The gun was designed to fire one of the first purpose-designed entirely new intermediate cartridges, designed to a 1945 requirement as a result of combat experience and German advances in weapons design during World War II.

The L64 (also called the Enfield Individual Weapon) was an intermediate calibre British bullpup layout prototype assault rifle developed in the 1970s. At one time it was known as the 4.85 Individual Weapon, a reference to the calibre of the bullet it fired.

The Enfield EM-2 Bull-pup prototype and trials rifles which stemmed from the EM1 Bull-pup assault rifle

A US Marine operating the cocking handle of an L85A1, 2000. The family is built in a bullpup layout (the action is behind the trigger group), with a forward-mounted pistol grip.

Nov 11, 2020 · The Enfield L85A1 rifle is extremely easy to shoot, popular with soldiers, and very accurate; despite its compactness, the bullpup layout ensures a reasonable barrel length. The …

Jun 1, 2021 · Its bullpup design set the action behind the trigger, retaining a full-length barrel while reducing the rifle’s overall length, and its straight-line design between barrel and stock was perfect for recoil control when firing on full-automatic setting.

A few decades later they would return to the bullpup configuration with the L85 rifle (which bears no mechanical similarity to the EM2 except gross configuration).

Jun 30, 2015 · Almost three decades later the British developed the .280 British round, very similar to the .276 Pedersen, and an experimental bullpup assault rifle chambered in it called the Enfield EM-2 or Rifle No.9 Mk1.

Feb 8, 2011 · Enfield tried converting the EM-2 Bullpup Assault Rifle to fire 7.62mm NATO, but the result was a rifle that (like most of the 7.62mm NATO rifles designed at the time) was uncontrollable in automatic fire.

Jul 12, 2017 · For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post! The EM-2 was the rifle that the British pushed for NATO trials in 1950. It was a rifle well ahead of its time in several areas – as a select-fire bullpup rifle, it was intended to replace both the infantry rifle and the submachine gun.